Ten Nights of Love: The Introduction

originally posted on February 3, 2010

the inspiration

In the fall of 2009, Heather over at The Galaxy Express asked me what the dividing line between romance and erotic romance is.

I almost laughed in her face – figuratively speaking. 😀

I mean, come on.

One, much more eloquent people than me have tried to explain it. Most of them did great jobs, too. And still gotten lost in their own words. Two, sometimes, I’m not sure there is an answer. Then I stopped backing away and realized that what she was asking. Namely, the age old, ever popular question that comes up repeatedly on romance forum discussions. How much sex is too much? Before it becomes not romance, I mean. Off I went emailing her a bunch of thoughts and links. Those later evolved into this long article that I divided in a series of posts.

the result

I decided to shelve the idea for awhile, though. Fully planning revisit it again in a week or so to see if it was as bad as I thought. It was. Then the holidays descended and I got distracted until January. Now after a lot of tweaking here and there, I decided I liked it again. Particularly when I realized that it was undergoing a major evolution into a look back at how my own reading tastes in romances have evolved over the years and how the sexual content of the books are reflected in those changes.

the plan

I had a long debate with myself over what to call this. There were several ideas that came to mind. None of them good. Trust me on this. o.O

Then I found this vintage book cover, Ten Nights of Love, and literally fell in love with its delicious perfection the moment I saw it. I’m having a devil of a time finding out anything much about it though. I suspect it’s from the 1940s-1950s era and that it’s not even a romance collection, which is just a shame. Other than that, any ideas?

A light bulb went off when I realized it was almost St. Valentine’s Day. The die was cast. It was fate. Or some such rot. I mean really, what better way to celebrate the season than to look at ten authors who’ve drastically, more or less anyway, changed my romance reading habits over the years. Finally, we’ll review the full gallery of covers to see all at once how the genre has changed for me.

Me? I’m still as whacky as ever even after all these years. 😀

See ya in one week with my first romance author.