Revisitations
Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that always makes me nostalgic. Perhaps it’s all that turkey; perhaps it’s the family gathering together; perhaps it’s that extra day off to read lots of novels. Whatever the reason, as Thanksgiving day approaches, my thoughts turn lightly to romance novels past.
I have all sorts of first when it comes to romance novels. There’s my very first romance novel (Mary Lide’s “Ann of Cambray”), my very first Kathleen E. Woodiwiss (”A Rose in Winter”), and my very first family saga (Jude Deveraux’s “Velvet Series”). But all of those were as infatuations as compared to true love. When I think back upon the seminal moments in my romance reading career, the book that comes to mind is always Judith McNaught’s “Almost Heaven.”
I was twelve when I read “Almost Heaven,” and it changed the trajectory of my writing career. Before “Almost Heaven,” I read mostly medievals and those sweeping family sagas that were so popular in the eighties. I had visions of writing a thousand page epic based on my own family history, called “Griffenclau” (catchy, no?). And then came “Almost Heaven.” Suddenly, I was in a world of witty banter and ballrooms stuffed with hothouse flowers, heroines as naive as I was and dashing heroes who loved them for it. There was no going back. Despite spending years in grad school studying the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I write books set in the early nineteenth century– largely thanks to “Almost Heaven”. And my paradigm of romance will always be shaped by the relationship between Elizabeth and Ian.
Right now, I’m working on the fifth book of my Pink Carnation series, a book I think of as my “Almost Heaven” book, since the heroine, Charlotte, is based off, well, me. Me at sixteen or so, that is, back when I was more Almost Heaven-ish than I am now. But when I gave my little sister the first hundred pages of the manuscript, her verdict was that it was only half an “Almost Heaven”– the heroine was Judith McNaught-ish, but the hero wasn’t. And she’s right (my little sister has a very annoying habit of being right).
Naturally, this got me thinking– how much have heroes changed since my early days of romance reading? Have Julia Quinn heroes surplanted Judith McNaught heroes? Is it a matter of changing cultural mores? And has the old fashioned heroine (naive but plucky) held up any better than the old fashioned hero (tortured, enigmatic, and all powerful)?
I’d welcome any thoughts you might have on the changing nature of heroes and heroines. I’d also love to know, which was your defining romance novel?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Then I discovered Regencies, and that was it. LOL 
But I sure have plenty of non-Regency favorites. . . like Sandra Brown. 
