A friend recently sent me a YouTube series of a reader/reviewer absolutely sending up one of Colleen Hoover’s books. I highly enjoyed the series, and it further cemented my decision to never, ever, ever touch a book by Hoover.At the tale end of the series, the reviewer made jokes about how the novel’s heroine seemed to be running away from the male lead. Our intrepid protagonist left her...
Scary Monsters and Superfreaks: Monsters in Romance
The idea that people are really into getting freaky with eldritch horrors is not news to me. I’ve been kicking around in anime fandoms, and we all know that tentacles are going to come up at some point. There’s also, of course, Rule 34, which means that if it exists, there will be porn of it on the internet.It just seems that lately, that kind of fantasy is maybe a bit more … mainstream. You know...
Payment Processors vs Platforms: A Worrying Trend
Payment processors are trying to dictate what's available for sale on certain platforms. That should worry us.
Why People Hate the Surprise Pregnancy Trope So Much
The surprise pregnancy trope gets a lot of hate from romance readers. What is it about this trope that sets us off?
The Straights Can Pry Omegaverse from My Cold, Dead Hands
Recently, a social media site tried to entice me to buy a cishet OV romance novel. It was ... unhinged, to say the least.
Do Omegaverse Dynamics Promote Toxic Relationships?
“Oh, here we go again …” (Liza Summer / Pexels.com) Recently, I was reminded of a screencap of a conversation that supposedly happened. When I saw it, all I could think was ah, the straights got a hold of the omegaverse. In this screencap, the texter was discussing their partner’s admission that they liked and read omegaverse fiction. The texter was sending a lengthy rumination...
Why Are Readers Demanding Less Spicy Reads?
Or Are They? I recently saw a post that commented on trends in the publishing industry. One of them was that readers seem to be shifting away from so-called spicy reads. (Tom Swinnen / Pexels.com) The post gave some good reasons that this shift might be happening—but I think there’s likely more to the story than meets the eye. TikTok Ramped Up and Ruined “Spice” The major reason this post gave...
Romance Novels as Resistance
We’re clearly in a hyper-conservative backlash against what has been billed progressive politics. In the US, we’ve seen attacks against trans people and queer people more broadly, against mixed-race couples, against women’s rights—and it’s getting worse. We’re seeing people pushing to get rid of not only abortion but access to birth control. We’re seeing the curtailing of internet access to not...
Target: Romance Novels
A lot has happened since this blog was last regularly active. I had a baby. My father passed away. The United States of America voted in the Republican candidate for a second term. Plenty of people are legitimately concerned for a wide variety of reasons. (Kaboompics .com / Pexels.com) As a queer person, a queer writer, and a romance novelist, I can see there’s a lot to be worried about. Even...
Is the Omegaverse Problematic?
By now, almost everyone and their mother has heard about the omegaverse. If you didn’t discover “wolf-kink porn” through the copyright debacle a few years ago, you might have heard of it when AIs seemed to devolve into writing a/b/o fics. That loaned support to the idea that AI had been trained on stolen fanfic—among other stories. (Ron Lach / Pexels.com) Whether you’re brand new to omegaverse or...
