There have been several romance novels that featured professional athletes.  True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson featured professional hockey players.  Susan Elizabeth Phillips centered her book Natural Born Charmer on a football star.  Mills and Boon did an entire series on Polo Players and a Harlequin series featured NASCAR race car drivers.  One can certainly see the allure of featuring tall, big, physically fit men as heroes.   So why it is that no one’s done a series on baseball players?

I’ll tell you why – it’s because they spit.  You read right, they commit the one heinous offence that both Marisa and I find beyond reprehensible.  Might I also state, that you never see women spit.  Men spit on the street all the time.  Most women I know would rather…

Under the name J.D. Robb, Nora Roberts has penned 29 books in her “In Death Series.” Each author has a different approach to writing a series and here’s what she has to say about how she approaches the story arc.

There’s a controversy brewing over a new Young Adult  book about to be released in the US entitled “Liar.”  The book, written by Australian author Justine Larbalestier is about a black teenager named Micah.  However, the cover art, beautiful as it is, is of a white girl with long straight hair. The cover art bears no resemblance to the story at all.  While ‘investigating’ this controversy – I wondered if we’re cultivating racism in the way we sell and market books?

The author states in her blog, I never wanted a girl’s face on the cover. Micah’s identity is unstable. She spends the book telling different version of herself. I wanted readers to be free to imagine her as they wanted.

But the art department at Bloomsbury obviously felt differently when they…

Romance novels don’t seem to embrace the plus size woman.  I wonder why that is?  Recently television has been making a statement featuring woman with ample curves in leading roles.  “Ugly Betty” is not a size two, yet people sit on their couches every week rooting for her.  Lifetime just premiered their new series “Drop Dead Diva,” the story of an air head model who dies and finds herself in the body of a very smart, workaholic, overweight lawyer.  She was once thin and beautiful and now she’s not.  Oxygen had “Mo’Nique’s F.A.T. Chance,” a plus-size pageant where women of substance strutted their stuff to be crowned “Miss Fabulous And Thick.”  And FOX will soon debut their version of “The Bachelor” featuring plus sizes everywhere, when their bachelor realizes with…

We took a poll last week, and asked what you’d like to see more of in romance.  The choices were, paranormal, contemporary, historical, time travel and western.  Paranormal received the most votes – in fact, 37% of you said that’s what you’d like to see more of.

Personally, I thought that well had run a little dry– I’m just saying.  Imagine my surprise when it would appear that many romance readers can’t get enough.
So tell me, why is it you want more paranormal.  What is it about this sub-genre that has got you hooked?

Here is Entertainment Weekly’s list of the top 25 romantic movies for the last 25 years.  I’ve copied word for word their blurb of the movie and why they think it’s romantic.  I then added my own viewpoint.  What do you think?

25. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991)

Perhaps Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s Oscar-winning lyrics say it best: ”Tale as old as time/Song as old as rhyme/Beauty and the Beast.” Walt Disney turned animated films on their ears with this vibrant and swoony retelling of the timeless fairy tale about a pretty girl who shuns outward appearances in favor of inner substance (found within her brutish captor). Still the first, and only, animated film to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award.

Maria says:  Terrific soundtrack, beautiful animation, and a wonderful…