My Favorite Century

I was at my RWA chapter crit group yesterday, and was surprised to hear someone say they don't read historical romances. My brain wouldn't let go of that tidbit. Of course, to each his/her own taste. Free country and all that. I just assumed as a writer, you'd want to research all the great writers, and many of them lie in the historical sub-genre.

To me, the best writers are both timeless and entrenched in their time simultaneously. Love, and the roller coaster we go through to find it, knows no boundaries of era or class. At least not the way it is writtten today. Did women in the 18th century get to marry for love as often as we writers portray it? Of course not. But the search for love as a theme can be plopped into any century. Is it fun to read pages of description of Regency era balls? You bet. Does it detract from the love story at the heart of the novel? Not at all.

I find genre's to be like ethnic food. I like to dabble. I couldn't eat Indian food every day for a month straight, and neither do I stick to one genre. My preference is certainly the straight contemporary. But I make sure to mix it up with historicals, romantic suspense and chick lit. Step outside your comfortable genre box. You never know what you might learn...or learn to love.