orchidandpeachcocktails

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“The very first romcoms were, of course, in written form. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing gave the template for all the movies, books, and shows that would come after for romance gone comedic. We can’t know for sure that many these romantic comedies rose out of a need for levity during difficult times, but considering the average lifespan during Shakespeare’s time was thirty and the bubonic plague lurked around every unlit corner, it’s not unreasonable to assume that people may have need a fun distraction here and there. And the pattern continued throughout history, where a rise in romcoms would parallel a rise in difficult times socially and/or politically.”

#romcom #romanticcomedy

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Two of these might involve dukes, but I’m intrigued by the plot of Thirsty by Mia Hopkins:

“A powerful, honest look at love as both a motivation and a risk, this story follows Sal Rosas, a former gang member on parole trying to make a fresh start. Back in his neighborhood, he runs into an old acquaintance, a widowed single mom, trying to give her daughter the best life possible. The book, told from Sal’s perspective, is a beautiful, authentic look at the challenges of starting over, the terrifying hope of the future — and the dangerous lure of the past.”

Another book for the wishlist, I guess!

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You can’t tell from the headline and summary above, but this is funny! And so supportive and loving of the genre and its readers. I went and bought one of Talia Hibbert’s books directly after reading this. 

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Saw this on Twitter. I hope this (and other authors/readers) learn a little from this. Particularly about how you can’t copyright titles and also about how long in advance covers and titles are decided in publishing. 

I heard about this last night but hesitated to mention it because I don’t want to be adding fuel to this fire. I don’t think this is particularly fun and I don’t want it to escalate. But this is a romance blog, I try to cover significant events in romance and this… well, it exists.

What is “this”? Newly successful, bestselling and critically acclaimed YA fantasy author Tomi Adeyemi posted a tweet saying it would be nice if other authors didn’t “shamelessly profit” by copying her titles. The problem with this? The author she was referring to was… Nora Roberts. Tomi Adeyemi’s book is Children of Blood and Bone. Nora Roberts’s book is Of Blood and Bone.

In this blog response, Nora Roberts goes through the reasons why this accusation was not the most solid: titles can’t be copyrighted, many other titles in the vein of “of blood and bone” also exist, her book was produced first, etc. 

But most of all: SHE IS NORA ROBERTS. 

I don’t know if I need to tell you that Nora Roberts doesn’t need to copy book titles to make money, but Nora Roberts doesn’t need to copy book titles to make money. 

Adeyemi somewhat apologized, saying that Roberts reached out to “explain.” Crucially, she has not deleted her original tweet. Because Twitter is a cesspool, one way that online harassment is fueled on Twitter is through incorrect tweets remaining on the platform. If the original tweet remains, then it can still be retweeted, easily spreading misinformation. (Also crucially, Roberts requests in her blog post that none of her fans harass Adeyemi. Please do not be that person.)

Last but not least, any of you who are new might not know this, but now-deceased romance author Janet Dailey was accused of and subsequently lost a court case regarding repeated instances of plagiarizing the work of… Nora Roberts. Roberts received a settlement, which she then donated to a literacy cause. If I was going to accuse someone of copying my work for financial gain, I wouldn’t be knocking on La Nora’s door. 

#romancenews

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The tea is that when George RR Martin includes the rape of a 13 year old girl and Pat Rothfuss writes 100+ pages of boring fairy sex it’s “just sex” and they still get considered part of the serious fantasy canon, but when a female fantasy author does it suddenly it’s “gratuitous smut” and their books can never be considered Serious Fantasy Literature™️ because they wrote about female orgasms and powerful women finding love, and their readers are derided for enjoying the sex scenes and wanting the romance because only Stupid Silly Women™️ care about these things and besides, haven’t you heard that the only accepted literary sex is unhealthy sex that is Painful But Somehow Still Hot™️ because the only valid, serious type of relationship involves a man abusing a woman for the delectation of a male audience!!

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Review: The Magpie Lord

KJ Charles is a new to me author and I had seen The Magpie Lord recommended on romance tumblr many a time, so I decided to take the plunge and buy it. Only $1!

Exiled to China for twenty years, Lucien Vaudrey never planned to return to England. But with the mysterious deaths of his father and brother, it seems the new Lord Crane has inherited an earldom. He’s also inherited his family’s enemies. He needs magical assistance, fast. He doesn't expect it to turn up angry. Magician Stephen Day has good reason to hate Crane’s family. Unfortunately, it’s his job to deal with supernatural threats. Besides, the earl is unlike any aristocrat he’s ever met, with the tattoos, the attitude... and the way Crane seems determined to get him into bed. That’s definitely unusual. Soon Stephen is falling hard for the worst possible man, at the worst possible time. But Crane’s dangerous appeal isn't the only thing rendering Stephen powerless. Evil pervades the house, a web of plots is closing round Crane, and if Stephen can’t find a way through it—they’re both going to die.

This is the first book in a m/m trilogy and I loved it so much I’ve already gone and bought the next two. The world building is subtle - mostly the reader learns about the magic of this universe as Lucien learns of it. The pace is incredible. The chemistry is *kisses fingers*.

It’s interesting to have a kind of fantasy romance set in historical times, as you also have the restrictions of the era as obstacles to be overcome, as well as the magical obstacles. 

I thouroughy enjoyed The Magpie Lord and will be looking at KJ Charles’ other books as well. Perfect for fans of m/m or paranormal/urban fantasy romance I highly recommend this book!

Amazon | Amazon AUS

#fantasyromance #historicalromance #romancenovel #romancereview

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“I’ll never forget the class discussion. It oozed with classism and misogyny, even in room full of women.

“The conversation went like this: Women who read romance novels are poorly educated, working class, likely stay at home mothers. They read romances to escape the emptiness and drudgery of their lives. At best, romance novels give them unrealistic expectations of love and marriage that will destroy their happiness. At worst, romance novels keep them from throwing off the shackles of the patriarchy.”

Everyone thinks they’re being original when they bash romance novels and the women who like them, but they’re just parroting the same old shit.

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“Every romance novel is a kind of fantasy, whether it features an impossibly wealthy duke or a cute guy who knows how to talk about his feelings. It can be escapist or aspirational, extravagantly hyperbolic or easily plausible, but it’s still idealized. Every romance has a happy ending, after all. That’s a narrative constraint and a defining characteristic of the genre; it’s also a puzzle for an author to solve. Make your main characters too good or too perfect, and obstacles to their happy ending seem far-fetched. Make them too flawed, and maybe they don’t deserve a happy ending. Here are five new romances that grapple with their protagonists’ shortcomings and virtues — their worthiness of a happy ending — or at least leave their readers doing so after the final page.”

Jaime Green is so good at reviewing romance novels, I can see why The New York Times hired her to be their first romance columnist.

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This is a good opportunity to bring up something that I’m not sure people understand. There’s a reason I don’t copy over entire articles. At the most basic level, it’s a violation of copyright and, as a creator, that’s important to me. But even more important… when other people (you) click on a story that I post and read it on the original site, that site knows that people are interested in that content. So they invest in its creation.

And that is why I did not copy over the very interesting description of Eloisa James’s use of sensitivity readers, because I want you to go to Shondaland, read it there, and reiterate to a website that supports the romance genre that it is worth it to continue doing so.

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“Because apparently the only good men are fictional.”

This response is particularly useful if the asker is trying to hit on you while simultaneously disparaging your reading selection—because everyone knows that’s so hot.

Why is this so common?! It seems like every conversation I have with a potential romantic partner about books has to involve the guy mocking any book I mention, followed up by suggesting Jack Kerouac or Ayn Rand.

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My gateway paranormal romance / urban fantasy was the Anita Blake series by Laurell K Hamilton. 

For a cool vampire novel that’s lighter on romance that a usual praranormal romance - Sunshine by Robin McKinley is beautifully written and really original.

Anyone got any romance author recs?

Especially for historical, vampire paranormal where everyone’s kind of a monster, gothic romance

I love Courtney Milan, liked The Red by Tiffany Reisz but haven’t read her other stuff yet, and Gail Carriger for the most part.

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“... ‘mechanisms’ like university syllabi and book prizes ‘valorise a certain kind of reading,’ according to Gillis. ‘What often happens is writing by women and about women — and I’d extend that notion to the romantic comedy — gets pushed to the peripheries,’ she says.”

”Some of the most commercially successful books from the ‘20s and '30s were actually romance fiction written by women, but they weren’t considered the best of the best. ‘Any university syllabus of the 1920s will say, James Joyce one of the most seminal authors of the 20th century, but actually one of the bestselling novels in 1926 is Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades,’ says Gillis. ‘This is what people are reading, they’re not reading Joyce.’ In the 1930s, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca ‘sold very well,’ says Gillis, but ‘wasn’t seen as the pinnacle of a certain kind of fiction. This is because ‘mechanisms’ like university syllabi and book prizes ‘valorise a certain kind of reading,’ according to Gillis. ‘What often happens is writing by women and about women — and I’d extend that notion to the romantic comedy — gets pushed to the peripheries,’ she says.”

I had a hard time picking a pull quote.

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If you haven’t heard, more romance novel adaptations are coming from Netflix. They’ve picked up the Virgin River series by Robyn Carr (it’s 18 books long!) and The Sweet Magnolias series by Sherryl Woods.

I’ve had the first Virgin River book for years. Guess it’s time to read it.

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If you’re going to claim to be feminist, try respecting women enough to trust them to read what they want.

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“Bea and Leah Koch, the sister duo who founded and own Los Angeles’ romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice, have signed an overall deal with Sony Pictures Television, the studio announced on Wednesday. The Koch sisters will partner with Sony to develop romance-focused projects for television based on their unique connection to romance readers and authors.”

Some more coverage here and here. Can’t wait to see what happens with this!

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The amazing Kate Cuthbert’s speech from the Romance Writer’s of Australia convention. Printed in Books and Publishing. 

It’s too long (not to mention rude to the originator) for me to paste the entire speech below, but I’ll post some excerpts and suggest you click through and read the rest:

Romance has always existed in the margins of the literary world. Not economically, of course, but within the broader literary landscape, romance is kind of equivalent to Wakanda, the mythical land in the Marvel movie Black Panther. Those outside it see only a desolate village, starved of real culture and devoid of literary merit. But once you find the book that takes you from outside to inside, you’ll find a vibrant, thriving community that is supportive, organised and running on a mythical, powerful element that the rest of the world does not even know exists.

In Wakanda, the element is Vibranium—used to make weaponry previously unheard of—but in the romance genre, that powerful element is something else entirely. Romance harnesses hope.

Hope has been built into romance stories from the very beginning, and it’s tied so strongly to what has made this genre so subversive for so long—the idea that women’s lives can be better. It’s what the ‘happy ever after’ ending means. It’s the kernel of motivation in every one of our stories—that no matter where we are now, or what is happening, things can get better. Things will get better.

[…]

I keep coming back to this idea of potential and obligation. Because I think this is why romance has been so important to so many women for so long: it shows the potential within all of us, and it honours its obligations.

Now, obligations are slippery. And in a genre as big as ours, they’re hard to pin down. The romance readership contains multitudes, and it’s impossible to be everything to everyone. And, as one cogent argument goes, we’re not the only genre. Why is romance being held accountable in a way that other genres are not? Why must we answer to this ingrained malice in a way that no one else is expected to?

Because it’s obligation. If we want to call ourselves a feminist genre, if we want to hold ourselves up as an example of women being centred, of representing the female gaze, of creating women heroes who not only survive but thrive, then we have to lead. We can’t deflect and we can’t dissemble. We need to look to the future and create the books that women need to read now. We’ve been shown our potential. To rise to it is our obligation.

And this is where it gets tricky, because as a community, we have to do the one thing that romance has never taught us how to do: breakup.

[…]

And part of this breakup needs to include compassion for ourselves for the things we weren’t yet aware of. We must forgive ourselves for not knowing what we didn’t know until we learned it. But we do know better now, and that comes with an obligation to do better.

Much of my thinking here has been informed by sex positivity, and how it can be applied to fictional worlds. There are two key principles to the movement: first, active, informed consent in all aspects of sexuality, and second, anything that happens between consenting adults is natural. I particularly like how principle the first flows into principle the second: if you have active, informed consent, then anything consenting adults do afterwards is natural.

And yes, it means consent for everything. Recognising the heroine’s bodily autonomy, her right to decide what happens to it at every point is crucial to these discussions. We need to divorce the idea of sexy from the idea of surprise. Your heroine can be pursued, but she must not be prey.

[…]

Progress isn’t made without sacrifice. Privilege isn’t shared if the privileged don’t make space beside ourselves. It won’t be an easy transition—none of it. But the alternative is to continue normalising coercion and domination and disrespect and powerlessness in our romantic relationships.

We are all in the business of imagination, and we’ve all chosen the genre of hope. I hope that you understand the power that you hold in your hands to influence the world and make it better. And I hope that you continue our long tradition of hoping for better lives for our heroines, and the heroines around the world who read these stories and learn to hope for themselves.

#romance romancenovels

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Every month, this is my favorite recommendation column. I always end up with a couple more books for my wishlist.