Hot History

I was fortunate enough to attend the annual Luncheon thrown by the Long Island Chapter of the Romance Writers of America today. The event hosts editors and agents and writers of every stripe who have a fabulous opportunity to meet, mingle, network and, most importantly, pitch in a relaxed and convivial environment.

What I took away from the luncheon (besides some goodies, and new friends) was that yes, historical is still big, yes, everyone is looking for great historicals and that hot, hot, hot historicals are REALLY in demand.

While paranormal historicals also seem to be growing in popularity (this includes the new subgenre of steam-punk), it is the heat level that both editors and agents were anxious to stress.

In other words, it aint' your Grandmother's Regency that anyone is looking for these days. The opportunity to blend the drama of bygone eras with the lush sensuality of today's romance is great. Folks like Victoria Alexander, Madeline Hunter, Hope Tarr, Stephanie Laurens and others are ramping up the sexual factor and readers are loving it.

Several folks said they were looking for good medievals, lots of Regency and, of course the stalwart Scottish historical are still in demand.

In fact, I had a great chat regarding the particulars of condoms in World War I, which had figured in one editor's recent historical erotic romance.

Where Rosemary Rogers, Thea Devine and Bertrice Small have led, countless others are now following and the fervor with which the heated historical are being received has not dimmed a whit.

So you may want to strike that tinder and get a fire going. Historical-style!

The Real Thing? Or Rose-Colored Glasses? Your Choice!

A wonderful author, and a friend, Patt Mihailoff, is an advocate of writing historical romance not so much as we might have wished it were, but more as it really was. Warts, unpleasantness and all.

Historical romance has to walk a fine line. Romance readers who are fans of a particular era tend to know a lot of details. They're quick to spot mistakes ("oops, killed Henry VIII off in the wrong year!") and they let you know. However, while you are busy writing the pristine historical romance how much of those historical details do you include? To whit, we always leave out the more unpleasant facts - chamber pots emptied into the streets, body odor, bad teeth, rampant disease and more often than not, the REAL way men and women dealt with each other (women = chattel, in almost every period).

But what about the more subtle harsh realities of life in the good old days? When a woman had no rights and physical relationships were a lot less like wooing and a lot more like "it's my right so on your back" (where do you think the expression came from, "just lie back and think of England"?). How and where do you draw the line in portraying those less appealing aspects of how things really were? Especially when some of the behavior that any average man might exhibit will not look good for your hero.

It is a tough call. The more thought you give this issue, the more apt you are to be able to include some details that will satisfy a reader who is looking for the history to ring true, even as they enjoy the romance that is (as we all must agree), far more "make believe" than "reality".

If you have a character who flies in the face of convention, you can get away with it as long as you have a good explanation to back it up. Provided, of course, that the era in which you are writing would have brooked such a rebel. Sometimes it just won't work, no matter how ingenious your explanation.

The tone of your book will also give you an idea as to how you can go. If you are writing a gritty, erotic Victorian romance, you can get away with some of the brutal realities of life. If you're writing a bubbly Regency, not so much.

I've read great romance authors who weave in realistic details and yet also produce anachronistic protagonists by using just such tactics. Explaining that the girl had a nanny from [pick the right place in the world] where bathing was more than just an annual event. Or whose father was a great thinker and followed the teachings of [pick the right name] who believed in equality for all and raised his sons that way, too.



Bottom line. Be true to the time frame you are rendering. Get your facts straight and know the conventions so that you know whether your characters are going to ring true and genuine, or will grate on the nerves of the readers who know that those characters would never have behaved that way, or that things would never have been so rosy. Then decide how far you can break those rules, and get away with it, while still penning a wonderful romance story.

To a certain extent the use of historical facts mirror the debate over inclusion in contemporary romances of the references to birth control, condoms, AIDS and so forth. It is a thorny issue and, quite frankly, there are always going to be some readers who think you went too far .... or not far enough.

Decide how real your romance is going to be or how far you are willing to remove yourself in the interest of your artistic vision.

Pick An Era, Any Era

So many times, so little, uh, time?

How does an author pick the era in which to set her historical romance? Certainly, there are authors who have their favorite. Regency England, certainly one of the biggest. Now, and, it seems, forever. The Middle Ages - Medieval England - was also big. Certain times wax and wane in popularity. The Vikings were popular with Heather Graham, for example, but the Viking romance is rather a rarity now. Civil War America was huge (ibid, Heather). It, too, along with the American Western romance, has fallen on harder times. Czarist Russia had its day, as did the Classical world's romance. Rennaissance Italy and France, and the oh-so-alluring Arabian romance came and went.

Some eras have never seemed to find favor or popularity. The Crimean War (one of my favorites). Georgian has some fans, as did the American Revolution, and the eras in America before the upheaval, including the tumult of the French and Indian War era.

Fortunately some of my favorite time periods are beginning to find fans - Victorian England is now getting more and more popular as the setting for romance and the American counterpart, the Gilded Age, likewise becoming a hot topic.

As we grow further removed from earlier 20th Century eras, they, too, are becoming popular fodder for the romance. The 1920's - the "Roaring" twenties could not be a more fevered period in which to place one's romance (after all, if it was good enough for F. Scott?). And the time period that captured my heart long ago, in my rather melodramatic teen years, when movies like From Here To Eternity, The Winds of War, 13 Rue Madelaine, Casablanca, The Great Escape, Stalag 17, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, The Guns of Navarone, The Yellow Rolls Royce, and one of my all-time favorites, In Harm's Way, introduced me to the climactic life and death struggles on all fronts - military and romantic.

Even as I write, more and more WWII romance novels are being published. Contrary to the ever-popular espionage and military fiction novels that have been written, the novels portraying the humanity - versus the tactics - are coming into print. The Kommandant's Girl got the ball rolling, and mainstream fiction titles like Charlotte Grey, Shining Through, and the keeper on my particular WWII shelf, Janet Dailey's Silver Wings and Santiago Blue - published decades ago - are keeping up the fight.

Unlike those authors who settle on a favorite period and keep to it, I'm a fan of many eras. And so I've got my work cut out for me. WWII, Crimean War, Gilded Age NY, the Civil War era and Reconstruction. Victorian England, the Vikings, and romances set in various time frames in Scotland, France, Russia and Germany.

And how can I forget the Wild, Wild West? Gold Rush? And don't forget those innocent years before World War I - when the industrial revolution had provided so much, and a world conflagration had not yet taken it away, along with the remains of the innocence that still existed in the world.

My. So many eras, so little time!

I guess I'd better start writing!

Time After Time

Welcome to yet another of my blogs! I'm here to chat about historical romance. So many places, so many eras in history - so little time!

What's your favorite era in history? Ancient Greece and Rome? The Middle Ages? Rennaissance? Do you favor the British monarchy or the Russian rulers? Are the major wars your area of interest? Whether you're a classic lover or a fan of the Wild Wild West, the one eternal - love!

I've got a great smorgasboard of topics to chat about, subjects to discuss and people and places to explore.

Join me, why don't you?