Why romance?
I was recently talking to a friend about the new book I’ve almost finished writing and they asked me why I’d decided to go with romance as my genre as opposed to another one, especially since the setting is distinctly sci-fi.
It turns out the answer was a lot longer than I’d expected.
Of course one of the reasons was that romance novels seem distinctly easier to break into when it comes to getting published professionally. There are a lot more of them put out every year, its a growing business, they’re one of the few branches that will accept writers without agents, they cover a much wider range of genres than most, its still an industry area that’s largely dominated by women and it seems like a very stable market that will continue to be stable.  I’ve had brushes with the professional publishing industry before.  Before I self-published Andromache: Stealing Tomorrow I went the traditional route by landing an agent that shopped me around and got me several bites.  Unfortunately none of the bites panned out and I ended up self-publishing (and one of these years I really need to get around to reformatting it for Kindle because I can only assume the book format is a mess to read that way).  The biggest publisher that showed interest though, and came looking for me a year after to say they were still interested?  A romance publisher.  For a book that did have romance in it but was very much a historic fiction coming of age story.  In the back of my brain, that’s stuck with me.
There’s also been this recent spurt of very over the top and controversial romance novels that have come down the pike, the famous Twilight fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, the mafia guy that kidnaps the lawyer he’s got the hots for, even Netflix has gotten in on things with the Harry Stiles fanfic rewrite.  And something I noticed about a lot of the romance books that have gotten made into movies lately is how they all hew toward the ‘love you so much I can’t take ‘no’ as an answer’ in their male leads.  It’s raised a lot of alarm in the reading community how often the lines between consent and Not consent are ignored and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing to be alarmed about.  I’m also aware that fantasy is fantasy and especially for women that have been told they’re supposed to be pursued and that they’re not supposed to admit to sexual desires, having a man so in lust with them that they ‘persuade’ until the woman can safety give in while avoiding the ‘slut’ and ‘easy’ labels is a comforting fantasy.  So I’m not going to get into when is a fantasy Not Okay Anymore in this.
It did however make me want to ask ‘what about the women that want to fantasize about being the instigator’?  If there are fantasies about ‘resisting until you’re overcome’ than there must also be fantasies about ‘being free enough to go after what you want without shame’.  What about the women that want to daydream about getting the guy because they’re still admittedly exactly his type but this time they got to make the first move and watch him jump at the chance?  What about the women that want to be pursued by the man of their dreams because they consented to the chase and its mutually fun for both of them, the ones that want to meet the guy halfway, the ones that want to meet their ‘prince’ on the same level that he’s at?  What about the women that want the story to be about their needs and not revolve it around the needs of the leading man?  So I thought - why not?  I can do that.
Granted, there are hundreds of romance novels that already have.  One of the only romance writers I have read regularly is very much about putting her female characters in the drivers seat with the male leads cheerfully along for the ride.  It’s not ground-breaking to fall on that side of the ‘is this consent?’ side of the fence.  But I thought ‘why not one (or five) more?’.  Would it really hurt to put out another romance novel where the woman was involved with the man because she had, right from the beginning, wanted to be?  Where the story wasn’t the route of ‘lust - misunderstanding - breakup - dramatic incident - reunion - true love’ but rather something more along the lines of ‘really really groove with someone, have adventures together about unrelationship involved plot, still be really grooving with them at the end of the story’.  Sure, the alien gets involved with the hottie starship captain because of alien reasons but she’s been quietly pining after him for years and he’s been secretly smitten with her just as long.  The drama can be her culture’s taboo about inter-species relationships and how they’re going to handle that together (while also dealing with having a murderous saboteur onboard their mission) without one of them having to get jealous because of something simple communication would have solved in two minutes.
So - why romance? Â
Well, a lot of reasons - but one of them is that I want to do What’s Right about romance and I also want to write it in a healthy fun way that says its okay to go for the hottie with the bodie without having to pretend otherwise.  He’s jacked with a heart of gold and he’s been pining after you for a long time - if only saying something wouldn’t put you in a compromising position, he would have spoke up ages ago.
