The very bad weather here last week, and even into this weekend, has kept me indoors, working on the WIP (rough draft almost done!), doing some research reading, and snarking about the gowns on the Golden Globes. Yesterday, desperate boredom even drove me to do some cleaning. I cleared out my office area, sending old magazines to the recycle bin, and dusting and vacuuming. My mother would be proud.

But it wasn’t all Cinderella-style drudgery! As I dusted my keeper shelves, I came across some old favorites. Some of them very old–the first romances I ever read, in fact. It made me wonder–what turns a person into a romance novel addict?

Hi, my name is Amanda and I’m a romance addict. Here is my confession.

It started out small, you know. A few Nancy Drew books here and there. I loved her great clothes and nifty roadster. Her boyfriend Ned seemed pretty useless, yet an essential accessory for any girl detective. A Laura Ingalls Wilder or two, just to be sociable. It was so sweet when Almanzo drove through the blizzard to rescue her from the crazy family she boarded with. Anne of Green Gables and that adorable Gilbert. Then things got a little harder–Sunfire YA historical romances.

I don’t know if you remember those Sunfire books. They always had a girl’s name as the title–Nicole (girl on the Titanic), Sabrina (girl in the American Revolution), Kathleen (Irish immigrant girl), etc. The covers depicted the eponymous heroine, usually in a poufy dress and very period-inappropriate hairdo (especially Elizabeth the Puritan girl and her perm), and the two men who vie for her affection. For some reason, there were always two, one a “suitable” boy approved by her parents, and one who offers her adventure and freedom. Which do you think she chooses in the end? But romance was not the only thing on the Sunfire girl’s mind. She was also a Patriot spy, a frontier schoolmarm, or a nurse (against the wishes of her rich Gilded Age parents).

I loved those books, couldn’t get enough of them. I read them when I was supposed to be doing homework, even traded them with my friends, thus involving them in my addiction and becoming a pusher. (Sadly, I lost most of my Sunfire collection in a move, but through the wonders of Ebay and some lucky library booksale finds, I’m rebuilding). Then things escalated. My grandmother became my unwitting supplier.

When we went to visit her one summer, she had a big box full of romances. Barbara Cartland mostly, plus a few Heyers, some Regencies by authors like Marion Chesney and Joan Smith. It was like a whole new world opened up. The Sunfires all had American settings, but these books were English. Regency. (A few of the Cartlands were purportedly Victorian or Elizabethan, but I couldn’t see any difference). I was totally hooked. I checked out non-fiction histories of the era from the library, and never looked back.

Now, this addiction did have a few side effects. When I started dating, I had quite unrealistic expectations. My first boyfriend, a sweet, 16 year old band geek, just couldn’t compete with those square-jawed, sardonic dukes with their high-perch phateons and perfectly tied cravats. But that’s another story…

I flipped through some of these old friends as I was cleaning. The Sunfire girls were as spunky as I remembered; the Cartland heroines just as asthmatic. It’s uncanny how much they resemble Madeline Bassett from the Jeeves and Wooster stories. I may have moved on to “harder” stuff, Laura Kinsale, Judith Ivory, Loretta Chase, and the like, but I’ll always have great fondness for these, my gateway drugs.

What were your favorite early romances? Do you remember what your “first” was? Did you ever read Sunfires? And whose gowns did you love and hate at the Golden Globes? (My favorites–Kate Winslet, Rachel Weisz, America Ferrera).

First off, apologies for flaking on last week . . . I know ALL of you were at home, beating your chests, screaming ‘Where is that Frampton Friday post?!? I will die without it.’ And in other news, it was awfully frigid in Hell last Friday, too.

Second, this week I wanted to talk about voice. For me, voice is what makes or breaks a book. And a blog. The reason I started thinking about this was a post Abby Godwin made on her blog about blogs. There are a bunch of bloggers, and authors, I read just because of their voice.

The best example of this is ESPN’s The Sports Guy. Yeah, I like some sports–basketball, mostly, ’cause I’m fond of tall, thin men, but I could really care less about most sports. But when writes about sports–and the latest Rocky movie–I care. It’s because his voice is so powerful.

You know how some people say ‘such-and-such an author could write a grocery list, and I’d read it’? Count me among those folks.

Even if the plot is weak, or ludicrous, if the voice is there, I’ll be there, too. The best situation is when the author’s voice AND plot are strong, but if there’s a choice, I’ll stick with the author who’s got the former. And voice is such a nebulous thing; is it the author’s personality coming through the work? Their distinct choice of language? Their sense of humor (or not)? It’s all of these things, plus something more–something that makes the author (or blogger) unique.

So who’s got the strongest author’s voice you’ve ever encountered? How about bloggers? (my favorite blogs are in a sidebar on my Writer’s Diary, go over and click around if you want. You don’t have to, though. I’m just too lazy to write them all down here. So they’re there.)

In romance, I’d say authors Carla Kelly, Anne Stuart, J.R. Ward, debut author Meljean Brook, Jennifer Crusie, and Mary Balogh.

In Blogland, I’d mention (okay, so I’m not as lazy as I look) Cindy, Suisan, Ilene and of course the Smart Bitches. There are many more (and I did not include any authors’ blogs), these are just some of the strongest voices whom I’ll read, even if they’re talking about vegan desserts.

How important is an author’s voice to you? Are you willing to overlook plot and other problems if you like the voice? Who’s got the strongest voice? What blogs do you like to read, even if the subject is not your favorite?

Thanks for reading!

Megan
www.meganframpton.com
P.S.: The painting is by John Singer Sargent, one of my favorites. Just because.

One of the advantages–I guess it’s an advantage–of having a twenty-something move back into the house (upon graduating from college, hooray! This is not a picture of her–the cakes wouldn’t last a minute in our house) is that you get to see a lot of tv you wouldn’t generally. And, yes, I’m talking about the American Idol auditions, which we have been following with horrified fascination. What makes those people think they can sing? What makes them so eager to expose themselves to humiliation and ridicule?

And what on earth does this have to do with the Regency? (And, incidentally, why is Marie Antoinette’s maid wearing a late Victorian uniform?)

Well, I started to think about the Regency period as one of ostentatious display and a certain lack of shyness in self-revelation–Harriet Smith’s Memoirs, for instance; Lady Caroline Lamb–yes, I could see her auditioning and berating Simon Cowell for being sarcastic, and leaving in floods of tears. What, he didn’t like me? Me?

It was a period represented both by the vulgar exuberance of Prinny (seen at right being laced in for the day) and the uh, jewel in his crown, the Brighton Pavilion, as well as all that elegance and self-restraint and gorgeous classical design.

Beneath his severe, beautifully tailored coat, your hero might well be sporting a lavishly embroidered waistcoat–and he’d make sure everyone would catch a tantalizing glimpse.

That’s what I love about the period, the contradictions and the sense of change–it might all be about the tailoring and the classical line, but it was equally about decoration for decoration’s sake. My theory is that this all ties into the developing sense of domestic privacy that began in the eighteenth century.

Houses were now designed so that family members could sequester themselves into private rooms–no longer was the typical house plan one where you had to go through everyone else’s room to get to the lord’s chamber, the seat of power in the house, where his bed was displayed as the best piece of furniture. Bedcurtains had always been to provide warmth and now they also provided that new luxury, privacy; chances are your servant would have his own sleeping quarters, and not a trundle bed in your bedchamber (a fairly new word in the English language).

I’d be interested to hear your take on the growth of privacy and ostentation vs. restraint, and also how you think your favorite Regency character, fictional or real, would do in his or her American Idol audition!

Janet

Last week I blogged about tear-jerkers and bittersweet endings. This week I want to talk about Happily Ever After. I love HEA myself—if I didn’t I’d be writing in the wrong genre! I find it interesting that people criticize romance endings as unrealistic.

I know some people who bash romance endings haven’t read the books and seem to think they’re all a romp in a flowery meadow or something. They don’t realize that in a good romance the hero and heroine deal with the “bitter” in the course of the story. They earn the “sweet” at the end.

It’s also a bit like what Paul Gardner said about painting: “A painting is never finished – it simply stops in interesting places.” Romance novels end at a happy spot.

I figure the hero and heroine will likely face some more rough patches, though nothing as bad as the author has already put them through. I doubt anyone wants to imagine one of them dying of cancer a year after the story ends. (At least I hope no one wishes that on my characters!) But they still have life to deal with and that means problems. The thing is they’ll face them together. Is that so unrealistic?

Romance readers don’t always agree on what constitutes a happy ending either.

Often the HEA involves a huge brood of children, angelically cute and well-behaved. In a Regency this would certainly be historically accurate as many though not all couples did have large families. (One can also imagine servants handling many of the messier parts of parenting.)

Even contemporary romances frequently include children in the HEA. Jennifer Crusie’s BET ME generated a lot of discussion because the couple in that story chose to have a dog instead. I liked that, as a change, but more because I felt that was what was right for those characters. I also read a lot of reader comments to the effect that it was a more romantic ending because children ruin everything.

OK, they often do! Babies certainly have some sort of sixth sense for detecting when parents are trying to make love, even a few rooms away. Maybe it’s a survival mechanism to ensure there aren’t younger siblings too soon! And all too often “normal” family life is a façade of happiness with a lot of repressed tension. There are certainly bratty kids around, the result of people who didn’t really want them in the first place, maybe.

But functional family life shouldn’t be an unrealistic goal. We aren’t perfect, but my husband and I try to keep it fun and not let things fester. Our kids are pretty fun to be around, at least 80% of the time. I can certainly think of adults with a far worse fun-to-be-around ratio!

Of course real life HEA with children is hard work. Exhaustion battles lust at times. You call a dozen sitters just to set up one night out. Maybe not everyone’s idea of HEA. Sometimes it’s not mine either! Sometimes I yearn for the life Crusie gives the BET ME characters. But that book works for me also because of the realistic characters, the heroine who predicts she’s going to put on weight in middle age, the hero who finds her sexy anyway, the way they nurture his nephew.

Which sorts of HEA do you like? Fairytale? Do you prefer to see her as always slim and him with all his hair, (no matter how much he’s raked his fingers through it, as romance heroes are wont to do)? 🙂 Or more realistic? Are there some HEA elements that you find too perfect to enjoy? Or are there elements of reality that spoil the romance for you?

Do you ever try to imagine characters’ lives after The End?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

P.S. Image is an illustration by Eleanor Vere Boyle, from Beauty and the Beast: An Old Tale New-Told. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1875.