Guest Post by Magdalen Braden: CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE AUTHORS DO IT WITH LESS

Magdalen is one of my favorite bloggers at Promantica. She doesn't review books, but she does blog about reading and writing, and her posts are invariably interesting! Today she's here to explain the art of writing a contemporary romance. Welcome, Magdalen!


You can get a reader in a romantic mood really quickly by setting the story in a romantic era, with romantic characters in a romantic setting. If you’re writing anything other than a contemporary romance, you’ve got it easy.

[Handy guide: Romantic eras include the Regency, pre-Revolutionary Paris, pre-American Revolution, and even some wars (all those yummy spies). Romantic creatures include vampires, mages, shapeshifters, and some literal Greek gods. Romantic settings include outer space, Atlantis, pirate ships, Almacks, and a sheikh’s Bedouin encampment.]

Contemporary romance writers have none of those things to work with. We’re required to dream up a romance from a few raw ingredients: one modern man, one modern woman, a plot, a real place that someone could visit today, and some realistic complications. Hey, it’s not easy. McGyver would have struggled with just those bits and pieces.



Everything in a contemporary romance has to sound plausible but also seem exotic. Billionaire sheikhs have to look like Oded Fehr: [Photo 1] And not like Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah: [Photo 2] Cowboy heroes are as sexy as the Marlboro Man, but don’t smell like an ashtray. Special Forces veterans never have PTSD severe enough to hamper their alpha hero status.

All of that is true because readers live in the same world as contemporary romances, but they don’t want a contemporary romance to remind them of their world. No broken toilets, no money problems, no screaming brats, no churlish in-laws, no cars that won’t start—unless the breakdown results in a meet-cute with the small-town chief of police who’s manning the switchboard, answers the frantic call for a tow truck, and comes out to rescue the heroine, only to discover she’s actually the straight-arrow auditor hired by the corrupt mayor to go over the police department’s books with a fine-tooth comb.

Ooh, I like that. I may have to write that...

In a contemporary romance, the laws of nature apply, the human body is limited to a narrow range of fang-less and fur-less specifications, and it’s a fine line between swoon-worthy and stalker. But we tackle all those limitations because, when it’s done right a contemporary romance reminds us that love really could be right around the corner. Sure, we’re not likely to meet a super-hot cowboy or an Italian magnate, but a well-written contemporary romance can let us dream.

After all, there’s no barrier of time, genetics, or science preventing a contemporary romance from coming true in the here and now.


Thank you, Magdalen! I'll take Oded Fehr any day. ;)
Magdalen is starting her own publishing company called Harmony Road Press and her series of legal romance novels, The Blackjack Quartet, is going to be published in 2012! To find out more about her and her work, please visit her author website at www.MagdalenBraden.com or her blog at www.Promantica.com.

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Guest Review: PERSUADE ME by Juliet Archer

Today we have a guest review from blogger and author Margay Leah Justice. The novel, Persuade Me, is an adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion and sounds quite excellent. Welcome, Margay!


I consider myself a romantic at heart. I like to watch romantic comedies, I get sappy at Happily Ever Afters, and I re-read tried and true romances to remind myself that they do exist – if only in the pages of beloved books. So it’s no surprise that I have a special affinity for Jane Austen. I love her stories, her affinity for recording the foibles of humans who dance the dance of love – and the idiosyncrasies of all the secondary players who make the heroes and heroines what they are. My one problem with Miss Austen is that she didn’t write enough stories! I feel like her main six are just a teaser – but oh, what a tease! So, to fill in the empty spaces left behind by what could have been had she written more, I like to read adaptations of her stories.

In my quest to get more of Jane Austen and the wonderful characters and worlds she created, I read just about every adaptation I can get my hands on. Some have been good, some not so much. But there’s a rare few that take my breath away and make me want to read them again. One of those stories is Persuade Me by Juliet Archer.

Persuade Me is a modern retelling of Persuasion and it has just enough quirks to make it original. The main characters, Anna and Rick, met and fell in love in France, but she, on the advice of an old family friend, broke it off, convinced it was a poor match, and then was whisked back to England by a father who can hardly bear the sight of her. Flash forward some years later and Anna has developed into a self-assured woman with a degree in Russian Literature and Rick is a marine biologist living in Australian who is making a splash in the world of literature having written a book with a somewhat provocative title. During his book tour – which inevitably leads him back to England – Rick crosses paths with Anna once again and the adventure begins.

I have to admit that Persuasion is one of my favorite Austen stories, so I was excited to read an adaptation of it. I don’t think it receives the attention Pride and Prejudice does, but it deserves it. This is such a classic story of lost love and second chances, ripe with likable characters and despicable ones and it translates well to modern times. In Ms. Archer’s hands, the story shines, taking on its own relevance and leading the reader by the hand through the story to the inevitable conclusion in such a way that, if one hadn’t read – or was even aware of – the original piece, it wouldn’t matter. They would still be enthralled by this story. Indeed after reading it, one might be encouraged to read the original to see how it compares.

I must admit that, sometimes, I’m hesitant to read adaptations because I’m afraid they won’t measure up to the original, but Persuade Me does not disappoint. It hits all the key points – the love story between Anna and Rick, the influence of the family friend, the despicable natures of Anna’s father and older sister, and the clingy, whiney nature of her younger sister – in the original, but does it in a way that makes it seem fresh. The idea of Rick being a biologist and writer rather than a captain is a stroke of genius. Anna being more self-reliant and not so much under the thumb of her family is a welcome relief. The book tour is a brilliant way to get all of the other key elements together and make it the author’s own. I had so much fun reading this book, I can’t wait to read it again. But first, I want to check out the first book in the Darcy and Friends series, The Importance of Being Emma.

Final verdict: Extremely enjoyable and I would recommend it to any Austen fan and anyone who just loves a darn good story.

A little more about it (from the author’s website):

Boy meets girl, falls in love and asks her to sail round the world with him. Girl loves boy - but listens to The Voice of Reason, an old family friend, and says no…

The words ‘forgive and forget’ are not in Rick Wentworth’s vocabulary. The word ‘regret’ is definitely in Anna Elliot’s.

When they meet again ten years later, he seems indifferent and intent on finding happiness elsewhere. Can she convince him that their lost love is worth a second chance?

Persuade Me, JA’s modern version of Persuasion, will be available in September 2011. In the meantime, you can read the prologue and first chapter here or feast your eyes on a certain Captain Wentworth.

JA says: Just as I felt Knightley needed updating for a 21st-century audience  in The Importance of Being Emma, I’ve given Anne Elliot similar treatment in Persuade Me. My Anna leads her own life and is financially independent of her father, although there’s enough baggage between them to fill an airport carousel! I’d love to know what you think of the extract - email me at juliet@julietarcher.com.

Thank you, Margay! That sounds like a great book.
Margay Leah Justice is the author of Sloane Wolf, available at museituppublishing.com. You can also find her on FaceBook, Moonlight, Lace and Mayhem, Twitter, MySpace, and the Jane Austen Society Pages.

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Author Interview: MANNA FRANCIS

Manna Francis is the author the Administration Series, which I started reading on the recommendation of Kris from Kris 'n' Good Books. These are some of my favorite books of the year--they take place in an alternate world (governed by the Administration) and focus on the relationship between Val Toreth, a government investigator, and Keir Warrick, a corporate developer. I was thrilled when Francis agreed to an interview to answer some of my questions about the series!

Heidenkind: You say in your GoodReads profile that you identify as an "original slash" fiction author. For people not familiar with slash fiction, yaoi, etc., can you explain what you mean?

Manna Francis: Slash fan fiction is fan fiction which features a sexual/romantic relationship between two same sex characters.  It's a genre that's primarily written by and for women, and it generally has a different and distinctive style to m/m fiction written by and for men.  Rather like porn, it's hard to explain but 'I know it when I see it'.

So for me, the original slash label was something of a marker for slash fanfic readers that this could be something that they'd like to try. I first put the Adminstration series online in 2002, when the original  m/m fiction scene wasn't anything like as large as it's become today.

H: Would you call the Administration a dystopian world? Is there a specific event in the history of the Administration that diverted it from our own?

MF: Well, it certainly isn't a utopia! It's described as a dystopia in a couple of places on the website.  I like dystopia as a description, because it packs in a lot of tropes for the reader to expect.

I've never been specific about when the Administration world diverged from the real world, as it's something I haven't yet fixed in a story. I wouldn't like to speculate about it, lest I narrow my options for future stories.

H: Why is Warrick so obsessed with creating an artificial world that feels real?

MF: I think that kind of obsessive approach is in his nature.  The ultimate evolution of the Sim would be something in which there would be no way to tell if it was real or not, so that's the goal he sets himself. Whatever he ended up doing with his life, he'd approach it in the same way as he does the Sim. When he was working on Administration security systems, he had the same dedication, and that's one of the things that caught Carnac's eye. If he'd become, say, a chef, he'd be an Administration Heston Blumenthal, engineering every dish to absolute perfection.

If guess that if you wanted to, you could make a connection between his growing up in an essentially artificial family and his desire to create a perfect world under his control.  Or something along those lines.  I don't generally go down that path with characters, though, as I don't find it helpful in writing them.

H: Do Sara and Warrick feel morally superior to Toreth?

MF: Morally superior in the sense of feeling that they actually have morals, or morally superior because he's a Para and they aren't?

I think they both feel that he's missing something that they have.

Sara doesn't see anything wrong with being a Para. Warrick never makes any secret out of his distaste for I&I.  On the other hand, he's happy  to take advantage of his corporate perks, and happy to see Toreth, so I don't think that he'd want to give any lectures on his moral superiority within the Administration. Not that Toreth would care if he did.

H: In several of the books, people accuse Toreth of being psychotic. Do you think he is?

MF: They accuse him of being a sociopath, which isn't the same thing. He has a very firm grasp on reality.

This is something I get asked a lot about Toreth, and I always say the same thing -- read the books, and make up your own mind about it. I think it's the kind of topic about which it's very unproductive for an author to shove in her two penn'orth. Certainly, no one has ever changed their opinion of Toreth's mental state because of what I said about it.

(The other question I never answer is 'does Toreth love Warrick?'. Because, really, where's the fun in giving people a flat yes or no about that?)

H: You make a lot of classical references in the books, especially in Quis Custodiet. Are you drawing from classical literature for your novels? Is the story of Toreth and Warrick's relationship going to follow the format of a Greek tragedy or comedy?

MF: No, and no. I really just liked the title.

Bonus question: Would Toreth ever be able to handle owning a pet?

MF: Ha! I can't imagine how he'd get it in the first place. It would have to be a very robust pet that could handle total neglect.  The closest thing I could imagine would be maybe a wild rat living in his kitchen--where at least it would be able to find plenty to eat.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions, Manna! 
To find out more about Manna Francis' novels, please check out her website at http://www.mannazone.org/, or go to her GoodReads Author profile page.

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Schnauzer Saturday

Pearl likes to watch TV sometimes, and she likes being adorable while she's doing it:

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Book Review: THE CONCUBINE by Jade Lee

Sun Bo Tao is a notorious playboy and the Emperor's best friend. When he criticizes the Emperor's foreign policy, however, Xian Feng punishes Bo Tao by making him Master of the Festival of Fertility, wherein eligible noblewomen throughout China come to the Forbidden City to compete for the position of Empress. I know what you're thinking: a playboy surrounded by desperate virgins... how could this POSSIBLY go wrong?

I love Jade Lee's Tigress series, which also takes place in Imperial China (although during a different time period), and this novel has all the elements from those books that I like: well-drawn characters, an awesome setting, and a wonderful story. It starts off with a great meet-cute between Bo Tao and Ji Yue, one of the Imperial Virgins, and is pretty much unputdownable from then on. There's never a lull in the narrative, and every character gets as much time on the page as they warrant. Ji Yue and Bo Tao go from hating one another's guts to pulling each other's clothes off perhaps a little too abruptly, but I think that can largely be attributed to the length of the book. And they definitely have chemistry, so it's not unbelievable even if it does seem a bit rushed.

Jade Lee really has a gift for writing historical romances set in China: they feel exotic, but at the same time there's always something familiar from a Western perspective to make the characters relatable, despite the cultural and historical gulf. It wouldn't be unreasonable to say this novel is like The Bachelor, but set in Imperial China; except that for Ji Yue and the other virgins the stakes are much higher than being sent home 'broken-hearted.' They can't go home if they fail the tests--that would shame their families. Their only options are to remain in the Emperor's harems forever, become prostitutes in Peking, or kill themselves. Those are pretty high stakes for a woman to face and still pursue another relationship! Ji Yue might have come off as an idiot for choosing Bo Tao over all that, but she doesn't because the choices she make are for herself.

The romance between Bo Tao and Ji Yue also draws upon the European literary device of courtly love (that Meghan mentioned in her guest post on medieval romance), in that there's nothing but shame and death that can come from their relationship. This is a modern-day romance novel, though, so thankfully things work out.

As for the exoticism, I don't think it comes so much from the setting as what Lee does with it. Imagining characters and stories set in China seems to give her the freedom to be much more creative and unconventional with how she builds her characters and plot than she is with romances set in prototypical nineteenth-century London, like The Devil's Bargain. She really has never failed to surprise and entertain me with either the Tigress series, The Dragon Earl, or this book; which is a shame, because as far as I can tell, Lee has no more novels set in China in the works.

To say I'm super-disappointed over this--and how other writers who set romances in unusual time periods and places are often either dropped or redirected to more popular settings by publishers--would be an understatement. I know they probably claim that readers don't seem interested in different settings as some bullshit excuse, but let me tell you something, publishers of historical romances: I AM YOUR AUDIENCE. I am the proverbial choir to your preacher; I am going to smell what the Rock is cooking. But to be honest, the whole Regency romance thing was getting a little tired in the late '90s. So trust me, I'm interested. I will take any unusual setting you have to offer: China, India, Canada, even nineteenth-century Paris, but PLEASE allow a book set somewhere other than nineteenth-century London to be published on a regular basis. Please! /public service announcement

If, like me, you enjoy historical romances but are looking for something a little different, I highly recommend any of Jade Lee's books. The Concubine I think is one of her more accessible novels, and probably your best bet if the prospect of reading--in detail--about Taoist sex cult practices makes you a little nervous. There's no sex-as-a-spiritual-practice in The Concubine as there is in the Tigress books; it's just a delightful romance novel set in the Forbidden City with top-notch research and great storytelling. Definitely a keeper!



Musical Notes: "All I Ever Wanted" by Airborne Toxic Event

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Guest Post by Meghan Burton: MEDIEVAL ROMANCE

Today I asked Meghan from Medieval Bookworm to tell us about the roots of the modern-day romance novel, medieval romances. Meghan challenged me to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight last year as part of Classics Month, and I really enjoyed it! Now she's going to tell us about her favorite medieval romances. Welcome, Meghan!



Romance is not really a modern notion, although the happily-ever-after ending for couples certainly is. But in the Middle Ages, particularly the High Middle Ages which took place roughly from the year 1000-1300, romance was flourishing. The only caveat? It was the courtly kind - the breed of romance that was never really meant to be consummated, and which was disastrous when it was. You can't really expect much else in a culture which focused on marriages for political reasons. In fact, many of the tales can be seen as cautionary; while they’re meant to capture the heart, they’re also lessons on how not to rock the boat too much, and how to retain your honor while engaging in courtly love.





This trend is very, very obvious when you start reading medieval literature. We have a lot of fantastic romances that take place through this veneer of respectability. The best known are, of course, the Arthurian legends. How much more romantic can you get than these stories? They have changed so much over time, first originating as Welsh myths, but many of the characters we know well appeared in Chretien de Troyes and later Sir Thomas Malory's medieval work on these legends. If you're looking for a romance, Guinevere and Lancelot are legendary, and the medieval period is when Lancelot du Lac actually appeared in the stories, which had previously focused on Arthur. But here? We have an entire civilization ruined more or less because two people fell in love.



One of my personal favorite lovers, though, is Elaine of Astolat, who may not be the most appealing of heroines, but who is certainly a romantic one in the most medieval of molds. After watching Lancelot joust in a tournament and nursing him back to health after an accident, Elaine falls in love with him. Lancelot, famously, is deeply in love with Guinevere, and as a result, Elaine dies of heartbreak. Her last request is to be placed in a boat, a lily in one hand and a letter in the other, and sent to Camelot to show Lancelot what he’s done.  Yet another life destroyed because of the love between Lancelot and Guinevere.



Outside of the Arthurian period, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales features a few romances – even raunchy ones – that demonstrate how we are the same and yet different even now. Chaucer doesn’t shy away from the facts of life, and at one point we even manage to get a young couple in each other’s arms. Over other tales, he also examines May-December romances, marriage, and courtly love, each in their own time. While no story is a romance in the way we’d call one, it’s hard to avoid the realization that, actually, love was as pervasive in their culture as it is in ours.



Staying in King Arthur’s court, we can skip further ahead in time to Tennyson’s poems. Writing in the Victorian age, Tennyson interprets the stories traditionally around King Arthur in new and different ways, giving life to the romances and inspiring some of the most beautiful medieval-inspired paintings I’ve ever seen.

The Middle Ages have become very romanticized over the years, and the romantic relationships in the stories have enjoyed the same treatment. It’s still very much worth reading the originals. I’d always recommend starting with Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.



Thank you, Meghan! I like how you said that the story of Lancelot and Guinevere is basically about how two people falling in love destroyed a civilization. Those are some pretty serious consequences!
If you want to find out more about Meghan, check out her excellent book blog, Medieval Bookworm or follow her on twitter @mbookworm.

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Janeite Gift Guide!

I've been noticing these 'gift guides' popping up everywhere, and since I don't like recommending books to get people I don't know (it's hard enough figuring out books to get people I do know), I thought I would instead share with you these delightful Janeite items you can buy on Etsy.



Jane Austen bookmarks by CastleontheHill--$9.50 for 6

Aren't these adorable? The seller also has art prints with these original drawings of Jane Austen characters. I think this would be cute gift for a pre-teen just starting to read classics.



Jane Austen inspired corner bookmarks by FairestLJ--$10 for 2

These corner bookmarks are much fancier (and more expensive) than the previous bookmarks. Not sure how practical they are, either, but they certainly look good.



My Other Ride is a Barouche decal sticker by eaton--$3 for 1

Cars and Regency-era romance so rarely go together, but they can now with this perfect accessory for every driving Janeite!



Mr. Darcy Note Cards by ecdesign--$14 for 10

Probably not the best card to use for an apology, but they would be awesome to send in lieu of a break-up text.



Mr. Darcy Holiday Card by bbInvitations--$5 for 1

Haha. Kidding! But kinda not.



Mr. Darcy Proposal Scarf by Brookish--$24 for 1

You'll not only think but feel like Mr. Darcy in this snowy white women's cravat, which repeats the classic words of his proposal, right before he put his foot in his mouth.



Mr. Darcy ring by CandleBrightCreation--$16 for 1

Mr. Darcy is literally wrapped around your finger.



Pride & Prejudice locations typography t-shirt by Brookish--$22 for 1

Okay, this I really do need. Listing all the locations mentioned in P&P, this shirt is a subtle and clever way of identifying other Janeites, and may also double as a map in case you get lost. In Regency England.


Do you have any great gift ideas for lovers of Jane Austen novels?

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