SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF

     My debut e-book Scene Stealer is a cozy and the book I’m shopping now, while it has plenty of romance doesn’t fit a well-liked and impressive mode of telling a tale called Romance Fiction. But when I read that readers buy more romance fiction than any other genre—it tops the sales charts—I began to think about romance and why readers are so drawn to its pages.

     I have a feeling that in addition to tales of bravery our early ancestors sat around their camp fires telling stories of romance. Shakespeare’s works are both literary and romance fiction: for example Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest where Prospero talks about “such stuff as dreams are made of”—the plays.

     Our mothers and fathers read bedtime stories to us that tell of Cinderella and her prince (perhaps that one explains why we love shoes,) Beauty and the Beast where a red rose bestowed by love enables a happy ending and Rapunzel, a tale of a twelve year old beauty with long fair hair imprisoned in a tower, a lover blinded in an attempt to rescue her—his sight is later restored by her tears. In our teens we read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre about the orphan girl who becomes a governess and falls in love with Rochester her employer and the master of Thornfield and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, romantic, gothic and socially relevant.

     When our own hormones start raging and adolescent love disappoints we play music—Rodgers and Hart or a ballad by Sinatra—or for the younger generation something that speaks to and for them alone. We’re all looking for love.

     There’s a vast variety of sub genres. Historical, Regency, Victorian, love stories between a man and a woman, two women, two men , paranormals, inspirational, erotic, punk or sweet, or chock full of suspense but followers of romantic fiction are loyal to their favorite authors and the genre sells more books than literary fiction or mysteries.

     Are you and why are you drawn to a specific genre and do you write primarily in that particular genre or does it change with each story or novel you write?

Bests,

Elise

Scene Stealer is available at the sites listed below and anywhere e-books are sold.