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Beyond Heaving Bosoms,
“If Roarke only did one thing to make me love him, it would be how he holds Eve after she has a nightmare. Eve will take solace in his arms for just the bare minimum of time, until she is just barely under control, and then she pulls away. But Roarke doesn’t let her go! He continues to hold on to Eve until she is calm, but also until he himself is calm. He absolutely, 100 percent needs Eve; without her, he is empty.”
The reformed man is seductive, but only when the man makes the choice to change for his love,
Lord of Scoundrels By Loretta Chase
Adult Dain is what he is because Proto-Dain’s gentler impulses were hammered out of him.
a sense of humor, and because he’s funny without necessarily meaning to be.
we want to think that we can tame a bad boy.”
Many romance characters are recovering from difficult or even deadly relationships with people who were abusive, sneaky, or just neglectful.
want a guy who will drive me to work when the roads are icy and wash the dishes—partnership and small care-taking—and still think that spontaneous sexoring on the stairs is a really good idea.”
finding a man who in one key way is the opposite of a preferred type
There’s one important thing for heroes to work for me both in books and in real life, and that’s understanding that they were wrong and trying to make it right.
he is the RIGHT man and the man that will make THAT heroine happiest.
“The hero is not perfect for every or any woman out there; he is perfect for that specific heroine. I think it makes the reader have more hope for her own life or own relationship…
TRAITS OF AN IDEAL ROMANCE CHARACTER* • respect • honesty • compassion • honor • courage • intelligence • sense of humor
the individual must be complete before pairing up with someone else:
The Barefoot Princess
If I read a scene with the hero and heroine laughing together, then I feel much more confident about their HEA.”
want the heroes to love the heroines for a core part of their personalities.
Sex never solves anything in a romance novel—if anything, it makes things more complicated.
“there is a feedback relationship in most couples between happiness and having sex. Happy couples have more sex, and the more sex a couple has, the happier they report being.”
The requirement is intimacy: “Keep in mind that sex is only one form of intimacy, and that some couples are fairly happy (and intimate) even without sex.”
Romance heroines are usually on journeys of self-discovery, including and not excluding sexual self-discovery.
“One of the most important things romance novels do is create a feeling of healthy desire.
while I didn’t want a man to love me for my body, I wanted to experience a man loving my body.
“It’s also fun when the heroine realizes that she’s sexy.
Romance and erotica aren’t as good as porn for introducing positions or outfits, but they’re much better than porn for role-play or toy suggestions and introducing kinkier subjects.”
Victoria Dahl’s contemporary romance Talk Me Down,
Lorelei James’s Rough Riders series
(Catherine Coulter, Midsummer Magic)
amazing romance is often created when the two people aren’t sure they like each other that much, but get stuck together
romances as a lesson in speaking up, and not avoiding the scary, difficult, awkward conversation,
romance novels are valuable not just for the romantic relationship, but for the value that they place on community and friendship and belonging.”
a great romance is that it offers hope for overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles.
Captive of Sin,
In order to be the hero of your own life, you have to decide what you want first.
you have to ask for what you want, or you’ll never get it
think of the care and feeding of your relationships as “courtship,” only without that pesky insecurity of not knowing if the person feels the same way about you.
remember that courtship is the act of trying to persuade someone to choose you—by demonstrating that you’ve chosen them.
To earn their happily-ever-after, they have to learn to embrace their newfound love, flaws and all. 2. They must come to understand that people are the sum of all their past experiences, both positive and negative. 3. They must mature enough to surrender the “me” to become the “we.” 4. And they must endure enough of the “worse” during the course of the book to appreciate the “better” to come.
she sees the happily-ever-after as accepting imperfections, both in one’s self and in someone else:
the hero/heroine challenges the other person in some fundamental way.
Concentrating on the positive, on the good in life, and finding a way to get there makes for good relationships and a successful life.”
They taught me that the relationship, the ‘us,’ is paramount over the ‘you and me.’
DON’T TAKE PEOPLE FOR GRANTED
Acknowledge the people you like. Merely going through the motions of your routine does nothing to communicate to others how you think of them.
I don’t hang up the phone with my husband without telling him I love him, even when I know he can’t say it back to me.
The most important relationship you might have is indeed with yourself, but all that self-love can get lonely and unsatisfying if you don’t also know how to communicate to someone else how valuable they are to you.
I loved telling stories, because they took me away from the world, and, most importantly, because I wanted to give other people that needed it a safe place to go.
You should be able to reveal your true self to the person who loves you, and they’ll love you exactly as you are.
Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels.
