When is adultery romance?

Novel Spaces is in its 10th year! Over the coming months we'll be featuring some of the most popular posts from our archives. This one was first published March 9, 2011.

By Jewel Amethyst

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a divorced mother. On discovering I was a romance novelist, she proceeded to provide me unsolicited ideas for my next novel. One of her ideas involved a military wife who falls in love with a man on base while her husband was involved in covert ops somewhere overseas.

I shook my head and said, “If I do that, I’ll have to make her husband pretty despicable and probably abusive. Readers don’t think of adultery as romance.”

As I pondered the scenario, the writer in me wondered, “When is adultery romance?”

Romance novels have clear guidelines. The leading character (especially the woman) should not be involved in a relationship at the time the romance begins. Beyond the guidelines, I have my own religious views, which do not condone adultery in any form or fashion. But as an artist, my mind was already thinking of scenarios that would work.

One scenario that would justify the new relationship is an abusive controlling philandering spouse. But what if that spouse was actually a nice person?

A few years back I was at a party when a friend of mine told the story of her friend, Jane, who called her in the middle of the night. Jane was driving aimlessly frustrated with no clear plan except that she was leaving her live-in boyfriend. Everybody in the group gasped. The consensus: he was such a nice man. He cooked, he cleaned, he took care of the bills and he was committed. But according to my friend, that was the problem. He took care of everything but he was a dud. Jane was emotionally frustrated and bored to insanity because her boyfriend offered no excitement or romance. He just took care of business.

I of course didn’t know the man and was only slightly acquainted with Jane. A few parties later I met Jane and I understood why she was dissatisfied. She wanted the kind of romance I write about in the novels, where the man wines and dines her and offers emotional excitement. She wanted someone who made her heart throb and her palms sweaty every time he came near. I could imagine in a situation like that, Jane would be vulnerable enough to leave her boyfriend (or have a steamy affair) for someone more exciting who can meet her emotional needs. Could we make that adulterous affair into a romance story that readers would enjoy and even root for?

Needless to say, Jane did return to her boyfriend, trading the excitement of the novels for the everyday mundane of a steady, comfortable, secure relationship. I have no doubt she had a laundry list of changes she would like to implement. But my question still stands: could we really make adultery so romantic that readers are rooting for the adulterous relationship, even though the spouse is a nice, committed person?

What do you think? What scenarios would work?

Why I write romance

Novel Spaces is in its 10th year! Over the coming months we'll be featuring some of the most popular posts from our archives. This one was first published February 24, 2012.

By Jewel Amethyst

Some time ago during a blog interview I was asked why I wrote romance. The question came back a few days ago when a relative, after snubbing the genre, proceeded to ask me why I wrote romance. Here is my journey:

I read my first romance novel when I was ten years old. It was a Mills and Boon. At that time, my mother called them “dirty books” and forbade me to read them. I hid in the bathroom, under the bed; I climbed the Guinup tree and read it. Just before I got to the end of the book, one of my siblings ratted me out. My mother confiscated it. That was the end of that book, but it left me enthralled with romance novels.

The heroine in that Mills and Boon was tall and astoundingly beautiful with long straight hair and alabaster skin. The hero was tall and handsome with the body of a Greek god, and unbelievably rich. Those heroes looked nothing like me. They didn’t resemble my parents who were both of African descent. My father was less than six feet and my mother was only four feet ten inches and quite rotund. Most of all we were struggling to put food on the table. But that didn’t matter. The book transformed me to another world where all was perfect and beautiful women fell in love with wealthy handsome men.

By my early teens I voraciously read Sweet Dreams Romance and Sweet Valley High novels. The heroines were constantly compared to Carly Simon and Brooke Shields. I didn’t even know who those celebrities were; I just knew they were tall and beautiful… and they didn’t look like me. Of course when I wrote my first romance novel at the age of fifteen (unpublished and now lost forever), the heroine was tall and graceful with long legs, had long straight hair and creamy white skin. The hero was over six feet tall, exotically handsome and wealthy beyond the imagination. By that time I was into Danielle Steele romance.

I devoured Danielle Steele’s wealthy uncommonly beautiful characters: the slim shapely figure type, the long shapely legs, long straight shiny hair. I followed the characters as they traipsed from New York City and California to London, Rome, Paris, Nice, Greece, Italy, all the places I knew I could never afford to go. There were so many royal characters and moguls who presided over mega business empires. Again the common thread: none of these people resembled me.

Finally, in my late teens to early twenties I began to ask, “Don’t poor people fall in love? Don’t black people fall in love?” You see, before then, I had never read or even seen an African American romance. In the books I read, the characters were all upper middle class to rich and if they weren’t, they fell in love with the wealthy heir. Tired of the titled, the wealthy, and the overly beautiful falling in love, I stopped reading romance and devoured mysteries and suspense novels.

Then I discovered Arabesque romance. I read a few, and the lead characters were African American. But again the overly beautiful, the upper middle class dominated. The men always seemed to have some wealth whether it was self made or inherited. It seemed as if the average person did not fall in love. In fact, with the exception of having milk chocolate skin (for females) and coffee cream (for males) the characters could have been the same as any other mainstream romance I had read.

That’s when I decided this world needed more romance that reflected the average person. That’s where Tamara Fontaine, the heroine of “A Marriage of Convenience”, came in. I made Tamara short (originally 5’ 2” but later by the urging of the editor I added two inches to her height). I made Tamara overweight. Not “big boned” as some like to put it, but fat – over two hundred pounds of fat. And I made her jobless, the victim of a recession and corporate downsizing. She struggled financially, she struggled with her self image, she struggled with her weight. However, Tamara grows during the story and blossoms into a confident woman. Yes she falls in love with a very handsome larger than life, accomplished man (I have to leave some room for fantasy) and she does get the man. But somewhere in the story you stop seeing Tamara as a fat short woman. You see her as beautiful and sexy because you begin to see the inside, the wonderful personality and you are rooting for her to get her man.

Many reviewers of the book expressed their appreciation for a heroine that is not the stereotypical model thin or ultra rich. The most common comment I hear from readers is that they can identify with the characters. Tamara embodied the average person.

So to get back to that question, “why do I write romance?” Well, we all need a dream. We need heroes and heroines that look like us, feel like us and go through some of the struggles we are going through. Are all my heroines short and overweight? No. But they are average people who are underrepresented in the romance genre. There are enough writers writing about princes and dukes and wealthy people. Those who struggle financially, those who are not tall and ultra slim and overly beautiful need a happy ever after (HEA) too. That’s why I write romance. To give the average woman (and man) her (his) HEA.

Why do you write your genre? Did you pick your genre or did your genre pick you?

The Interracial Romance

Novel Spaces is in its 10th year! Over the coming months we'll be featuring some of the most popular posts from our archives. This one was first published July 24, 2011. 

By Jewel Amethyst

We have been discussing as a theme “Vampires and human” love stories. The thread that seems to be recurring in the discussion is the issue of the forbidden love. I want to deviate and write a little about romance in a more realistic sense: The interracial romance. In this context I am talking about love between two human beings of different races or ethnicities appearing in books and on TV.

I was recently working on a manuscript where a white female of a deeply religious sect living a 19th century lifestyle in distinct colonies, falls in love with a black man. Of course it is a forbidden love, much like the Vampire human love stories. As I began looking at publishers and their submission guidelines, I realized for African American romance, several publishers place a stipulation that both the hero and heroine had to be African American. In fact Genesis press had this as a guideline: “The heroine in romance and the protagonist in fiction must be black (African-American, African, Caribbean etc). The hero in romance must also be black....”

Are we saying love between a white woman and a black man cannot be considered “African American Romance, even if the man and just about every other character in the book are African American? Mainstream romance is not much different either. Even if the guidelines don’t specifically say it, in most mainstream romance both Hero and Heroine are of the same race. Therefore interracial romance, especially if it involves a white woman and a black man, neither fits into African American Romance or Mainstream romance.

That prompted me to look around on television for interracial romances in the primetime series. I examined the last two seasons of primetime shows on ABC, simply because it’s the television station I watch the most. I found while many of their primetime shows had at least one gay couple, only one show, “Modern Family” seemed to have a stable interracial couple. It was the marriage between an older white male and a young (really sexy) Hispanic female. Consequently, that couple also embodied the May/December relationship and the multicultural relationship. And though I am not much of a movie buff, I’ve seen very few recent movies with interracial romances.

Apparently while Vampire/human romances are gaining popularity today, the interracial romance, especially between black and white are becoming a relic of the past, at least on television. It is not a true reflection of today’s society where there is an increase in interracial marriages. According to the PEW report, 20 years ago only 6.8% of marriages involved couples of different races. Today, that number has more than doubled to 14.6%.

So why don’t the romance in books and on primetime television reflect the trends of today’s society in terms of interracial romances? I can postulate a few reasons:
 Interracial relationships are still uncomfortable to many viewer/readers?
 Too many complicated societal issues?
 Writers/producers fear offending particular races by having stereotypes?
 Or is it because fiction simply lags behind reality?

What’s your take on it?

Recipe for Romance

This is a recycled post I wrote for Literary Musings during my Hurricane of the Heart July - August Bewitching blog tour. Enjoy!

So you want to be a romance writer? Well here is a recipe you can use:
Serving size: 1 full length romance novel

Ingredients

1 really intriguing storyline
2 cups well developed lovable characters
5 tablespoons of memorable supporting characters
½ cup of conflict
1/2 cup sexual/emotional tension
Heat (variable depending on targeted readership)
1 emotional conflict resolution
A dash of comedy
Love making (optional)

Before we begin this recipe you need to prep. Here’s how you prep.
1.    Know what romance is
Have you ever read a book that’s labeled romance and found that there is everything in the book except romance? The genre romance can run the gamut. There are a million and one subgenres of romance including historical, paranormal, mystery, suspense, erotica, you name it. The heat level also covers a wide range from simple hand holding to explicit sex. So what really is romance?
Romance is a story about the love and eventual relationship between two people that is driven by the emotions with a hopeful ending.
So before you begin to write romance, make sure you know what kind of romance you want to write, the heat level and your targeted readership.

2.    Know your characters
Well developed lovable characters are essential for writing romance. Readers like to fall in love with the characters themselves. An interesting way to create multidimensional characters is by doing an interview with the main characters. It helps you to know how they think, what they would and would not do, and how they would react to different scenarios.

3.    Know your storyline
Whether or not you are using an outline know where you story is going. You must know how it begins, how the couple meets, and what would happen in the end. The middle is a determined by your imagination.

4.    Know how to create conflict.
Conflict can be either internal or external. It could be a residual scars from past relationships. It could be the person’s own insecurity or dislike for the other person. It could also be caused by other people, circumstances, or decisions that have to be made. The greater the conflict, the more interesting the resolution.

Now that you’re all prepped we can begin making that spicy romance.

To the intriguing storyline add two lovable characters. The characters should be strong, memorable and even if they are the most villainous characters, have something that readers could identify with and like. We want characters that readers will be rooting to get together.

Add a dash of conflict at the beginning of the recipe. We’ll add the rest later. Stir in a few memorable supporting characters or sidekicks.  Beat for a few minutes and add emotional/sexual tension drop-wise allowing it to build up to a fever pitch. Stir in comedy so that it blends with everything else. When mixture is nice and smooth, place it on the fire and slowly add heat. The heat depends on the targeted audience so be careful.  Let it simmer so readers can get a whiff of the HEA. Love making is optional depending on subgenre and heat level, but it should be driven by emotion. Use your discretion when adding this. As it comes to a boil add the rest of the conflict and turn up the heat. Keep stirring. When it begins to bubble out of the pot add the conflict resolution. Stir to make everything smooth.

Taste the pot (proof read) to make sure you have a lovely flavor and add or remove to improve the taste (editing). Now you have yourself an intriguing romance novel.

Introducing Sylvia Sinclair, Marissa Monteilh's IR alter ego

Marissa Monteilh here, with a quick post about my 8/7/15 release, To Each Her Own, my first IR title under my pen name, Sylvia Sinclair. I am very excited about delving into the topic of interracial, as I learned a lot through my research, but also, this is my first shot at romance. This Swirl series is about love, dating, racism, liberation, friendships, family, and generational curses. Please wish me luck as I release my baby into the world. This has been a whole lot of fun, and I hope my current and new readers will enjoy it. Below you'll find a synopsis. Write on!! 

Shasta Ann Gibson is a liberated, educated, successful executive at a broadcasting company. At 39 years old, she's never been married nor has she had kids, and her biological clock is ticking. Born and raised in the south by a conservative single father, she grew up with certain rules impressed upon her about race. While she has a very long list of what she wants in a man, being with a man who is a minority is not one of them. That is until Ramon Vaz, a charming, younger coworker who runs the mailroom charms her into just one date. But her boss, her friend named Maya, and her father, cause problems that will either force her to run from, or run to this black man named Ramon, who might not fit the bill as far as her list, but she just might have more in common with him than she bargained for. 

Amazon link - To Each Her Own by Sylvia Sinclair

SORMAG interviews Novel Spaces members

Our regular Day 4 poster, the lovely Marissa Monteilh, is recovering from surgery and won't be able to blog today. Get well soon, Marissa!

Last month, LaShaunda Hoffman of Shades of Romance Magazine (SORMAG) interviewed Novel Spaces members Jewel Amethyst, Kevin Killiany, Marissa Monteilh and Liane Spicer. Here is the full podcast of the interview in which we discuss the running of a group blog--how we got started, why we do it, how we do it, what's behind our longevity, and more.

Enjoy!

So--you're a romance writer... *snicker*

The two or three people who've read my work know me as a romance writer. Two of the three novel-length works I've published to date are contemporary romance/romantic suspense, and I tend to get a little defensive about my 'romance writer' label for two reasons:

• Romance writing is generally looked down upon by the rest of the writing establishment, and by academia. (See Romance Schromance: Do Romance Novels Have Any Literary Value?)
• And then there's this: romance is just one of the genres in which I write. 

I decided to count my genres when I read Che Gilson's post "Writing Bucket List", and realized I write in no fewer than seven of them.

I write mystery. I've started a mystery novel that I'm very excited about. It's set on a fictitious Caribbean island and explores the other side of the tourist destination ethos of the region: no smiling 'natives' serving drinks with umbrellas but real people with real struggles, out of control violent crime, white collar corruption, and yes, a little realistic romance.

I write memoir. I've written one on raising my son and it's awaiting a final edit before I submit it anywhere.

I write literary fiction. One of my short stories has been published in a literary journal, another was shortlisted for a lit prize, and several others are cooling their heels on my hard drive. One of my WIPs is a novel which draws on my family history and may be categorized as literary, women's fiction or mainstream. Not sure yet.

I write science fiction. Just one so far. Yup, surprised me too, but I woke up with the story in my head and could not get it out. So I wrote it. Not sure yet what exactly I should do with it, and don't know if I'll be writing any more.

I write poetry. I don't consider myself a poet, but I've always written 'poemish' things. Last year I took a poetry writing class and although I got an A I still don't consider myself a poet. Not too sure what I'll do with that collection of sonnets, haikus, tankas, ballads, acrostics, villanelles, dramatic monologues, modified forms and free verse, but it sure was fun writing them.

I write flash fiction. Submitted my favorite here, and I see more FF in my future.

Seven genres, and I've probably overlooked a couple others. I was told by a well-meaning friend years ago that I should stick to one genre and develop a fan base there before moving into other genres. But I'm wayward. I write what I want, when I want. And with the growth of indie publishing, I can also publish what I want, when I want. Am I making money doing my own thing? Very little thus far. Am I happy doing things my way? You bet I am.

Do you stick to one genre? Or do you juggle multiple genres like I do?

~Liane

Special Guest Skylar Hamilton Burris: The Challenge of Genre Labels

Skylar Hamilton Burris is the author of two novel-length sequels to Pride and Prejudice, a collection of poetry, and a collection of literary criticism. Her latest novel, When the Heart Is Laid Bare, is a contemporary story of healing and friendship. She earned a dual degree in English literature and economics from the University of Virginia and holds a Master's in English from the University of Texas. Skylar is the editor of Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, which has published quality short fiction and poetry for over fourteen years. Her short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Big Pulp, The First Line, Spring Hill Review, The Lyric, Voicings from the High Country, The Penwood Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Small Press Review, and Montgommery's Journey.

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           Publishers like to fit novels into the tidy boxes of genre. This makes them easier to market and sell to readers who know the general type of books they seek.  From romance and young adult to science-fiction and horror, genre labels give readers an idea of what to expect. Publishers are reluctant to bring to market books that break the conventions of the given genre to which they are assigned. Your Christian fiction can’t feature characters who swear or have sex outside of marriage. In contrast, your new adult romance ought not to have characters who are too chaste.  Your genre thriller probably shouldn’t be written with a great deal of literary flourish. These sorts of rules are unwritten, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. An author’s genre label will determine where his or her books are shelved and how they are ranked within categories, and it will help to direct readers. Labels are necessary, but they can also be limiting.

These labels pose a special challenge to authors who blur genre lines or whose books don’t fit neatly within the conventions of a single category. Last year, I read Stephen King’s Joyland. The book is labeled Hard Case Crime on the back, but fans of the hardboiled detective genre may find it a little too whimsical and insufficiently focused on the mystery. It has some chilling moments and hints of the supernatural, but the book isn’t quite a horror novel either. Joyland might best be classified as a coming-of-age story, but that label probably wouldn’t appeal to King’s usual audience. So the publisher chose a genre and ran with it. Stephen King is a big enough name that a slightly inaccurate label won’t prevent millions of people from buying his latest book, but labeling poses a greater challenge to debut and midlist authors whose works don’t quite fit within the confines of one particular genre.

At places such as Amazon and Goodreads, I have found my novel Conviction stocked on a variety of virtual shelves, including Christian fiction, literary fiction, historical romance, Regency romance, inspirational romance, and Jane Austen sequels. While it has some Christian characters (a vicar is one of the major players) and a few Christian themes, it doesn’t closely follow all of the big publishing house rules of what is and is not allowed in Christian fiction, and the religion of the characters is not the focus of the story. Although the book clearly provides a romantic plot with the typical “happily ever after” ending, it is written in a literary style that is not commonly found in the romance genre. My third novel, which will be released May 1^st, is also difficult to classify. The book is a story of grief and healing and male friendship, which might qualify it as literary fiction, except that the two romantic subplots consume a fair portion of the focus. On the other hand, one of the expectations of the romance genre is that the hero and heroine will be in face to face scenes for fifty percent of the novel with romantic tension throughout, but When the Heart Is Laid Bare begins with the death of the hero’s wife, and he’s understandably in no mood for romance.   While the book has Christian themes, it involves a character who is shaky and growing in his faith and breaks some of the unspoken “thou shalt not’s” of the Christian fiction genre.

What’s a genre-blurring author to do? I found a small press Christian publisher who was willing to be a little more flexible in her boundaries than most of the big houses, and I accepted the “Christian fiction” label even though I don’t like the idea that it might limit my readership by turning off a non-Christian reader to a book he or she might actually enjoy. Other authors, after much reading and research, modify their books to fit more neatly within a specific genre. Some choose to self-publish their genre-bending books. For writers and readers alike, genre can be both a challenge and a tool. 

P.S. I’ll be happy to send a free copy of "An Unlikely Missionary" to one person randomly picked from those who comment below.

Books by Skylar Hamilton Burris: 

 

   

Give Me the Night

This post is not about my preference for the late hours, though they don't call me The Owl around here for nothing. Five years after Café au Lait hit the shelves, another novel bearing the Liane Spicer brand is about to be released on an unsuspecting reading public.

Why the long gap, you may well ask. All I'll say in my defense is that I haven't exactly been idle. In the interim I've put ten titles in the Kindle stores, in various genres and under various pen names. I've had one short story published in a literary journal and my little collection of similar short stories is growing slowly but surely; three are ready for submission. I've also racked up a few other achievements, both literary and non-literary, that I'll share some other time.

But this, this Give Me the Night, this complicated second child—oops, novel—was the option book with my first publisher, Dorchester. It got stuck in the infamous meltdown and disappearance of that house, just for starters. It has also been a victim of my inaction and indecision, hesitation and procrastination, distraction and much else, but here it is at last, ready to try out its fledgling wings.

In stores March 23. Wish it well. :)

Red hot chili peppers—the spicy side of romance

I was at a party a few weekends ago where I met two young ladies.  A relative of mine introduced me to them as an author.  They proceeded to ask the question that most authors get, “What kind of books do you write?”

When I responded that I wrote romance, one of the ladies said with disdain, “That kind of stuff is too hot for me.”

“What kind of stuff?” I asked.

“If you write anything like what she [my relative] reads, well that is just wild stuff.”

Turns out my relative reads erotica.

Of course I defended the genre by saying romance is about love.  A discussion ensued where I tried to show the difference between romance and erotica.  I described romance as being driven by the love between the main characters, while erotica is driven more by the sexual content whether or not there is a love story.  Furthermore, the sexual content in erotica is generally more explicit than in romance.  But after a few minutes of discussion and a few blatant examples, I realized the lines between romance and erotica were sometimes so blurred it was difficult to distinguish.  

Why? The romance genre is a spectrum when it comes to the sexual content.  On one end of the spectrum lies the inspirational romance based on faith, where there is no mention of sex or even male/female contact besides holding hands.  In those, even among married characters, sex can only be implied.  On the other end of the spectrum is the spicy romance that contains so many explicit sex scenes that they can be categorized as erotica.  Between the extremes there are the sweet romances, the mild romance with just an implication of sexual activity and the more spicy romances with one more sex scenes between the characters in love.  Even then it can vary from sweet and romantic, to hot and spicy, to outright erotic.

So how can a reader tell whether a romance is sweet or spicy?  I guess they can read the summary at the back of the book.  But that often times tell the story line without indication for the spice level.  They can use the author as a guide.  If the author is Leanne Banks they can expect something a lot spicier than if it was Debbie Macomber.  But some authors write both sweet and sensual romances.  A third way to distinguish is by the imprint.  We can expect Harlequin Blaze and Kensington Brava to be spicy hot, while traditional Regencies and Harlequin’s Silhouette would be more on the mild side. But with the increase in self-published books, using the imprint as a guide may not be so helpful.

Well, some groups have provided a spice ranking on their blog reviews so one can tell how explicit the books are.  “All About Romance” rates books as Kisses, subtle, warm, hot or burning.  Their descriptions are posted on their website www.likesbooks.com.  My favorite ranking system, mainly for its metaphor, is the chili pepper ranking by “notyourordinarybookbanter”  Their rankings include the chili green pepper, chili red pepper, chili pepper on fire and chili pepper roasted.

While these rankings don’t give the intimate details of the book or storyline, they do give a good indication of the sexual content of the book.  For example, my novel, “A Marriage of Convenience” was given a “warm” ranking which aptly indicated the level of sensuality. The unfortunate thing about these rankings is that you cannot find them on the books when you purchase them in the bookstore and they are only available when those particular blogs post a review of the books.  Maybe in the future Amazon will do a similar sensuality ranking or publishers would put those rankings on books.

But until that is done, to determine the spice level of romance readers will just have to depend on the resources they have at their disposal: the blogs, the quick scan of the books, author stereotypes, or recommendations from friends.

As for those two ladies at the party, by the end of the conversation, they were eager to obtain copies of my romance novels. I guess I didn’t do too bad a job of selling myself and my genre.

Perceptions of Beauty

As a romance writer, I have to write about beauty; in particular, the perception of beauty.  I have to transform my characters into people readers can fantasize about, and at the same time, make them human enough that readers can identify with.  In the past I succeeded in getting my readers to perceive a two hundred pound short woman as beautiful enough to deserve a HEA with a Nubian god… no easy task.  Though I am listed on this site as writing contemporary romance, most of my novels are multicultural in nature.  As a multicultural romance writer (and a person transplanted from one culture to another) one thing is obvious to me:  different cultures have different perceptions of beauty.

Let me give you two examples.  I am from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts where a woman with a large derrière is considered sexy irrespective of height. Here in America, being tall and slim is a trademark of beauty especially among some of the more dominant cultures, and a large backside is just "a fat a$$".  My family has a trademark large backside that they proudly tout and a tendency to gain weight on that area.  

Two years ago, after the weight gain of child birth I decided I was a little too plump. Through diet and exercise, I lost a significant amount of weight.  My family was shocked.  They described me as being “dried up” and bemoaned the fact that I lost the family trademark “assets”.  On the flip side, my American co-workers repeatedly complimented me on how wonderful I looked without the excess weight.  Some even were inspired to enter weight loss programs.  Two different reactions, two different cultures, two different perceptions of beauty. 

Another perception of beauty that is quite different is the existence of a gap in the front teeth.  I have a large gap between my front teeth.  In St. Kitts, and several other Caribbean Islands it is considered sexy.   But in the US, it is just ugly teeth.  No dentist that I had been to in St. Kitts ever offered to fix my gap.  Since coming to the US, every dentist has suggested that I get retainers to close my gap. I’ve responded to each in the same way, “In my culture, it’s a sign of beauty.”  An associate of mine, a migrant from the Caribbean with a pronounced gap between her front teeth recently succumbed to the pressure of her dentists.  She got retainers and after a year her gap was successfully closed.  I spoke about it with her and she had mixed feelings.  Her Caribbean friends were not as excited to see her gap removed as were her American friends.  Two different reactions, two different cultures, two different perceptions of beauty.

As a writer of multicultural romance, I have to ensure that I capture beauty in relation to the cultures that I am writing about, and the individuals I am writing about.  While a six foot tall woman with a 0 dress size, Double D cups and slim hips may be considered beautiful among some US cultures, in many Caribbean and some African cultures that woman is just top-heavy.  Some European cultures favor the blond hair, blue-eyed alabaster skin look and others, the raven black hair with the olive skin tone. In the photo above the wearing of a disc in the lip by women is a sign of beauty in the Suri culture (Ethiopia).  The bigger the lip disc, the more cattle she receives as a dowry in marriage.

 

In writing, we have to be cognizant of the different perceptions of beauty, especially when it is germane to the story.  How do I get around the different perceptions of beauty in my multicultural romances?  I emphasize the commonalities:  the internal beauty that manifests itself in things my characters do and say.  I make my readers fall in love with the personality of the character, not the physical attributes.  After a while, that person could be a bald headed sumo wrestler or a double amputee with scar tissue for a face, the reader feels the beauty emanating from that person.

How do you deal with different perceptions of beauty in your writing?

Why I write romance

Some time ago during a blog interview I was asked why I wrote romance. The question came back a few days ago when a relative, after snubbing the genre, proceeded to ask me why I wrote romance. Here is my journey:

I read my first romance novel when I was ten years old. It was a Mills and Boon. At that time, my mother called them “dirty books” and forbade me to read them. I hid in the bathroom, under the bed; I climbed the Guinup tree and read it. Just before I got to the end of the book, one of my siblings ratted me out. My mother confiscated it. That was the end of that book, but it left me enthralled with romance novels.

The heroine in that Mills and Boon was tall and astoundingly beautiful with long straight hair and alabaster skin. The hero was tall and handsome with the body of a Greek god, and unbelievably rich. Those heroes looked nothing like me. They didn’t resemble my parents who were both of African descent. My father was less than six feet and my mother was only four feet ten inches and quite rotund. Most of all we were struggling to put food on the table. But that didn’t matter. The book transformed me to another world where all was perfect and beautiful women fell in love with wealthy handsome men.

By my early teens I voraciously read Sweet Dreams Romance and Sweet Valley High novels. The heroines were constantly compared to Carly Simon and Brooke Shields. I didn’t even know who those celebrities were; I just knew they were tall and beautiful… and they didn’t look like me. Of course when I wrote my first romance novel at the age of fifteen (unpublished and now lost forever), the heroine was tall and graceful with long legs, had long straight hair and creamy white skin. The hero was over six feet tall, exotically handsome and wealthy beyond the imagination. By that time I was into Danielle Steele romance.

I devoured Danielle Steele’s wealthy uncommonly beautiful characters: the slim shapely figure type, the long shapely legs, long straight shiny hair. I followed the characters as they traipsed from New York City and California to London, Rome, Paris, Nice, Greece, Italy, all the places I knew I could never afford to go. There were so many royal characters and moguls who presided over mega business empires. Again the common thread: none of these people resembled me.

Finally, in my late teens to early twenties I began to ask, “Don’t poor people fall in love? Don’t black people fall in love?” You see, before then, I had never read or even seen an African American romance. In the books I read, the characters were all upper middle class to rich and if they weren’t, they fell in love with the wealthy heir. Tired of the titled, the wealthy, and the overly beautiful falling in love, I stopped reading romance and devoured mysteries and suspense novels.

Then I discovered Arabesque romance. I read a few, and the lead characters were African American. But again the overly beautiful, the upper middle class dominated. The men always seemed to have some wealth whether it was self made or inherited. It seemed as if the average person did not fall in love. In fact, with the exception of having milk chocolate skin (for females) and coffee cream (for males) the characters could have been the same as any other mainstream romance I had read.

That’s when I decided this world needed more romance that reflected the average person. That’s where Tamara Fontaine, the heroine of “A Marriage of Convenience”, came in. I made Tamara short (originally 5’ 2” but later by the urging of the editor I added two inches to her height). I made Tamara overweight. Not “big boned” as some like to put it, but fat – over two hundred pounds of fat. And I made her jobless, the victim of a recession and corporate downsizing. She struggled financially, she struggled with her self image, she struggled with her weight. However, Tamara grows during the story and blossoms into a confident woman. Yes she falls in love with a very handsome larger than life, accomplished man (I have to leave some room for fantasy) and she does get the man. But somewhere in the story you stop seeing Tamara as a fat short woman. You see her as beautiful and sexy because you begin to see the inside, the wonderful personality and you are rooting for her to get her man.

Many reviewers of the book expressed their appreciation for a heroine that is not the stereotypical model thin or ultra rich. The most common comment I hear from readers is that they can identify with the characters. Tamara embodied the average person.

So to get back to that question, “why do I write romance?” Well, we all need a dream. We need heroes and heroines that look like us, feel like us and go through some of the struggles we are going through. Are all my heroines short and overweight? No. But they are average people who are underrepresented in the romance genre. There are enough writers writing about princes and dukes and wealthy people. Those who struggle financially, those who are not tall and ultra slim and overly beautiful need a happy ever after (HEA) too. That’s why I write romance. To give the average woman (and man) her (his) HEA.

Why do you write your genre? Did you pick your genre or did your genre pick you?

Guest author Delaney Diamond: My On-Again/Off-Again Affair With Erotic Romance

Delaney Diamond is the bestselling author of African-American and interracial romance.  Her latest books, Worth Waiting For (sweet interracial romance) and The Temptation of a Good Man (sensual African-American romance), will be released this fall. Visit www.delaneydiamond.com or join her at www.facebook.com/delaneydiamond to stay up to date on future releases. 

Everyone knows sex sells. Take a look at ads for GoDaddy.com, Carl Jr.’s hamburgers, and perfume ads, and you’ll agree with me. Because of the sexy nature of the ads, they remain planted in consumers’ minds, and those businesses watch their sales go through the roof each time a new commercial launches.

The same holds true for romance novels. Sex and romance go hand in hand. When I first started reading erotic romance, I have to admit it was thrilling, but the bloom has started to fade off the rose. I’ve found lately that I don’t purchase as many erotic titles as I used to, and I’m less likely to try new-to-me erotic romance authors. The fact is, erotic romance has gotten a little extreme for my taste. It seems authors are trying to outkink each other.

There are basically three heat levels of romance. Sweet (inspirational is sweet with religious content), sensual, and erotic. I read books in all three categories, but my writing remains firmly planted in sweet and sensual.

Below are some of the gripes I have about erotic romance:

• Lack of plot. Whenever I find one that has a good plot and sexy scenes, I’m always excited. I’m tired of sex scene after sex scene. I just end up skipping over them.

• Excessive curse words. Curse words can be used to signal anger, excitement, etc. They can also be used in dialogue to distinguish the speech patterns of certain characters from others. However, if everyone in the book is cursing up a storm, it’s a turn off. I don’t need the f-bomb dropped every three sentences.

• Graphic descriptions. This goes hand in hand with excessive curse words for me. Granted, I tend to use euphemisms in my writing. I realize that not everyone appreciates words like shaft, manhood, arousal, and apex of her thighs as substitutions for sexual organs, but that’s what I’m comfortable writing.

I’m okay reading words like c*ck and p*ssy, but when they show up every five sentences, I get aggravated. And the one word that I absolutely can’t tolerate as a female sex organ is the word c*nt. Ugh. It knocks me out of a sex scene every time, but the word has become more prevalent in erotic romance and gets tossed around more than a frisbee on a sunny afternoon in the park.

• Unbelievable sexual scenarios. I used the word unbelievable because I’m hard-pressed to believe these are part of the billion-dollar genre romance. I think we need a new genre for these types of books. Just a thought…

• A ménage à trois is no longer enough. Now we have heroines sleeping with as many as seven men. Seven. I found one like this. The more the merrier, I guess.
• Voluntary incest. I still can’t believe this is considered romance.

I often run across conversation threads on Goodreads where readers bemoan their displeasure with erotic romance. Some are gravitating toward the opposite end of the spectrum—toward sweet books. I’m not sure if there are more readers reading sweet, or if it’s simply that they’ve become more vocal, but sweet books are taking off.

The Clean Romances Group on Goodreads has over 900 members and continues to grow steadily. My first sweet romance will be published by Astraea Press, a publisher dedicated to offering clean romance and fiction. Even though they only opened their doors in February of this year, they have dozens of published books by approximately twenty-five authors. They’re growing so fast that the owner just hired several more editors and another cover artist to meet the demand of submissions.

I realize this is all about personal taste, and we express our preferences by deciding how to spend our limited income. Anyone who prefers sweet or erotic won’t buy my sensual books any more than I will buy an erotic book that includes the situations I listed above.

So tell me, what are your preferences? What are you getting tired of seeing in the genre(s) you read?

Relationship Saturday: Novel Spaces

I find contemporary relationships to be absolutely fascinating. After all, we're all here on this earth to love and be loved. Most of my books revolve around family, parents, children, etc., but mainly love and life issues between a man and a woman - some type of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, shifting to boy meets the girl next door scenarios.

Though my first title, May December Souls, was classified as romance, my books are now far from romance and are very unconventional. I'll take on the everyday dramas of real life that involve taboo topics, and twist them into couples's lives. I feel passionate about tackling the edgy characters who take a shot at things that make folks just a little uncomfortable, even the wife who physically abuses her husband - you hate her to no end, yet by the end of the story you understand her dimensions enough to feel sympathy and cheer on her success. And actually cry at her demise. Or the woman who dates her best friend's son, and the payback is for that best friend to date the friend's father.

On my Facebook page, I gather relationship dilemma questions from FB friends who inbox me in confidentiality, and post the questions for my other FB friends to lend their advice, instead of me lending advice (well in some cases I do). It absolutely fascinates me that while you would think most women would feel outrage over a new husband who still pays his ex-girlfriend's son's cell phone bill (not his biological son), you'll find other women who understand the bond between a man and a boy from a supportive mentoring standpoint and think it's okay, suggesting the woman not be so insecure. You might have a man who is upset that his wife won't take his last name once they're married, yet other men would have no problem with it. Every time I think I can predict the responses, someone posts an opposing view that makes you think. I even asked women what they would do if while making love to their husband, he told them it would be their last time together. The responses were shocking, hilarious, and passionate - some simply asking "why" and others ready to Lorena Bobbitt him in a heartbeat.

Love and relationships are complicated and what one person does in one case will be the complete opposite in another. I think that's why writing stories can be so entertaining to readers, yet frustrating as well. We have an opportunity to show them what can happen, and introduce them to the lives of people they otherwise would not have had an opportunity to experience, who might not think like them, but who are dealing with their drama based upon their own make up, issues and experiences. It's like getting dirty virtually without having to play in the mud.

I still believe that true life is stranger than fiction. What we write about has been done before somewhere, and some things we hear about we probably couldn't have made up in a million years. But the blessing comes once we create three-dimensional characters (knock on wood) and allow them to experience the friction of their journeys, even when we don't know how it will end.

Relationships - the heart of our works and the pulse of our passion. Seeing other sides and hearing other views, even on Facebook, has enriched my writing and my outlook on love and life, encouraging me to stay open-minded. On this Relationship Saturday, I just want to say, thank you to my FB friends for their invaluable feedback, and thank you to my readers, for reading the stories of my drama-filled, flawed characters who are just trying their best to, relate.

Vamps Romancing Humans and Vice Versa

I admit that I am not a big reader of paranormal romance involving humans and vampires (or werewolves for that matter).

However, since childhood, I have long been big on vampire-human romances on television and in the movies. My guess is that the popularity of this coupling in Hollywood productions mirrors that of fiction.

I believe that humans are drawn to romances that stray outside the lines, but are still within reason. Romance between a man and sheep would be bestiality or a perversion few would be attracted to. However, vampires and humans are close enough in appearance, desires, habits, histories, and such, that the attraction is an acceptable one for fans of paranormal romances. After all, vampires were once human, which could never be said about sheep or other mammals (unless a shapeshifter; but even then the attraction would not be there while the human was in sheep's wool, so to speak).

The male vampire, in particular, is a natural attraction in romance fiction. He is, in effect, a substitute for the dark and handsome, sexy and mysterious, human male in series and contemporary romance fiction. Think Dracula and any woman, before and after being sired. Or Barnabas Collins, the vampire of Dark Shadows gothic soap opera, who charmed and romanced a number of women such as Maggie Collins who bore a striking resemblance to his first love, Josette

Of course, in modern paranormal romances, there are just as many female vamps who are able to charm human males the same way as human women would--by being beautiful, shapely, sexy, charming, and desirable--only with the perhaps even more alluring vampire's edge.

Moreover, many paranormal romances involve vamp-vamp romances. Or some other non human pairing.

The main point is that so long as the romance involves characters in human form with all the strengths and weaknesses of humans as we know it, the alter egos such as vampires in disguise is merely giving readers the true and tried with an added element to keep things lively and interesting.

Are you a big fan of vampire fiction?

What are you favorite vampire books, movies, or TV series?

The interracial romance

We have been discussing as a theme “Vampires and human” love stories. The thread that seems to be recurring in the discussion is the issue of the forbidden love. I want to deviate and write a little about romance in a more realistic sense: The interracial romance. In this context I am talking about love between two human beings of different races or ethnicities appearing in books and on TV.

I was recently working on a manuscript where a white female of a deeply religious sect living a 19th century lifestyle in distinct colonies, falls in love with a black man. Of course it is a forbidden love, much like the Vampire human love stories. As I began looking at publishers and their submission guidelines, I realized for African American romance, several publishers place a stipulation that both the hero and heroine had to be African American. In fact Genesis press had this as a guideline: “The heroine in romance and the protagonist in fiction must be black (African-American, African, Caribbean etc). The hero in romance must also be black....”

Are we saying love between a white woman and a black man cannot be considered “African American Romance, even if the man and just about every other character in the book are African American? Mainstream romance is not much different either. Even if the guidelines don’t specifically say it, in most mainstream romance both Hero and Heroine are of the same race. Therefore interracial romance, especially if it involves a white woman and a black man, neither fits into African American Romance or Mainstream romance.

That prompted me to look around on television for interracial romances in the primetime series. I examined the last two seasons of primetime shows on ABC, simply because it’s the television station I watch the most. I found while many of their primetime shows had at least one gay couple, only one show, “Modern Family” seemed to have a stable interracial couple. It was the marriage between an older white male and a young (really sexy) Hispanic female. Consequently, that couple also embodied the May/December relationship and the multicultural relationship. And though I am not much of a movie buff, I’ve seen very few recent movies with interracial romances.

Apparently while Vampire/human romances are gaining popularity today, the interracial romance, especially between black and white are becoming a relic of the past, at least on television. It is not a true reflection of today’s society where there is an increase in interracial marriages. According to the PEW report, 20 years ago only 6.8% of marriages involved couples of different races. Today, that number has more than doubled to 14.6%.

So why don’t the romance in books and on primetime television reflect the trends of today’s society in terms of interracial romances? I can postulate a few reasons:
 Interracial relationships are still uncomfortable to many viewer/readers?
 Too many complicated societal issues?
 Writers/producers fear offending particular races by having stereotypes?
 Or is it because fiction simply lags behind reality?

What’s your take on it?

All Men Are Vampires

Vampire romance is, to me, an oxymoron. I don't have issues with human-other love in fiction - I've even written a story in which a slightly mutant human consorts with alien beings. I do, however, draw the line at human-vampire hanky-panky.

• Vampires are not hot guys who just happen to be a little, well, different. However handsome, sophisticated or dangerously alluring they might seem, they are blood-sucking demons. Demons have their place in horror, not romance. Sexy romantic heroes kill all the time, but for noble reasons. They don't kill because they are dark, undead creatures who must prey upon people to maintain their own un-life. Adding teen angst and glitter doesn't change that.
• The combination of death, sex and lust is bizarre. Sex with dead (or 'undead') people reeks of necrophilia. Blood-drinking rituals are creepy and disturbing, not erotic.
• Centuries old creatures seeking the love of teenage girls? Isn't that taking pedophilia to new extremes?

So why are vampire incubi the new rock stars, evidenced by the hordes of squealing teen girls (and their mothers!) buying the books and packing the theatres to drool over pale fanged guys with an insatiable thirst for human blood? I've seen many rationales for the popularity of the genre, including:

• The stories are entertaining and provide pure escapism in grim economic times when readers find reality depressing. Fantasies about vampires, werewolves and such are simply fairy tales for adults, and cool guys with issues is a standard of the romance genre.
• People have an enduring fascination with death. Vampire romances explore this realm and provide an intriguing look into the 'other side' of the life-death equation. According to some, these stories aren't really about vampires; they're about death, immortality, and transformation.
• In our youth-obsessed culture, the fantasy of unending pleasures, unending life and unending youth is irresistible. The hero of the Stephanie Meyer novels is 400 years old yet he has the appearance of an attractive young man - and there's no botox or plastic surgery involved.
• Forbidden love has always been a huge romantic trope. Think Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Lolita, The Thornbirds, The Scarlet Letter, Helen of Troy and Paris, Tristan and Isolde... Vampires are as forbidden as you can get.
• "All men are vampires." (Michael De Groote, writing in The Mormon Times) They are all capable of hurting women very, very badly, far more so than women are capable of hurting men, both in romantic and physical contexts. They inflict scars, literal and psychological, that take a long time to heal, or never heal at all. The greatest threat to women comes not from strangers in dark alleys, but from the men they are intimate with; examine the crime statistics if you doubt this. Women are fascinated - and aroused - by the element of danger in men, a fascination they learn to curb in real life (if they're wise). A vampire is the ultimate dangerous male, and by consorting with him between the covers of a book women get all the excitement and none of the dire consequences - such as ending up in the emergency room or, yanno, dead.

I'm not swayed by any of the above, though. I prefer vampires, those terrifying creatures of the night, in their rightful place in the horror genre. Pretty them up all you like but let them mince along the corridors of nightmare where they belong. They have no place in my romantic fantasies.

—Liane Spicer

Fangs for the Memories

KeVin Killiany suggested the following as a shared blog topic at Novel Spaces in July: "No one would be charmed by a romance between a man and a sheep—so why are vampire/human romances popular?"

(Note: I have not looked at other Novel Spaces posts on this topic. I wanted to approach it uninfluenced by what others have already posted or will be posting. So my comments may overlap with other posts.)

Which is better, sheep or vampire? Depending on the author, modern vampires often look much like humans and sometimes can pass for them easily. The hero or heroine of a romance novel could easily be sexually attracted to a vampire for the same reasons she or he is attracted to another human: hair color, style of dress, charming conversation, sense of humor, body shape, or any of the many traits vampires and humans share in common. The reader could like the vampire for the same reasons.

A sheep, being a living mammal, in many ways has more in common with the human protagonist than a vampire does. A beating heart, for example, and not eating live prey. But the sheep lacks the features that normal humans find sexually attractive. A romance between a man and a sheep would be a sad, pathetic thing, with little communication and no mutual interests. I would assume a man in such a romance would be physically or mentally so repulsive that no human woman would have him.

Which is better, human or vampire? I suggest five reasons that writers, their characters, and readers may find a vampire attractive.

1. Glamor. A vampire can charm a human into feeling attraction and going along with the vampire's desires. In real life, glamor would be terrifying. As a fantasy, though, it can be extremely compelling. Most people have desires they don't give into because reason or morality or the thought of social disapproval stops them. Under glamor, they can give in to these desires and feel no guilt because they were glamored.

2. The ultimate protector. In a society that doesn't regulate male violence well and whose popular culture glorifies it (such as our own), women may consider the ability to protect her an important quality in a mate. For such women, a vampire is an almost-perfect mate. She has nothing to fear from human men because her mate is stronger, faster, and more experienced; can't die; and won't run away when she's in trouble.

3. The ultimate object of pity. Heroes in romances often have a tragic past that has scarred them emotionally or physically and/or turned them into men who hate themselves and so behave hatefully to others. The heroine's role in such romances is to discover the pain, understand the pain, and heal the hero. The vampire, for all his powers, has lost most of what matters in life. Some fictional vampires are on a quest to find a way to be human again. The heroine with a soft heart finds the perfect man in the vampire who allows her to see his pain.

4. A link to a more mannered and cultured past. The past century as been a strange one for women. They have won rights, become educated in high numbers, and established themselves as capable beings allowed to make their own choices. During those same years, society in most ways has become cruder, ruder, more selfish, and less cultured. A vampire born during a more formal and cultured time is likely to come courting well dressed, to be on his best manners including not cussing, and to able to talk knowledgeably about art, politics, history, food, foreign countries, and other such topics. The vampire thus makes a better date than someone who shows up in torn jeans and teeshirt, takes you to a violent action movie in which hundreds of innocent people get blown up/killed in a car crash/eaten by zombies, and can't converse about anything but lowest-common-denominator popular culture.

5. Cultural evolution. If you've read early vampire novels such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, you've seen that the earliest vampire characters in fiction were disgusting and evil in every way. They were unsatisfying characters because they were one-dimensional. Since then, authors have gradually rounded out vampire characters. Now vampires have personalities that differ from each other. They have good traits and bad traits. Some have retained their emotions or their love of knowledge or in other ways have traits that appeal to the opposite sex. Some even feed on animal blood or drink "True Blood" because their morals don't allow them to harm people. As vampire characters become more rounded and humanlike, it's only natural they become more appealing, both to other characters and to readers. Also, the introduction of TV and the Internet has made the world smaller. Readers have grown up knowing about societies with, for example, different customs or different eating habits. People who aren't "just like us" are no longer automatically frightening.


What do you think? Have I left anything out? Or put too much in? And what about male characters? What do you think attracts them to vampire women?


I'll be blogging again on August 6.

—Shauna Roberts