Romance Shmo-mance

While we women authors often include at least a touch of romance in our novels, it doesn’t mean women understand romance better than men or even that we’re better at "working" it. Perhaps—and this is just my opinion—women simply have more fun with romance than men do.

Let’s suppose for a moment that the love of fun is the reason women authors rule the fiction genres that include a pivotal romantic element. Well, as the author of a novel with a romantic subplot, I can tell you that, for me at least, romance is more fun to have than to write.

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Here’s the problem: Good fiction romance must be fresh absolutely, but it must also carry a few standard elements such as conflict, chemistry, obstacles and, finally, resolution (happy ending, tragedy or something somewhere in between). Thus, while romance is fun, writing about it can be “unfun.”

One thing I found as I wrote Curse Me Not, the going got much easier when I decided to stick with a realistic, modern approach to the romantic element in the novel. As one of my reviewers (five star, thank you very much) noted, the interaction between my heroine and her love interest was “sweet, sexy and more importantly, not cringe worthy.” Another reviewer commented that my treatment of romance was amusing and entertaining, but the focus on the actual plot was never “lost in the lust.”

While Curse Me Not can be classified as a paranormal romance or urban fantasy, the novel is far more than the story of a romance with a twist. It’s more of a twist with a little romance. After all, a woman is not defined by the romance she finds (or doesn’t find), and neither is my heroine.