Contemporary Romance

I have written 30 novels. Three of them are contemporary romances. Considering how popular contemporary romances are, that's not a good ratio. Seriously. What was I thinking? Let's go on a stroll down memory lane to see what I have been writing.

8 - I have written eight science fiction novels. Eight.

8 - I have written eight urban fantasy novels. Eight.

5 - I have written five fantasy novels.

3 - Three contemporary romances.

3 - Historical romances.

2 - Horror.

1 - Action/adventure.

Now, the first 12 books I wrote are not to see the light of day. They are old and sucky. I was a crappy novelist when I wrote them. They don't deserve to be forgotten as part of my journey as a novelist, but only books fourteen through twenty-eight are published and available in print, ebook, and audiobook. I also have a few books in the works that haven't reached their full publishing potential. Doing that drops my number of contemporary romance novels to two. Let's talk about them.

Whenever You Want

Is a sweet little PG-rated romance about an escort named Tina who doesn't work as an escort for very long, but she works New Year's Eve and meets a handsome stranger who she has to kiss at the end of the night. She quits working as an escort almost immediately, but she had this shockingly romantic night. She took the job as an escort to help pay for college. When she graduates, she gets a job working for a PR rep and TA-DA... It's the same guy from New Year's Eve. He doesn't recognize her because she was wearing a wig, had no glasses, and went by a different name, but...

I think you can all tell where I'm going with this. It was a cute book, and it has earned me more money and more publishing deals than all my other books combined. It is super fun. Except, I wrote it when I was very sick, and all I wanted was happy stuff around me. I don't think I can write something like that again.

If I Tie U Down

Is about a prankster named Shannon, who is trying to help her friend get a record deal. They hatch this dumb plan to kidnap a producer from a record label at fake gunpoint. It doesn't work out because they kidnap the wrong guy. When the women realize their mistake, they have a fight, and the songstress whacks Shannon over the head with a brick. Shannon is out like a light. The woman holding the brick starts freaking out, but the guy they kidnapped, Fletch, is not freaking out. He's calm. The thing is that he knows who Shannon is, and he's cranky with her for having dumped his cousin. He convinces the singer to leave Shannon handcuffed to him in exchange for all the money in his wallet. She's desperate enough to ditch Shannon and take the money. When Shannon wakes up, she's in for a world of hurt, as Fletch is going to make sure she knows how awful she is for breaking up with his cousin.

This book bucks pretty much every romantic comedy/romance novel trope that there is.

For starters, Shannon is a beautiful woman who knows how to use her charm. There is no Cinderella transformation sequence in this book. She's so confident in her desirability that not everyone can make it through the first chapter. Her dialogue is too confident. They want a heroine who is unaware of how pretty she is. She needs to be a little stomped on and undervalued. I let Shannon take a brick to the head, but it wasn't enough to win everyone over. They want a bird with a broken wing, not a swan with thick eyelashes.

Secondly, Fletch is not romance novel material. He's not rich. He's a redhead with freckles. He's a drummer, and he's just a little too much like a man you could actually meet if you were walking around in the inner city after midnight. Romance readers do not want heroes who are something like real men. They hate real men the most. They want a fantasy: rich, dark, handsome, controlling, and all that stuff that looks great on a billionaire and bad on a dude that lives in a trailer park. Not that Fletch lives in a trailer park... I didn't go that far.

I'm so perverse that even writing that second-to-last sentence makes me want to go write something warped about a dude who lives in a trailer. *SMACK* I've got to snap out of it.

Back to the topic at hand, I also wrote four contemporary romantic shorts and released them all individually and then had them printed together in a single volume. Here's what I wrote and then what I learned:

Tiny Wishes

Is about two university students who end up living together. Our girl, Wyn, flips out because she thinks that Raif will fall in love with her if he merely lives with her. She doesn't want to be chosen as a love interest because of proximity. She decides to make a house rule that he isn't allowed to talk to her unless he does a task from inside a jar. She wants to make everything as hard as she can, but what will happen if he makes all her tiny wishes come true?

Born in January

Is about two teenagers, Annaliese and Trip, who decide to date behind her mother's back because her mother won't let her date until she has graduated from law school. They keep their romance a secret, and that's when the trouble begins.

The Land of Umbrellas

Is about Lindsay, who has decided to leave the world of acting behind to get a real job. She goes to Vancouver Island to help renovate a hotel where she's suddenly part of a love pentagon with two brothers and two very different blonde bombshells. Controlled chaos ensues.

Cut Like Glass

Is a story about a man who sends his limo driver to pick up his brother's girlfriend, only for him to pick up the wrong girl. Maisie was picked up accidentally because she had just suffered a head injury, and she was confused when she was asked who she was. Bart is standing in front of his mountainside mansion, looking at her fragile form in the back of the limo, wondering what he ought to do.

Now, which of these stories sounds the most appealing to you? If you chose Cut Like Glass, you are part of the majority. That book gets hit after hit and download after download. It is enormously popular. And I think the reason is two-fold. One is that it is told entirely from Bart's perspective. The second is that he is rich, and it is mentioned in the synopsis.

The second most popular is Born in January. I think the reason is that the synopsis focuses on secrets. People like uncovering secrets.

It's difficult to gauge the popularity of the other two. One was written quite a while ago and has had more time to accumulate hits.

So... if I'm going to write a contemporary romance novel, it needs to be about a rich man with a secret. But... what secret could he possibly have? That he has an extra wife chained up in the attic? He wants to chain our heroine up in the attic? He's a vampire? He's a werewolf?

Not to be too contrary, but doesn't each and every one of those things kill the genre? Don't those things turn the book into a thriller or a horror? Both? We're trying to write contemporary romance. Not only that, but my book His 16th Face is about a rich man with a secret. I worked on that book for eleven years. If given the same premise, I don't know what else I could do with that. As I said, his secret kills the genre. In my mention of my books above, I put His 16th Face in the urban fantasy slot.

So... a rich man with a secret. Okay... kiss that goodbye. A rich woman with a secret? Now I desperately want to write a book where our girl has a huge mansion and a man tied up in every room in the basement. She calls her mansion Tartarus and makes all the men miserable in different ways in each room. What does she do? How many floors does Tartarus have again? Okay... over 200. Let's go for the nine circles of Hell and call it Tartarus.

1. She makes one bake bread all day, every day. Don't worry about the excess bread. She has nine other dudes to feed. There won't be any leftovers.

2. She makes another one do designs on fake nails. If he gets them wrong, he has to wear them... on his toes.

3. She makes another photoshop all the ugly pictures of her that are posted on the internet. She's rich and famous, so there are a lot of them.

4. She makes the next one do all the beadwork on her latest dress.

5. Dude thought he just got out of beading, but the next room is sewing sequins. It's not even that she really wants to torture them at this point; she just has a lot of beading/sequin needs. She ends up liking the guys in those rooms the best. As the author, I could easily let this theme of sewing difficult/valuable parts of dresses get out of hand. Get another room for embroidery, and another one for crystals. We just need to leave this whole line of thought, or we'll turn it into a sweatshop.

6. Make chocolates? ... Never mind. I don't think I can think of enough

Bah... That's a terrible idea.

See? Contemporary romance is so hard for me... So hard.