Why I Write Romance Novels

By Donna Fasano

I can’t tell you how many times over the course of my 20-plus year career as a published romance author I have been asked, “When are you going to write a real book? You know, a [insert genre of choice: mystery, historical, thriller, etc].” So I’d like to take this opportunity to tell readers why I write romance novels.
I suffered a lot of tragedy while I was growing up, the worst of which was the death of my mother just as I was entering my teens. I felt as though I went from 13 to 35 overnight, and when my friends were off having fun, I was cooking and cleaning and helping my little brother with his homework. Romance novels were an escape for me. The Wolf and the Dove, The Far Pavilions, Whitney My Love, Rebecca, The Thorne Birds…if the book featured one man and one woman falling in love, I read it! Romance novels offered me hope for a happy future filled with love (hokey, maybe, but I was a naïve teen). As a young wife and mother, I discovered Silhouette Romance Novels. These books were short and sweet and uplifting. Each and every story put a smile on my face, and the happily-ever-after endings always boosted my spirits. Are romance novels real? No. Does every real-life relationship end in HEA? Of course not. But if I wanted doom and gloom, I’d watch the evening news.
As an author, I can’t think of a better way to use my talent than to bring pure enjoyment to my readers. I tell people that I write cotton candy for the mind. Think about that. When you were a kid and you put a small cloud of that wispy confection on your tongue, what did you do? You smiled. And maybe you even laughed. That’s the reaction I’m going for with my short, upbeat stories. That’s why I write romance novels. So if you’re looking to get lost for a few hours in a fun, cheery story, I hope you’ll try one of my books.

~ ~ ~

Donna is a bestselling, award-winning author of over 30 novels that have sold over 3.6 million copies worldwide. You can find her on the web at www.DonnaFasano.com, or on Facebook  or Twitter.
 Her books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Sony, and Apple iBooks.

~  ~  ~

Exciting news! Donna has a new 3-book series available. The Single Daddy Club is about 3 buddies who have been friends since college and are now single and raising children. They vow to support one another…any way they can. (Of course, love will find each and every single dad before this series ends. They don't call it happily-ever-after for nuthin'!) Look for The Single Daddy Club in Amazon's Kindle Store, in the Nook Book Store, at Kobo Books, and on iTunes.

If you prefer to read your books in paperback, Donna has a brand new one available this month: Her Fake Romance. The female protagonist in this book is a caterer, and there are several delicious recipes included as bonus material.

If you prefer audio books, Donna has a brand new offering – her very first audio edition – The Merry-Go-Round, available at Audible.com.

Criticism and Writing

                       

"When it comes to reading, I love it. Giving or receiving criticism, constructive or otherwise? Not so much.

My main love is fiction - mainly romance novels. I do read other fiction as well, if I find something that just sounds too interesting to pass up.

After I read it, I give it a rating on Goodreads and you have the option to write a review. Most often, I pass up this option and simply star the book. The reason is...I am not sure what to put in the review and if I didn't like something, I find it difficult to tell the person why I didn't like it because it is often just the way I feel.

I don't feel that it is my place to tell people what is wrong with their writing. Sure, I could see informing the writer of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and basic information that is wrong that perhaps should not have been gotten wrong. Anything else and I feel like I am stepping on the person's view of the world - or even the world they made up, if that is what they are interested in.

Those romance novels I mentioned reading? I can't count how many times I've been made fun of for reading them. Tripe, ridiculous garbage, 'it is just porn for women except it's not images, it is words', 'romance novels are not real writing', etc. I've been asked why I don't go read something with more substance.

I instantly ask them...'Have you ever actually read a romance novel?' Better yet, have they ever tried to research to write a romance novel based on historical times in say...Victorian England? It is a lot of work and reading and getting all the facts straight. Hours and hours of it, in fact. I think if you've never even read a few different items in a specific genre, you have no business commenting on how stupid you think they are.

Don't get me wrong. It's not wrong to dislike something that another person wrote. You can dislike it and think it is stupid but you can just say 'this is not my cup of tea' and move the heck on. I don't like horror - at all, period. What do I do? I don't watch it and I don't read it. If it doesn't sound interesting, I don't spend time on it. Heck, I am even choosy when it comes to who and what reading I will do in romance novels. I have my faves, I admit but I will give new authors an opportunity and if I don't like it, I simply don't read them again.

I have to say that for the most part, people who read someone on a regular basis are very constructive and do an excellent job of telling the author why this book or writing didn't stand up to the other things they've done and they are not the people I am speaking of. Then you have those who said they chose this book because of the description but it was misleading.

These are not the people I am speaking of. Being respectful and telling someone simply why you didn't like their story is fine - I'd say that in my opinion, most authors would want to know what you think or what they could improve on. It's the blatant disrespect and making fun of other people's work that is disgusting.

Sometimes, a book just doesn't do anything for me and that's okay. Honestly, if I really didn't even read the whole book or knew from the beginning that I wasn't going to enjoy it, I don't rate it. I have experienced disappointment by authors I normally read and it is usually a feeling of 'well, this story wasn't as good as the others' but there isn't necessarily something wrong with the story.

Really, I wrote this because I'm afraid of this kind of response to my writing but for an entirely different reason. When people criticize something I do, I have always taken it personally. Of course, I want to know how I can improve, what didn't work and what did work, etc. I expect to receive these kinds of things in response to my writing.  I just don't want to be told it is stupid by people who really aren't into it but read my writing or book anyway and feel they can tell me what tripe it is for the heck of it.

I think if you want to be respected for your work, then you should always be respectful of other people's work."

Cassandra Janey

Follow me on Twitter @CassJaney

The Girl from Minnesota

  This author was born in Minnesota in 1962. If you don’t understand anything else about Minnesota you must know that this State is known as the “Land of 10,000 lakes.” Around those lakes are mountains, plush forests’, and lots of snow in the winter. It can get down to 20 degrees below zero which makes Minnesotans’ rugged environmental loving people. To get through those long cold winters families had to share common interests to pass away many long hours by blazing fires together. Our author’s parents did not own a television but they did own at least 5000 books. Our author and her three younger siblings, Bridget, Noah, and Micha would read such classics as Beowulf, Shakespeare, and Greek plays. Even at a young age our author was interested in romance. Her long time favorite was Romeo and Juliet. To entertain her younger brothers and sister she would put on a puppet show, with lights and great flair. It just turned out that all of her shows were romance stories. She finally convinced her father to allow her to read one romance novel for every two classic books. The romance novels were that of Georgette Heyer and to this day our author says those books changed her life. The girl from Minnesota is Eloisa James. Her fictional backdrop for her novels are set in England's Regency period (1811–1820), and James often has references to Shakespeare or includes pieces of 16th-century poetry or other tidbits she has researched all of her life and put into her romance novels. Her first works were the Pleasure Trilogy. Book # 1 Enchanting Pleasures was published by Dell. Yet, before the Ink had dried on book # 2 and # 3 of her trilogy Random House picked them up and Eloisa never looked back.

     Very Recently Eloisa was interviewed in London by the BBC radio. She however was not introduced as Eloisa James (that is her pen name for her fiction) instead they were interviewing Dr. Mary Bly PhD. a Shakespeare scholar with degrees from Oxford and Yale, and she is a associate professor and head of the Creative Writing program at Fordham University in New York City.  

    Mary’s Father is Robert Bly the 1960’s poet and co-founder of the 1966 American Writers against the Vietnam War. Robert Bly led much of the opposition among writers to that war. When he won the National Book Award for his book The Light Around the Body, Bly contributed his prize money to the Resistance. His books for the “coming of age for men,” have been translated into several languages and remain popular today.  Mary’s Mother is the Late Carol Bly. She was a teacher and an award-winning American author. Mary’s Mother wrote short stories, essays, and nonfiction works on “The Art of writing.” Carol Bly was an activist as well but for Women. She featured Minnesota women who made changes with empathy to moral crisis’s women were facing in her day. Carol Bly’s body of work showed that changes could be made by women in their community or in themselves.

      If this were not enough literary force in Mary Bly’s life, her godfather is the Pulitzer- Prize –winning poet James Wright.

     One of the most fascination features of Dr. Mary Bly’s life she discussed in her recent interview on the BBC radio in London. For several years Bly kept her fiction writing and her identity as Eloisa James a secret from her fellow professors at Fordham University.  It was only after her first best selling New York Times romance novel was published in 2005 that Bly decided to introduce her alter ego to her colleagues during a faculty meeting at Fordham University. They were shocked and pleased at the same time. Bly brought copies of her novel to the faculty meeting for each of her fellow professors.  This was quite a twist to the demanding world of academia and the many books Mary Bly has written that has gained the respect of her fellow professors. One such book is The Geography of Puns: London’s Bawdy Whores, addresses “the geographical and linguistic economies of early modern London.”

   All of those long winter nights in Minnesota by the fire with her family helped shape the amazing genius, creativity and Witt of Dr. Mary Bly and her alter ego Eloisa James.

                                     

                                             “A stale mind is the devil's breadbox.”

“Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you.”

                                                          

                                                   Mary Bly

Jan Atchley Bevan,
Presidential Panache, NLAPW Jacksonville branch

                                    

   

   

 .

 

 

 

      

 

Why I Write Romance Novels

I can’t tell you how many times over the course of my 20-plus year career as a published romance author I have been asked, “When are you going to write a real book? You know, a [insert genre of choice: mystery, family saga, historical, thriller, horror, western, etc].” So I’d like to take this opportunity to tell readers why I write romance novels.
I suffered a lot of tragedy while I was growing up, the worst of which was losing my mother just as I was entering my teens. I felt as though I went from 13 to 35 overnight, and when my friends were off having fun, I was cooking and cleaning and helping my little brother with his homework. Romance novels were an escape for me. The Wolf and the Dove, The Far Pavilions, Whitney My Love, Rebecca, The Thorne Birds…if the book featured one man and one woman falling in love, I read it! Romance novels offered me hope for a happy future filled with love (hokey, yes, but I was young). As a young wife and mother, I discovered Silhouette Romance Novels. These books were short and sweet and uplifting. Each and every story put a smile on my face, and the happily-ever-after endings always boosted my spirits. Are romance novels real? No. Does every relationship end in HEA? Of course not. But if I wanted doom and gloom, I’d watch the evening news.
As an author, I can’t think of a better way to use my talent than to bring pure enjoyment to my readers. I tell people that I write cotton candy for the mind. Think about that. When you were a kid and you put a small cloud of that wispy confection on your tongue, what did you do? You smiled. And maybe you even laughed. That’s the reaction I’m going for with my short, upbeat stories. That’s why I write romance novels. So if you’re looking to get lost for a few hours in a fun, cheery story, I hope you’ll try one of my books.

~ ~ ~

Donna Fasano  is a bestselling, award-winning author of over 30 novels that have sold over 3.6 million copies worldwide. You can find her on the web at www.DonnaFasano.com, or on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/DonnaFasanoAuthor, or on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/DonnaFaz. Her books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Sony, and Apple iBooks.

~  ~  ~