A blog about writing & romance
Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of romance novels marketed by their primary trope, like:
I can’t decide if I think this is brilliant marketing or a terrible shame.
I don’t know about you, but I kind of like writing in a bubble.
Not literally! I mean, a bubble where my writing is beautiful and perfect and only my opinion matters.
Writers must, I think, start out in a bubble. But, at some point, you’re going to want to get some feedback.
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I loved books, as a kid. The first book I remember loving was The Robber’s Daughter by Astrid Lindgren. After I read it and we returned it, whenever we visited the library, I would walk by the shelf where it was housed, feeling like it was this special, secret gem, this thing no one else knew about or understood.
I felt the same way about the Harper Hall books by Anne McCaffrey. I was fairly young when I read them (maybe grade 5), and to me they were these fantastical things.
That love is what planted the writing seed for me. I wanted to write something that made people feel that way.
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When I tell people I write romance novels, as I occasionally do, they always ask, “Are you published?”
When I say, “No,” they seem to lose all interest.
I get it. If someone told me they’d written a novel, I’d definitely wonder if it was published. And if it wasn’t, I’d probably assume it wasn’t that great.
Not that being published means a book is good, necessarily. ‘Good’ is, of course, subjective. But, if a book has made it through a publishing process, that’s at least some arbiter of its quality. Even if a book is self-published, you have to go to some trouble to do that, so I’d assume its quality might likely be higher than a book sitting solely on the author’s computer.
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Sheikh Khalid bin Nasrallah Al Tariq loves his free-wheeling, globe-trotting, bachelor life, as long as he’s allowed to forget that he’s heir to the throne of Sarab.
What he doesn’t love is the meddling of his manipulative father, the Emir of Sarab. So, when his father orders him back home to meet some important dignitaries, Khalid is furious to learn those ‘dignitaries’ are in fact a pop singer — set to perform a concert in their tiny Arab kingdom — and her stick-in-the-mud sister.
Penny Lucas has followed her superstar sister Lex around the world for seven years. But, she’s getting tired of people viewing her as nothing more than her sister’s lackey, and is nearly ready to follow her own path in life. If she can just figure out what that path is…