Not like OTHER Romance authors...

Описание: Not like OTHER Romance authors...

Story time!

Harlequin launched in the 70's as the American imprint of UK publisher Mills & Boon, popularizing the Romance genre in the US market (if you want to know more about the history of what we now call the Romance genre, I highly recommend researching the work of Vivian Stephens!).

Ever since then, popular discourse around the genre has been stuck on a hamster wheel. It seems that every few years when the genre garners notice, the media will talk about how Romance has ✨changed✨ and is now feminist, empowering, egalitarian, subversive etc.

It's almost like the media is trying too hard to legitimize the genre.

Unfortunately, authors often fall into this trap, too (including myself before I started learning about the history of my genre). We say our books are ✨not like other Romance books✨.

Sure, our tastes and sensibilities as a culture have changed from that first batch of 1970's novels and we don't necessarily like everything we find in them now. And no, not every Romance novel will be for every Romance reader. There are plenty of Romance novels that are not for me, as much as I love the genre.

But Romance novels, just by being an art form made for women and primarily by women, are subversive by their very existence.

The Romance genre is perfectly valid, worthy of taking up shelf space, awards, and media notice, and we don't have to keep having this conversation. There's no reason to keep trying to pass some arbitrary moral test. .
.
✨Get 10% off your first order: https://hello.elisabethwheatley.com/w...