Paperback Reader

With the number of romance novels published each year exceeding 2,000 titles – and those are just the ones we know about -- there is little wonder that it’s hard to find new authors that excite readers.

Heck, it’s little wonder that it’s hard to find story concepts that excite readers.

Over and over, we’re subjected to improbably perfect heroines, women who tend to resemble Barbie dolls rather than females of the human species, and implausibly handsome heroes. These men are so incredible that their beard stubble doesn’t hurt the heroine’s delicate skin. Maybe that’s the ultimate fantasy: no tell-tale rashes during illicit rendezvous.

Allow me to wax nostalgic . . .

When I first began reading romance some twenty years ago, I fell into the habit of haunting a local independent, one stocking both new and used books, for their monthly shipments of category romances. The small store had a romance friendly - and romance knowledgeable - staff who introduced me to the works of Linda Howard, Erin St. Claire (Sandra Brown), Barbara Delinksy, Elizabeth Lowell, Diana Palmer, Jackie Weger, Sandra Canfield, and more. For years those books published under both Harlequin and Silhouette imprints fed my romance reading addiction. And, yes. I still have many in their original category format, the ones that have since been released in mass market or hardcover as their author's star continues to rise. I learned that there is a satisfaction found in a well-written category romance that is hard to duplicate in any other form. The stories are pure romance, their focus clear. There is little room in the shorter format for anything other than the developing relationship between the hero and heroine. There is the frame of an external plot that gives structure to their love story, but the spotlight is, quite simply, theirs.

In her paranormal debut, Slave to Sensation, Nalini Singh introduced romance readers to a crisp cyber punk universe where the emotionless, computer-like Psy race was juxtaposed to the beast-within-the-man race, the changelings. The result was entrancing and stunning. A fresh and unique take on the staid boy-meets-girl genre. In her latest, Visions of Heat, Singh revisits the Psy-changeling cosmos with Faith NightStar, an F-Psy designate, and Vaughn D’Angelo the lone jaguar changeling in the DarkRiver leopard pack. Together, they are pressed into action when another Psy serial killer – further proof that the Psy’s way of life, Silence, is crumbling – emerges. The world Singh builds is, again, stellar and continues to captivate, even when the romance and storyline buttressed by that world limp along.

Academia is not the only field that lives by the saying “publish or perish,” many genre authors have been forced to adapt their writing to the changing demands of the publishing world or lose any chance of a continued writing career. While some find success in melding their voice, style, and traditional plot conventions to their new genre, many flounder and eventually meet the fate they were trying to avoid. In the last few years, the Romance community has witnessed many authors—well known and obscure—switch sub-genres to meet the flavored trend of the year: Chick Lit, Paranormal, and Romantic suspense.

Several years after its emergence, erotic romance continues to be one of the least clearly defined subgenres of romance. The strong sexual content of erotic romance is intended to be “hotter” than traditional romance yet not as sexually envelope-pushing as erotica. What lies between those two divergent points is an ocean of heat levels that can range from temperate to on-fire and there is little to indicate to readers how explicit erotic romance will be until they read a particular piece. Add to this the invariability of one reader’s kink being another’s reader’s vanilla and the parameters of erotic romance become rather nebulous: Know-it-when-you-read-it. Into these vague definitions comes Sasha White’s latest Aphrodisia release, Lush, cutting a clear and easily defined swath through the haze. The three novellas are sex driven fantasies made accessible and familiar by romantic undertones. White finds a middle ground that is slightly more daring than a “hot” romance yet never strays into make-readers-squirm territory.

You know what I fear? Okay, other than that. Everyone fears that. What I fear is someday actually being forced to cull my book collection down to a mere dozen titles. Like, oh, something happens and I really do have to spend the rest of my days on a desert island. Just me and my desert island book collection.

Can you imagine anything more terrifying? What if you made the wrong choice? What if you can’t choose just twelve? What if the future of the world depends on you making this momentous decision…and you can barely limit yourself to twenty, much less a dozen?

It keeps me awake at night, you know?