Bev's Books » Entries tagged with "Romance Is…"
Could romance be the Captain Kirk of literature?
Blink, blink. You see, that’s the question that occurred to me whilst watching the scene in the new Star Trek movie where Kirk gets to confront his oh, so logical accuser, namely Spock, about his, um, little indiscretion regarding the Kobayashi Maru test when I rewatched the movie this last weekend. Now, for those of you not familiar with Star Trek, here’s something to help ‘splain things. For those of you that are familiar, you should get a real kick out of this montage. You see, it’s not about whether or not the Kobayashi Maru is a valid evaluation of a cadet’s potential readiness for command. It’s about the fact that everyone knows Kirk will never, ever bow to the logic of it. Old Kirk. Young Kirk. Doesn’t matter. He does not … Read entire article »
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Ten Nights of Love: Overview & Afterthoughts
Yes, I know it is past Valentine’s Day, but my ever so logical brain wouldn’t let me ignore posting a list of chronological links for this entire Ten Nights of Love series for future reference. Following that, you’ll find a few thoughts that crossed my mind as I made this journey through the years. First, here’s the full list of posts in order: The Introduction Grace Livingston Hill Emilie Loring Glenna Finley Julie Garwood Amanda Quick Dara Joy Stephanie Laurens Christine Feehan Linnea Sinclair Shelly Laurenston Cover Gallery Now for my overall thoughts completely unrelated to individual authors and simply about the journey I just took. I find it fascinating that what started out as an attempt explore the changes in sexual content in the books turned into something completely different. Or maybe it didn’t. The thing is I’m not sure we can ever … Read entire article »
Filed under: Featured, Ten Nights of Love
Ten Nights of Love: The Introduction
Last fall, Heather over at The Galaxy Express asked me what the dividing line between romance and erotic romance was. I almost laughed in her face - figuratively speaking. I mean, come on. One, much more eloquent people than me have tried to explain it, did great jobs and, yet, still gotten lost in their own words and, two, sometimes, I’m not sure there is an answer. Then I stopped backing away and realized that what she was asking was the age old, ever popular question that comes up repeatedly on romance forum discussions of “how much sex is too much?” before it becomes not romance and off I went emailing her a bunch of thoughts and links which later evolved into this long article that I divided in a series … Read entire article »
Filed under: Featured, Ten Nights of Love
There’s respect and then there’s… market presense?
The question is which is more valuable. Thing is that I rarely get into the romance don’t get no respect issue. ‘Cause frankly I could care less. I read what I read and that’s that. But I ran across a couple of articles this last week that raised even my eyebrows, partly because I came across them so close together and partly because they came at the same issue from such totally divergent directions. Judge for yourselves. First there was this one It wouldn’t be half bad (not that it’s all that good, mind you – still making up my mind on that one) if it didn’t propagate some seriously wrong information about romances in these two paragraphs: Rape or near-rape fantasies are central to romance novels, one of the perennial best-selling categories in fiction. These books … Read entire article »
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Placeholders & the dual perspective
After my post yesterday, which linked back to a post on Racy Romance Reviews, there was a comment by AG there that I felt I could respond to more appropriately and more at length here and without getting too far off topic for Jessica’s post: Despite the definition it kind of feels like placeholder heroine is a term similar to bodice ripper. It’s meant to put the reader of romantic fiction into a position of defense. Actually, I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. We have to understand that this is something that respected and relatively popular authors within the genre bought into and wrote about – in more than one essay in that Dangerous Men, Adventerous Women collection. Authors who were and still are teaching other authors about the … Read entire article »
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The old “placeholder heroine” myth
I’ve been mulling something over for awhile now and a post over on Racy Romance Reviews about Romance Fiction as Popular Culture made me bring something off the back burner and get it ready to post. I first ran across the placeholder heroine concept back in the late 1990s when I read about it in Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women, which is a group of essays by romance authors edited by Jayne Ann Krentz and originally published in 1992. The placeholder heroine or “heroine as placeholder” was simply confusing when I first read about it. It was nonsensical psycho-babble all tangled up in reader identification to me unlike how I reacted to other concepts presented in the book such as alpha heroes, which I’m either for or against depending on its use, or even say … Read entire article »
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Not just for women
For months now I’ve been thinking of starting a post category on the blog called “Romance Is…” dedicated specifically to defining romances as I know and love to read them, not in any specific dictionary definition way but more in a “what they are and aren’t” to me personally as a longtime reader and by association to other readers as I find things to comment on around the web. Well, the first instance of this has occurred. Heather over on The Galaxy Express asked me a question in one of the comments on Will Sweet Science Fiction Romance Survive? and when I went to answer my response ended up becoming this post. So away we go: @BevBB If you’re still checking back, do you think the “by women for women” mantra … Read entire article »
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