Romance Authors on "Why Does Romance Matter"

This month, writer and reviewer Bobbi Dumas, author of the popular NPR Books blog essay "Don't Hide Your Harlequins: In Defense of Romance," declared August "Read-A-Romance Month." Tired of being the butt of jokes at parties for her literary leanings, tired of being condescended to because of her love of romance, Dumas decided to do something more than just defend her beloved genre. With the support of several major romance publishers and nearly 100 romance authors, Dumas created the Read-A-Romance Month web site. The site is clearly a promotional one, with publishers and authors sponsoring contests and give-aways for visitors who leave their names and email addresses. But by publishing short posts by romance authors responding to the prompt "Why Romance Matters," Dumas is also attempting to jump-start a broader conversation about romance, one not based on stereotypes about romance novels or their readers.

Will feminism play a role in this broader conversation? I was interested to see how many of the authors posting on the site would refer to feminism as a reason why the genre matters.

Susan Mallery, the site's inaugural poster, began the month with a bang, opening her essay by asserting:

I am a feminist.

I read and write romance. 

Those two statements do not contradict one another.

In particular, Mallery argues, romances "empower women" in two specific ways: "Romance novels teach women that they can do or be anything" and "Romance novels teach women how we deserve to be treated by the men in our lives." I've only read one Mallery book (The Best of Friends) and found it rather flat, but her open embrace of a feminist identity makes me eager to read more.

In her post, Maya Rodale doesn't explicitly claim a feminist identity, but tells readers they must read a blog post by a "brilliant feminist blogger" (Caitlin O'Donnell at Drake University, who blogs at Help. I'm Alive), to find one of the reasons why she believes romance matters. Clicking to the post, readers discover O'Donnell's list of reasons "Why Society Still Needs Feminism", a biting and succinct summary of the ways in which our post-feminist age is not quite as kind to women as we'd like to believe. Rodale's list of reasons why she believes romance matters are all feminist ones: economic self-sufficiency; respect; safety; personal choice; empowerment. I wonder, then, why she herself doesn't use the word "feminist" to describe herself? Would the identity fit the books she writes? (Again, I've only read one of them to date).

Lucy March (also known as Lani Diane Rich), offers the most compelling (and the most amusing) post, by openly rejecting the prompt she'd been given. Having difficulty writing her post without "charging in here on my big feminist horse (her name is Betty, by the way, and she's kickass)," March tries to figure out why what is supposed to be a celebratory post keeps coming out as an angry screed. The reason is easy to discern: 

To say "Romance Matters," makes me feel like I'm acknowledging and accepting that romance is somehow different from any other genre and while we don't have to say that Mystery Matters or Thrillers Matter or Literary Fiction Matters, we do have to say out loud that Romance Matters, because somewhere deep down, we've internalized and accepted this nonsense that, by default, it doesn't.  And then there's the idea that it doesn't matter because its written predominantly by women, predominantly for women, and women are made to feel like we don't matter because misogyny is woven into the damn fabric of our culture...

Well, hell. I'm on the horse again.

Lucy March, you've just risen to the top of my To-Read pile. And I'd be happy to offer a carrot to Betty, any time you'd care to bring her by...

As of the writing of my post, we're on day 21 of Read-A-Romance Month. And only three authors have used the "f" word in their essays. These posts are making me wonder, how many romance novelists openly claim a feminist identity? And do those who claim the mantle of feminism write books with more feminist sensibilities than writers who don't? Are writers who write for the big NYC publishers (authors selected to participate seem to be primarily those who write for the web site's sponsoring publishers) less likely to claim feminist leanings than those who don't? If so, why might that be?

Photo credits:

Read-A-Romance Month

The power and limits of labels: Bill Konigsberg's OPENLY STRAIGHT

When I was in the tenth grade, my family moved from a small suburban Connecticut town to an even smaller city in Vermont. Such a move gave me the opportunity many teens long for—a chance to reinvent myself, unburdened by friends and classmates' prior assumptions about who I was or what I could be or do. In Connecticut, I'd always been labeled one of the "smart" kids; in our progressive, but tracked-by-ability school system, everyone knew which students had scored high on standardized tests, and which ones didn't (classes were numbered; those ending in 9 or 7 were for the bright kids, those ending in 1 or 3 for the not so academically-attuned). I took Orchestra, which meant I couldn't take Acting (the two classes were scheduled opposite each other). Our school was also too large for the uncoordinated and unskilled such as myself to participate in competitive sports. But when I moved to Vermont, I got the chance to strut my stuff on stage, to play Varsity basketball (I scored 2 points all season, but had a lot of fun in spite of my lack of production), and to experiment with other identities that my previous reputation as a brainiac had made it far more difficult to try on while I lived in Connecticut.

In the early 1980's, a do-over of my sexuality was not an experiment I considered. But it's precisely the possibility of such a do-over that draws Seamus Raphael Goldberg, the first-person narrator of the truly funny YA novel Openly Straight, to transfer for his junior year, from a liberal co-ed public Boulder high school to a small private all-boys Massachusetts prep school. Back in Colorado, Rafe leaves behind his ultra-liberal parents, his gal pal Claire Olivia, and, best of all, he thinks, his identity as openly gay. Out since eighth grade, Rafe is tired of being seen only as "gay," frustrated that other aspects of who he is get swallowed up by a label that only captures one part of his identity. He can't partake of the easy male camaraderie other boys take for granted; he's frustrated by the way his mom takes on queerness as her own personal cause (joining and becoming president of the local PFLAG chapter, bringing home stacks of books about homosexuality for him to read); he's angry that he always stands out, always has "different" metaphorically pasted across his back, a "kick-me" sign he's supposed to be proud of but instead just finds a deadening burden.

The above list may make Rafe sound like an ungrateful whiner, but Konigsburg's gifts as a writer create a narrator who is anything but. Between Rafe's narration of his present-day life at Natick and his creative writing assignments detailing "A History of Rafe," short pieces narrating events from his Boulder days that made him long for a less openly-gay public identity, Rafe comes alive as funny and thoughtful, confused and willfully ignorant, self-reflective and self-absorbed by turns, the perfect guide to this exploration about what really constitutes a person's sense of self.

After instituting his own "don't ask, don't tell" policy at Natick, Rafe gets to experience the thrill of being "mainstream," "acceptable," not automatically lumped in with the geeks and dorks and other clearly "different" kids as he was back in Colorado. The day he arrives, Rafe takes part in a pick-up football game and gets to experience the euphoria of group sports competition; later, he joins the soccer team and becomes part of the jock crowd; he even gets to sit with the "top of the food chain" at lunch, and enjoys cracking them up with his jokes. Not everything is about his sexuality, Rafe asserts:

...knowing a person is about more than knowing whom they fantasize about. That's the small stuff, actually. The big stuff is lying next to a guy on the floor and locking eyes and having deep conversations about philosophy. The big stuff is letting a friend know your hopes and your fears and not having to make a joke about it. That's what matters. (180-81)

Yet as the term progresses, Rafe finds himself drawn as much, if not more, toward the awkward and disaffected at Natick as toward the typical jock boys in the sporty crowd: his "ironic survivalist" roommate, Albie; Albie's openly gay best friend, Toby; and his fellow jock, quiet, kind, but guarded Ben. As Rafe's feelings for Ben grow beyond casual friendship, and Ben's for Rafe seem to, as well, Rafe becomes increasingly reluctant to face the truth that his sexuality may just be one of the "big things" about which a real friend has a right to know.

Teachers of my generation, those with a commitment to social justice, can often find the reluctance of younger students to acknowledge the racism, sexism, and heterosexism that still surrounds us frustrating, even bewildering. Reading Openly Straight helped me to understand a bit better where this reluctance stems from, and how my own attempts to counter it might just be compounding the problem. For example, after Rafe tells his parents about his sexuality:

   Suddenly there were six books I had to read about what it's like to be gay. I said to her, "Mom, can't I just be gay, and not read about it?" But she explained—and Dad backed her up—that we need to know history. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it, blah blah blah.

     You know how you get the urge to clean your room, and it's no big deal? But when your mom tells you that you have to clean your room, you don't want to? That's me, anyway. So maybe if I had found all this stuff on my own, I would have really enjoyed learning about it. But instead, I got a pile of books from Mom, and now it was like I had gay homework from my mother. I was like, Thanks for making this exciting new thing a chore, Mom. Awesome.

I think I'll still be offering the books (including Openly Straight), Rafe's frustrations notwithstanding. But I will have a little more patience when my offer is met with a groan or a grimace, keeping in mind Rafe and the time and space he needed to come to terms with the more difficult, even painful, aspects of embracing and accepting a "different" identity. And perhaps, after reading Rafe's story, teen readers will cut us older ones a bit of slack when we jump on the "let's celebrate difference" bandwagon, calling embarrassing attention to aspects of their identities that they're still learning to wear with pride.


Photo credits:
Gay Candy poster: Zazzle.com
Rainbow books: Salon.com

Bill Konigsberg

Openly Straight

Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, 2013

Mid Adult Romance?

A recent post by S. L. Scott on the Huff Post Books blog, discussing the rising popularity of the "Mid Adult" book—genre books with "characters that range from the ages of 35 to late 40s"—surprised me, because I'd been considering writing my own blog post about how few genre romances feature protagonists of a certain age. The Old Skool romance paradigm, matching a-30ish hero with a late teen heroine has given way in recent years to protagonists of more comparable ages, but still, the majority of romance lovers could hardly be said to be middle aged. The three books that Scott cites as examples of this new trend—Gillian Flynn's Girl Gone, Daisy Prescott's Geoducks are for Lovers, and Helen Fielding's Mad About the Boy—can all be categorized as romances, although Girl Gone's primary genre affiliation is suspense/thriller, and Mad's (if it is anything like the earlier Bridget Jones books) is chick-lit. But do three books make a trend?

Despite the fact that, being myself a gal of a certain age, I'd appreciate seeing more middle aged protagonists in my romances, I can see quite a few reasons why the genre is less than welcoming to such older lovers. First, as my spouse pointed out when I was bemoaning the prevalence of the youthful in romance, we've all been young once. Older folks can remember, and thus presumably relate to, love at a younger age, but the opposite is not true for younger readers. In a genre focused so much on "relateability" (oh, how I dislike this coinage!), on assuming that a reader must closely identify with its protagonists, the market for older heroes and heroines will necessarily be smaller than that for younger lovers. Perhaps the splintering of the market in the wake of romance's current self-publishing tsunami will make books with smaller audiences more economically feasible, but in the past, few traditional publishers could justify printing a genre romance with an in-built limited readership.

Not the image I was looking for when
I did a Google search for
"middle age romance"

Older lovers also fly in the face of the "one true love" paradigm that most genre romance still holds close to its heart. If you've made it to 35 or older and still haven't found that one true love, that's a pretty sad statement about the state of the world, a sadness that romance isn't likely to want to acknowledge. Or if you have, but then lost it (except through death—widows and widowers still make for good romance protags), you're flying in the face of the central hope that romance offers—that finding true love = living, and loving, happily ever after. In the world of romance, if a breakup or divorce, rather than death, ended a romance, then you must not really have found true love, putting us back at problem 1 (the bummer of not finding true love before age 35).

Are there other reasons you can think of why "Mid Adult" romance is unlikely to flourish? Or, if you're of a more hopeful turn of mind, reasons why we really might be on the cusp of a flowering of forty-something lovers in our romance reading?

Do you have any favorite romances that feature not just one, but two older protagonists?




Photo credits:
Medieval romance: GGGA English

Self-Sacrifice and the Single Man: Mary Ann Rivers' THE STORY GUY

At the climax of many a romance novel, the hero and heroine's exchange of "I love you"s is often accompanied by language of wholeness or completeness. "You're everything to me," says the heroine; "All I see is you," responds the hero. Part of the fantasy of the romance is this suggestion that hero and heroine are sufficient unto themselves, everything and all to one another, regardless of any job commitments, friendships, or previous family ties either one may have had before the start of their relationship. Such an inward focus can have the unfortunate result of suggesting that a person with colleagues, friends, or relatives who demand anything substantial in the way of time or energy is simply not a likely candidate for true love in romancelandia.

But aren't the busy and the burdened worthy of romance, too? Especially those who choose (or are forced) to spend the bulk of their days and nights sacrificing themselves for others?

I will meet you on Wednesdays at noon in Celebration Park. Kissing only. I won't touch you below the shoulders. You can touch me anywhere. No dating, no hookups. I will meet with you for as long as you meet me, so if you miss a Wednesday, we part as strangers. No picture necessary, we can settle details via IM. Reply back with "Wednesdays Only" in the subject line.

Thirty-something librarian Carrie (librariansdeweyitbetter@villagemail.com) has a thing for the personal ads posted by men in the online Metrolink newspaper. Reading them not as a "source of entertainment at the expense of the lovelorn" but "the way I might ritually eat a favorite candy bar," Carrie takes pleasure in what appears to be "what men might really be thinking and never say. They yell and cry and woo and break themselves open before their post slips off the page." They're especially appealing during Carrie's current "Lady of a Certain Age funk," brought on by her realization that she really doesn't want to go on yet another vacation with her parents.

But Carrie hasn't ever answered one of the ads until the above words (as well as the accompanying photograph of a beautiful man with "completely closed" body language) capture not only her imagination, but intrigue her libido. Frustrated with her overly safe life, Carrie impulsively responds, reassured by the knowledge that her email will likely be lost amidst the dozens of other replies cluttering Wednesdays Only-man's in-box. But it's Carrie whom he contacts. And it's Carrie who agrees to meet, for "Kissing only," wondering all the while what this contained, private man really needs.

Carrie wants to know even more after she meets Brian on their first Wednesday, which begins awkwardly but develops into kissing far more intense than either had expected. Yet when Carrie begins to broach the idea of not waiting another week to meet again, Brian immediately closes down. Even after further Wednesday meetings, IM chats, and even a steamy bout of phone sex, Brian won't reveal why "it's complicated," why he "can't be lucky, can't ask for anything" from her, even though it's obvious that their attraction is more than kiss-deep.

"What am I doing with this man who can't make himself available to me?" Carrie wonders, even while she "can't help but think I might be able to pick his locks. Come across his latch.... Coax him from the center of his labyrinth." But even when the knife-edge upon which Brian has been dancing starts to slip, slicing open his tightly-held secrets, the revelations do little to help. For it's not that Brian doesn't want to be available, but that something else demands his time, his thoughts, his emotional energy. Something "so sad it called out over all the other sad men's voices in the city's most desperate corner." And if he turns away from his responsibilities for any more than a Wednesday lunchtime, Brian fears he'll never come back.

As a feminist literary critic, I often use this little trick: switch the genders of the main characters, and see if the story still makes sense. If not, said text is often a sexist one. Or at least a text that mirrors the sexism of the larger culture in which it was produced. Brian's story would still make sense if Brian were Brianna, but would it tug on our heartstrings in the same way? Would the caretaking burdens that Brian shoulders be so moving, so worth our admiration, if Brian were a woman? Would readers feel sympathy if a Brianna, not a Brian, expressed the same frustration and anger at the life-draining deal fate has dealt her?

Perhaps not. But Rivers' novella still feels anything but sexist. By upholding a man who embodies not the usual competencies of the romance alpha male, but rather those more commonly found in a stereotypical female, as hero-worthy, Rivers expands the possibilities of romance masculinity far beyond its typically narrow borders. That The Story Guy also asks readers to consider where to draw the line between self-sacrifice and self-abnegation, and does so in prose far more beautifully-honed than is typically found in genre romance, makes for a reading experience far more moving that that offered by most first-time authors. I'm looking forward to reading more from such a promising writer.



Photo/Illustration credits:
Personal ad heart: Funny Craigslist Ads
Heart and key: SpectacularStuff on etsy

Mary Ann Rivers, The Story Guy

Random Love Inspired, 2013

Happy Birthday to RNFF!

Yes, it's a bit early to be celebrating the birthday of the Romance Novels for Feminists blog. After all, its first post went up in September of 2012, and it's only the 2nd of August now. Yet with the blog having recently reached the 50,000 hits mark, it feels appropriate to sit back and raise a glass in tribute to the community of readers that RNFF has fostered. Thanks to everyone who has visited the site, and especially to those who have taken time out of their busy schedules to post their ideas, arguments, and book recommendations. I look forward with such anticipation every day to the messages in my in-box, telling me that someone has posted a comment on the blog.

One of the main reasons I began writing RNFF last fall was to reach out to readers, writers, and literary critics, hoping to start a dialogue with others who are committed both to feminist principles and to the genre of romance. It's been a welcome and quite lovely surprise to discover that there are so many of us out there, all invested in the possibilities of romance fiction, yet not willing to settle for books that shortchange us as women. I'm looking forward to the wonderful books, and intriguing conversations, that RNFF's second year will bring.

I'll be taking a one-week break from posting, but will be back on August 13th, ready to share more opinions and ideas about feminism and romance novels. In the meantime, I'd love to know what topics you'd be interested in seeing discussed here in future...

Photo credit:
Birthday cake: Romance & You

The Gold Rush of Self-Publishing?

This year, for the first time, the national conference of the Romance Writers of America featured a series of workshops devoted to the craft and logistics of self-publishing. Courtney Milan and other romance authors who had originally been published by traditional publishers spoke about the pleasures, both intellectual and financial, of controlling all aspects of a book's production after switching over to self-publishing. Authors such as Liliana Hart, who had experienced break-out success with nary a nod from a traditional publisher, described how they had built their careers, and their fan bases, from the ground up. Dorien Kelly and other long-time writers spoke about hybrid careers, and in particular about reaping new income by self-publishing backlist titles long ignored by their print publishers. Chairs were often at a premium at the Self-Publishing track workshops, published and potential authors alike eager to learn all they could about a publishing process that only two or three years ago, most would have turned away from with scorn, deeming it appropriate only for writers not good enough to make the cut with an agent or an editor at a big 6 publishing house.

The majority of speakers I heard tended to focus on self-publishing's benefits. Authors no longer need rely on middlemen to choose their cover designs, to promote their new titles, to communicate with booksellers and readers. Nor did they have to restrict their subject-matter, or self-censor, in order to please editors and marketing departments eager to make their books (i.e., their products) palatable to the widest readership possible. No more need to abide by the often arbitrary rules about what "the romance reader" likes or will tolerate, as if the millions of romance readers all share exactly the same tastes. No more accepting contracts heavily weighted in favor of publishers, or dealing with unscrupulous or unsavvy agents. No more being treated as if writers are the supplicants, publishers the ones doing them a favor by deigning to print their books. Most of the upsides of self-publishing, focused as they are on empowering (primarily female) writers, warm a feminist's heart.

Perhaps I am just by nature a contrarian, though, because I found myself suppressing the urge to caution writers about hopping too eagerly on the self-publishing bandwagon, to examine the process and its claims more critically, lest self-empowerment turn too quickly to self-delusion or disillusionment. Very few workshop leaders discussed the downsides of self-publishing. Milan noted that not everyone has the skills to self-publish, the organizational mind-set or the desire for control. Hart discussed the need to hold off on self-publishing until you have at least three to five books ready to launch, and told audience members to be prepared to offer something new (novel, novella, or short story) at least every month to sixty days, otherwise one's rankings on the all-important amazon.com sales charts would quickly sink. No one mentioned whether a book written and published in a month could match the quality of one over which a writer worked and polished for many months (or even, possibly a year!). Will self-publishing push readers even further into accepting quantity instead of quality?

The new closer relationship readers expect from authors—posting on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites not just about their books, but about their daily lives—is even more vital for the selfpublished author. With no publisher to rely on to get a book into stores, or into the hands of reviewers, self-published authors need to cultivate readers directly. As agent Steve Axelrod noted in an interview for the Popular Romance Project, such cultivation requires a completely different skill set than the one required for writing compelling prose.

The personal sharing social media demands may also give many writers pause. Do your children, your parents, your significant other really want the world at large to know about their hobbies, their likes and dislikes, their foibles? And how much time are you willing to spend cultivating those readers, as opposed to actually writing your stories?

Are you willing to be a "brand" rather than a writer? For I heard the word "brand" far more often than the word "book."

Money, as well as privacy, may be a stumbling block, especially for previously unpublished writers. The initial start-up costs required to produce a professional-quality book might seem small for authors already making a living from their writing, but how many writers will shell out several thousand dollars, hiring editors, copyeditors, cover designers, and promotional experts, only to find that their returns do not come close to recouping the initial expense?

  

I can't help but be reminded of the 1849 Gold Rush. So many men left everything behind to fly to California in the hopes of striking it rich. Yet the ones who benefitted the most were not the prospectors, but the ones providing services and equipment to them: the barkeeps and cooks, the storekeepers and laundry owners, the overall makers and the whoremasters. Will it be the freelance editors, book designers, file converters, and authors of books about self-publishing (271 at last count listed on amazon.com, 564 on Goodreads) who end up earning the most from the self-publishing boom? And will it be the female romance authors, rather than male prospectors, who are left with so little to show for their leap of faith into the unknown?

As a reader and a reviewer, I also wonder who will serve as the gatekeepers if and when traditional publishers disappear? If my tastes do not match those of the "average" reader, will I be able to find other sources besides popularity charts to guide my way through the deluge of self-published works likely to flood the market in the coming months and years?

So, am I being too much of a Negative Nellie here? What do you think are the potential up-sides of self-publishing, for romance authors? For their readers? What pitfalls do you see?


Photo/Illustration credits:
Publisher cartoon: David Sipress, The New Yorker
Self-publishing time chart: Ryan Gielen, AppNewser

Rediscovering the Romance in the Best Years of Our Lives: Laura Florand's TURNING UP THE HEAT and Ruthie Knox's MAKING IT LAST

In one of the most moving scenes in the 1946 Academy Award-winning film The Best Years of Our Lives, an account of three World War II veterans adjusting to civilian life, young Peggy Stephenson tries to explain to her parents why she's going to break up the marriage of the man with whom she's fallen in love. When father Al questions her decision, Penny exclaims,

You've forgotten what it's like to be in love.... It's just that everything has always been so perfect for you.You loved each other, and you got married in a big church, and you had a honeymoon in the south of France, and you never had any trouble of any kind. So how can you possibly understand how it is with Fred and me?

The camera, which had been shooting over the shoulders of of the Stephenson parents to Peggy sitting on the bed in their bedroom, cuts to a half-shot of Al and Milly, wife seated, husband standing by her side. The two look into each other's eyes, wry, pained, yet loving expressions on their faces. Finally Milly, squeezing tight to her husband's hand, responds:

Frederic March, Myrna Loy, and Teresa Wright
in The Best Years of Our Lives

We never had any trouble? How many times have I told you I hated you, and believed it in my heart? How many times have you said you're sick and tired of me? That we were all washed up? How many times have we had to fall in love all over again?

This central truth of marriage—that "I do" is not the end, but just the beginning, the verbal symbol of a commitment to keep fighting to rediscover the person you will fall in and out of love with many times over the course of your life—is one rarely addressed by contemporary media, especially contemporary romance. Married couples rarely serve as the protagonists in love stories; once mutual declarations of "I love you" (or, more rarely these days, wedding rings) have been exchanged, the romance novel comes to an end, implying that the relationship built within its pages, and the love upon which said love relies, will inevitably last into the future.

That's why I was so excited to discover not just one, but two novellas published this year that focus on married lovers who have grown estranged and who have to find their way back to one another through the minefields of their own misbeliefs, resentments, and deep vulnerabilities. Neither Daniel and Léa Laurier (of Laura Florand's Turning Up the Heat) nor Amber and Tony Mazzaro (of Ruthie Knox's Making It Last) are officially estranged; each couple is still married, still living together. Neither relationship has floundered under the weight of major disagreements or bitterly opposed goals. And neither husband nor wives have stopped loving each other—they think. Or hope. Yet each has lost the other in some way, has lost the connection—emotional as well as sexual—that initially led them to utter those life-changing words, "I do."

Tahiti, where you can see the fish right beneath your floor

Both authors use the device of a vacation—an escape from the mind-dulling everyday routine—to jolt their married lovers out of their passive acceptance of the unfulfilling state of their marriages. Daniel returns home from yet another consulting gig to find Léa gone, fled to Tahiti, while Tony urges Amber to remain behind, free of both him and their three demanding children, at the end of their less-than-relaxing Jamaican family holiday. Both women have spent years catering to the needs of their families (Amber to said children and to her extended family, Léa to her younger siblings, orphaned when she was only eighteen), but suddenly find themselves at a crossroads when the children move on to school or their own adult lives. With the constant press of fulfilling others' demands no longer distracting them from their own selves, each wonders if she has any self left, any desire of her own—even a desire for her own husband. "Back when she'd met Tony, [Amber]'d been so inexperienced that his cock had seemed like this miraculous thing, but lately she just wanted every penis in the house put away," Amber reflects when Tony unexpectedly returns to Jamaica, realizing that leaving her alone is not enough to ensure she comes back.

What, no kids?

Tony has long recognized that Amber has been slipping away, and that his long work hours are partially to blame. But with the poor economy endangering his business, their very home, he can see no way to fix their problems. Workaholic Daniel is more clueless than Tony, too caught up in his own insecurities to see Léa's. But he's just as afraid as Tony is that his wife's abrupt departure means she's going to leave him. Both men pray that reigniting their sexual chemistry will solve their marital woes, but both husbands and wives need to recognize that a bout of sex, no matter how mind-blowing, cannot change the fundamental patterns of the lives they've chosen, patterns that have made them all deeply unhappy.

Each couple works to overcome their estrangement in different ways. Yet both solutions involve finding meaningful pursuits separate from their families for the two wives; discovering the strength to speak about shameful, embarrassing, guilty emotions; and choosing to recommit to each other, just as they did when they first uttered their wedding vows. In other words, each couple has to fall in love all over again, not only with each other, but with their best selves.

Knox and Florand wrote novellas, not novels, about the already-married. In Knox's case, at least, few people expressed enthusiasm about a full-length romance about a married couple. I hope RNFF readers will go out and support these two works, and their authors, and send a message to publishers and other romance writers that such stories are not only needed, but truly welcome.

This post is dedicated to my cousin Nicole, who will be saying her own "I do" for the first time this weekend.

Photo credits:
Tahiti: Romance Travel Concierge
Jamaica: Travel By Darcy

Laura Florand, Turning Up the Heat.

AOS Publishing 2012. 

Ruthie Knox, Making It Last. Loveswept, 2013.