Sunday, June 14, 2015

Is It All A Matter Of Position?

I find it interesting that the Kama Sutra, the bible of sexual positions, lists 100 different scenarios, yet when writing romance, you have only so many positions from which to choose. Shouldn't romance have as many different positioning options as sex itself?

i recently received some very good feedback on my latest contemporary, which is book one in a trilogy about a mother, daughter and granddaughter who all retreat to the family lake house when they get into romantic trouble. Because each book deals with an individual love story, the heroine for the first book is in her 30s, the mother will be in her 50s and the grandaughter, who, when it's her turn for a story, will be in her 20s. How do you position a series like this, when the heroines are all different ages?

Here's the short answer–you don't.

It's not women's fiction, since it doesn't have multiple subplots or deep female relationships. It's not category romance because the age of the heroines is all over the place, instead of being cute young things just getting started in life. The advice I was given was to choose one or the other, and rewrite my book to fit neatly into one of these existing positions.

But I don't want to write about cute young things just getting started. I love the fact that my characters have had a life before my story starts. That they've earned every line on their face. That they've loved and lost before. This is second chance romance, even for the granddaughter. Why isn't there a category for that?

Guess what? There is. It's called self-publishing.

Maybe it's time to take the plunge.

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