Used to be that few if any historical romances were set in France, particularly prior to the Revolution. I remember an article from the RWR a few years back titled along the lines of, “What’s Wrong with France?” If I recall correctly (and I likely don’t) the article talked about taking risks that could pay off - no one wrote about sports figures as heroes until Susan Elizabeth Phillips came along, so who knows if you’ll tap into the next big thing?
French settings for historicals, however, were different - because if you know your history, you know what happens to many of the royals of France. Same with other historical revolutions and tragic events. In the end of a romance set in Rome, the hero and heroine go off to live in Pompeii and my first thought was, “Y’all need to move!” It’s like throwing cold water on my nice warm fuzzy happy ending.
France and sports aside, I had an email from a reader who had an interesting question about a similar risk in characterization and setting. Emily asks:
I’m formulating an idea for romance novel at the moment, but I’m wondering if I’ve shot myself in the foot right out of the starting gate in deciding to make my heroine HIV+, and aware of the fact. Given that I’ve yet to see a romance novel that so much as winks at herpes or even something curable like gonorrhea, I was wondering if it was pointless to even begin to tackle the idea. I’ve heard of True Love overcoming all odds, and I’d like to see that theory tested. COULD love overcome something so massive as Lingering, Painful Death in a Thong and Holding Champagne? Granted I’d already begun working on how I would or could justify ANY sexual contact, and there’s definitely no simple answer in sight.
What are your thoughts?
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Thanks for this tip-off. I have lots of new shiny books now.
WRT: drm’ed ebooks. I have just been introduced to ConvertLit (or with a graphical user interface instead).
I have now freed all…
From Fictionwise FTW
ev, the contest is a LOL cover. If you don’t frequent the Lolcats page, then you may not be familiar with the [mis]spelling conventions. “Mai” for my, “forth” for fourth, “countz” and “ur” are all down to that.
…From Votz For LOL Handz!
Plus, Dan Savage taught me all I needed to know about CBT, GGG, DTMFA, fuzzies, sounding, canned hams, and more. I’ll never look at sex and romance the same way again.
Too funny. I never saw this one before. And did you notice he’s got 6 fingers?
From Votz For LOL Handz!
Connecticut is only cool if Referendum Question #1 is defeated. It says, “Should we convene a consitututional convention for the state constitution?” That means, can we get people together to rewrite the ENTIRE constitution? Place that have done that (California,…
