I enjoy reading historicals and I adore writing them. But to me history is mood and it's part of the world I create for each book. I can alter events, rearrange them or create them out of whole cloth. In my books everything exists to advance the story so that it follows my muse's twisted inclinations. It'll be a winding road, but it will end happily, every time. To get there I may create language, events or people that bear no relation to the history we learned in school. Ultimately, in a QA tale, everything exists to serve the romance and that includes history. That irritates the heck out of some folks, but I believe there are books enough to cater to every taste.
Regardless of my history as mood philosophy, my historicals still far outsell my contemporaries. In fact, overall in the romance world everywhere - historicals tend to far outsell contemporaries. And that bothers me. It bothers me a lot. There are some great contemporary writers and some fabulous stories set in our very own era. I like to think that some of those fabulous contemporaries, a couple of them to date, are mine. And just like my historicals - my "now" is apt to look and feel a lot different because from over the top, everything looks better.
I wish we could give contemporaries their own month. Better yet, why not give them their own season. Yes, I think Spring should be the era of now.
As we anticipate the "Spring Into A Contemporary" movement, we're sprucing up our contemporaries with brand new titles. To be more accurate - we're adding a subtitle. The change has already been made to one book - Griffin's is now - Dangerous Relations: Griffin's Law. We'll be changing the other one - now titled The Billionaire's E-mail Seduction -- shortly. The covers of both books will catch up soon too.
Why the change? It came about because we were tinkering with the title of my WIP, which is - you guessed it - a contemporary. I'd been calling it "The Office Ink" or "The Office Ink Spells Murder". But while the book centers around a murder - it's mostly a romance. This murder occurs at a family law firm. After my dearest hubby suggested the subtitle, I realized that not only does it suit "Office Ink," it also suits all my contemporaries.
My contemporaries are all focused on what happens when love intersects with the law. Dangerous Relations describes events for the lovers and events surrounding the lovers. It's a great "hook" for all of the books and we hope the "hook" reels in more readers to check out how now looks from over the top.
We haven't settled on a firm title for E-mail yet. Adding the subtitle to the front of E-mail would produce a title of unwieldy length. It's current title is already a little wordy. I'm thinking of "Dangerous Relations: Tempting The Billionaire" or "Dangerous Relations: Seducing The Billionaire" or "Dangerous Relations: Enticing The Billionaire." But that title is still up in the air.
I do hope that more readers will make it a point to pick up a contemporary - particularly one of mine! It'll remind all of us that all the excitement, spark and sizzle of love didn't end with the Regency era. Love is as timeless and eternal as forever. We may live in "now" rather than "then," but we still deserve a happy ending - and some quacking good fun reaching it.
Join us at QA Romances this year and SPRING INTO A CONTEMPORARY!!!