We’ve talked here before about no-go stories in romance–narratives that readers just aren’t having. Many readers can’t abhor infidelity, others can’t stand violent heroes/heroines, etc…
Today I’m curious what stories would you like to see more of in romance? Personally, I’d like to see more stories that deal with the impact technology is having on relationships. I’d like to see heroines who realistically manage family and careers. I’d like to see alpha heroes who work in fields considered traditionally female. I’d like to see stories where lovers who disagree profoundly about politics find true love together. I’d like to see more stories set in the 1900s. I could go on and on!
How about you? What tales would you like to see more of or told more often?
I don’t know if it’s already been mentioned, but I would love to read more books about people.with disabilities. Hard of hearing, brain injury, blindness, loss of limb not due to injury during war etc. The few I’ve read have been very eye opening with conflicts that you don’t find often.
We definitely have a tag for that!
https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/disability/
This is a broad tag that includes physical disabilities, mental illness, and chronic illness. I’m starting to add some specific tags (ie blind, PTSD) but it is in progress.
What @Lieselotte is looking for is often referred to as ‘Seasoned Romance.’ The leads are both over 40 (or some say 35 is ‘seasoned’) and the focus is on the romance, not the later in life coming of age or awakening that you are more likely to see in. Women’s Fiction. This a a slowly growing ‘subgenre’ that many authors are embracing and many readers are calling for, I write this sort of romance, with a real emphasis on a heroine with life baggage.–and I pair her with an age similar hero. Like the men, the women are silver foxes, not stereotypes of age–no cougars, no crazy old cat ladies, no knitting grannies, no old crones or comic relief. I write contemporary romantic comedy, contemporary rom com-mystery, and romantic suspense with a cosy spy thriller mystery blend featuring a middle aged Irish female butler and the British spy who loves her.
I did a guest post On AAR about Seasoned romance and it gave suggestions for authors, books and books lists for Seasoned Romance.
https://allaboutromance.com/seasoned-romance-a-guest-post-by-sandra-antonelli/
There is a Facebook group dedicated to seasoned romance
https://m.facebook.com/groups/958318970951705/
There are several lists on Goodreads as well, this one’s a good place to start
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/99966.Seasoned_Romance
Books like these are close to my heart –I did a doctorate on the viability older women as romantic leads and examined the ageist sexism that has, for too long, prevented women over 40 for being portrayed as experienced, strong, capable, intelligent, sensual, sexual whole human beings –who just happen to be older–not dottery, dreary, demented, dead below the waist, or at death’s door.
Yes! I love you for your books.
I forgot to mention you in my post.
Sorry!
You do it so well.
You’re people are real, in being the age they are, not old in a young body or the other way round. I may or may not love their shenanigans, but I really like them and their attitude. Your race car driver heroine, oh, her cool competence, yes yes yes, more!!!
Your suggestions in your guest post were good, too.
Thank you for all of it!
I wish you all success in building and expanding, you hit so many sweet spots of mine!
Thank you Liesolette!
I’m going to keep on writing them and championing other authors who write them too! I am always so chuffed when I see a reader who is looking for older characters–publishers need to change their thinking and get over the ageist stereotypes and the ideas they cling to about romance being a younger woman’s tale.
“publishers need to change their thinking and get over the ageist stereotypes and the ideas they cling to about romance being a younger woman’s tale.” This isn’t the precise reason why I self-publish, but the sentiment is the same. I don’t want my stories and characters shoved into industry standard boxes. (There’s a lot of other reasons why I self-publish too, but I don’t want to go off on too much of a tangent here.) I imagine that you, like me, found unmet needs in the literary marketplace and decided to fill them yourself.
Good luck on all your writing endeavors, and I hope you do an updated guest post on AAR. At the risk of sounding like too much of a self-promoter, Ms. Grinnan invited me to do one too: https://allaboutromance.com/erotica-vs-erotic-romance-by-nan-de-plume/.
We’d love an updated piece!
Love to give an update on what has and hasn’t changed in the last year. Shall I contact you directly, Dabney?
Yes! That would be fabulous.
I would absolutely love to read your Irish butler/spy books,but they are not on audio at this time. I have limited vision and reading novels is no longer an option for me. Any plans to make these happen in audio format? I know there are thousands of other romance fans who would love adding these to their audio libraries!
I am looking into doing audio versions, @KesterGayle. Thanks for asking. I am being encouraged to do so and there is much to consider. Since you asked, would you listen to an author read with own book?
BTW, I saw that you joined the Seasoned Romance Facebook group! YAY!
Sandra, it would depend on the author’s voice acting skills. I don’t want to be simply read to, I want the story acted out. For me, the narrator needs to be able to do male and female voices across a variety of ages, as well as accents. Perhaps you have such training, and I know that there are plenty of places to get that kind of training if you don’t. Reach out to some professional narrators to see what suggestions and advice they might have for you in this regard.
I am very pleased to hear that you are looking into this! I know it’s an expensive undertaking, but if you get the narration done well, we romance audio listeners are very supportive. I suggest you take a look at Aural Fixation Faceebook page for an indication of how strong this community is. Listeners, authors, and narrators all participate there, and I often see authors pose questions to listeners about what they look for in narration, or narrators and authors will discuss ways to accomplish orally what the writer has on the page and in her head about her books. There are now 9000 members, and folks there are very positive and often have great feedback. ( FYI: There is a lot of fangirling going on, it’s not a review site or a book club site. It is strictly folks talking about the books, authors, and narrators that they love.)
AudioGals is a great professional review site, and if you read through some of the reviews you will see the kinds of things listeners look for and have come to expect in audio narration.
I was very happy to see your mention of the Seasoned Romance FB page, it’s a category I seek out all the time. I have not found many audios about 40+ romance, so I’m hoping that at least some of the books I discover there will be on Audible. It looks like a very fun site. I’m looking forward to exploring it, and I thank you for taking the time to answer my question.
I listen to and review a LOT of Audiobooks (at AudioGals and here occasionally) and I’d echo what KesterGayle says – there are some authors who read their own fiction and do it well, but they are few and far between. Romance narrating is one of the more demanding types because rather like romance readers, romance listeners consume a lot of books and expect a lot from the performers. For many of us, the name of the narrator is just as important as the name of the author (there are narrators I won’t touch with a bargepole, no matter who the author is!) and in the past I’ve helped authors to find the right one for them. If you ever want to chat about it, feel free to email me!
Caz, I was hoping you’d volunteer as tribute! And I’m also hoping to see these novels in audio someday. They sound delightful.
@KesterGayle and @Caz
Thanks for the suggestion of Aural Fiction. I, um, have done live/recorded readings of one of my books on my Facebook page–complete with voices and accents–as an experiment. I was quite shocked by how many tuned in, watched later, and encouraged me to do more. I do plan on doing it again, even if I am not a fan of appearing on camera.
Audio is an expensive endeavour. I am saving up for it. I’ll be honest, if money weren’t an issue, I’d pick Toby Stephens as a narrator because he’s done many audiobooks, is rather good at it, had a sensational voice, he’s THE Mr Rochester, and one can dream.
I’d love to chat with you Caz to find out who you’d steer clear of and who you’d suggest would be a potential voice.
Agree completely about Toby Stephens! (It’s a shame the rest of that adaptation was a bit rubbish!)
And you can email me any time – I can hold forth about audiobooks until the cows come home!
I’d like more friendship within the romantic relationship. I’m not talking about Friends-to-Lovers; As a couple falls in love, it would be nice to see why they LIKE each other in addition to loving and lusting after each other. I’m not articulating this well, but I see a lot of books where the couple act as each other’s therapist or absolver or sex machine or whatever, but you don’t get the sense that these people have enjoyable, but boring moments together. Give me the couple that has inside jokes, game night, or the same taste in books.
This is so Fitz and Millie in Ravishing the Heiress, which has been mentioned. It’s sort of friends to lovers in that theirs is a marriage of convenience at a very young age, and they agree not to have a sexual relationship until much later. They end up building a business and a life together, so there’s a lot that they share. Where it does diverge from what you’re looking for is that Fitz doesn’t realize until the end that he’s fallen for Millie.
I think Sarina Bowen is an author who’s good at writing relationships in which characters have something in common beyond sex.
I love the way that book make Fitz’s friendship love for Millie the reason he falls for her romantically. It’s so kind.
I know this is a very beloved story for many people but I couldn’t get past the inequality in that book. It felt like Millie doing everything for him and him finally doing her the great honor of falling for her. She was sitting home every night when of course he should go off and have all kinds of affairs while still fancying himself in love with his old girlfriend. While using Millie’s money and business to put his family affairs in order the whole time. There was zero expectation that Millie should have the same rights. I know you can argue it was more in line with the times which were all about the men, but it just left a sour taste in my mouth. Everything was for him and about him. It felt very old skool to me where the heroine should be endlessly patient and kind while the hero should never be expected to be celibate! Men must be men!
I guess I think Millie signed up for that and she kept telling him it was what she wanted. I hear you but I still love that book best out of the three!
I also love the relationship that builds between the two over time and bawled my eyes out at the end. It’s well written and the characters are drawn well.
It just will never make my keeper list because of my issues listed above. I’m not sorry at all I read it, I just will likely never pull it out for a re-read.
I don’t hanker after different types of characters or settings in particular, but I do want characters to talk to each other more so that I can see them falling in love with each other’s minds as well as their bodies. Genuine slow burn romances in which physical attraction comes after they know and like each other well. Even romances in which the characters may have known each other for ages but not considered each other in a romantic light until they have a chance to spend more time together or one or the other of them starts to see the other in a different light. But this does not mean I want to slog through 400 pages of the minutiae of daily life. just want romances in which there is less sex and more conversations about things that reveal the characters’ personalities.
Responding to points in several different posts:
The first sex scene in _Mistress_ by Amanda Quick is a good example of an extremely awkward start.
Unless I’m mis-remembering, there was a Carla Kelly Regency short many years ago with a not-so-tall somewhat pudgy hero who sacrificed his toupee to save the heroine from some embarrassment at a dance.
The recent Milla Vane book has a VERY different setting (capturing the feel of the sword & sorcery genre quite well), and the language doesn’t follow standard contemporary American style. In fact, the word order made me think of Yoda. Unfortunately, the hero, who is supposed to be a great leader, acted as dumb as a brick with his assumptions about the heroine.
Since I already read almost all sub-genres of romance, and find the humor I prefer in a reasonable subset of them (a couple thousand with enough humor to recommend since I started reading the genre in the 1990s), I don’t have a big wish list. My tbr list is already so big it would take me several years of reading full-time just to catch up on the highest priority subset.
More stories where people get over things that actually happen in romantic relationships. He cheats–they figure out how to get over it. She overspends on makeup and massages–they figure out how to get over it. Those true crises that real relationships get wrecked by but they don’t.
I wonder if there are any romances where a partner cheats and yet the couple eventually still gets an HEA. I’m not talking about ménage/poly romances where there are multiple partners and everything is consensual and done with all the involved partners’ full knowledge, and I’m not talking about when a couple mutually decides to go “on a break,” I’m talking about a romance where one partner straight-up cheats on his/her partner with another person. I’m also referring to capital-R-Romance novels, not women’s fiction or chick-lit. I’m not sure I would be interested in reading it, but I’m just curious if anyone is aware of romances where there is cheating AND an HEA.
Doesn’t Mary Jo Putney’s The Spiral Path have a hero who cheated? I haven’t read it myself.
The other one that comes to mind is – apologies if this is a spoiler but it’s been years since it was published and if anyone is looking to see this sort of conflict, it’s a great choice – is Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas. Fitz isn’t faithful to Millie in Ravishing the Heiress, either, though as Chrisreader noted they have an agreement about that.
So yes, not something you see much in romance, and not really equivalent to buying too much stuff.
I wrote a romance like that, which I pitched to agents as “a husband and wife struggle to rebuild their marriage after an Indecent Proposal in Victorian England”. The general consensus was that most readers don’t want adultery in their romances, even if that adultery happened off-page and before the story began, so I’ll probably end up self-publishing the manuscript.
“…so I’ll probably end up self-publishing the manuscript.” Go for it!
On the subject of infidelity, I think you’re right about romance readers not wanting it in their stories. Obviously there are exceptions, but it’s a hard no for a lot of people. Interestingly, I’ve found that the tolerance for infidelity in erotica is a mixed bag. Some people really get off on it, probably because of the “naughtiness” of the situation, but there are some erotica books that specifically state in the product description “no cheating HEA” for readers who don’t like that sort of thing. The big turn off to a lot of erotica readers, at least according to Amazon reviews, is pejorative language- i.e. characters being called racial or ethnic slurs, even if called so by the villain of the piece. That’s not something I’d write anyway, but that really surprised me for some reason, especially when you consider all the other shocking acts a number of erotica readers are open to.
“Obviously there are exceptions, but it’s a hard no for a lot of people.”
There are historical romances where the hero or heroine are married to other people, but have sex with each other (“The Secret Pearl” and “Waking Up With The Duke” came to mind right away). This kind of adultery may be more acceptable to readers, though, because it’s the hero and heroine having sex with each other.
I wanted to subvert this trope by having the heroine married to the right man, the hero, but to save him from ruin she accepts an offer from another man. It’s a single incident, it’s part of the backstory, and it’s clear that this was never an emotional affair – it was a business transaction for her. But the fact that she had sex with another man at all was probably the dealbreaker.
Oh, I definitely think your infidelity plot could work- especially because the heroine had altruistic reasons rather than “la dee dah, I’m bored so I think I’ll screw around.” Unfortunately, as I know you’ve found, a lot of publishers aren’t willing to make exceptions on their no infidelity rule.
The Way Home by Jean Brashear has the heroine leaving the hero because of his infidelity, but it does end with a HEA/HFN. (As far as I remember it’s more of a HFN, but that’s mainly because they have already been married for years, so the usual HEA epilogue is not included.)
Cheating: This is a very US hard no. Just no.
I get it as one of those things that are a cultural taboo.
Like the French and disrespecting cheese, or offending anyone’s Royals.
Austria has a thing about nuclear power (against).
And it makes no sense to others, you just need to accept it. And move on.
I would love to read that.
How to get over cheating.
Or flexibility on “confused while falling in love and making out with the other guy”.
Or having revenge sex while still married and still getting a HEA.
So many ways to get sex wrong, and be a deeply decent person.
So many ways to be a horrible person without cheating in sex..
But US romance redeems violent thieves, murderers, drunkards, and so on, but having sex with another – no.
This is a mystery to me, but I would not try to get that one published, because there seem to be people out there who will not read your books anymore If you “condone adultery”.
I would read it willingly, and we might get a small group together if I read others right, but we will not be enough to make it viable. Maybe: publish under a special pseudonym just for that, to avoid burning all other projects?
There was a contemporary romance series in the 1980s or 1990s that dealt with married couples putting their relationships back together. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the series name, but I think it was discontinued in less than two years. It might have come from the same publisher as the Second Chance at Love series. I used to have a bunch of those books, and I think either real infidelity or suspected infidelity might have been a plot point in some of those titles. The fact that the line is defunct may say something about reader preferences right there.
I think emotional affairs and suspected infidelity may be more generally acceptable, but I myself don’t like actual infidelity on the part of the central characters.
Coincidentally, I just read a blurb on Amazon for Ainsley Booth’s SHAME. It’s not scheduled for release until November of this year, but the blurb seems to imply that the hero has cheated on the heroine. Booth (either writing under that name or under her alternate name, Zoe York) is one of my favorite writers and it will be interesting to see if she is indeed going to “go there” in a romance novel.
(On the other hand, I could have completely misread the blurb. Only time will tell.)