Let’s Talk Classic Romance!
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
We have often talked about what we’re reading now here at Plotmonkeys. But I wanted to talk today about what we were reading then. As in, at the very beginning of our romance reading lives. I’d really like to know the name of “the book” or books that started you down the path of romance reading heaven. And maybe to talk about what qualities in those books made you a romance reading fan for life.
I’ll start.
I began reading romance novels at the age of 12. Like a lot of readers, I started with Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame And The Flower. 
One of my sisters had brought it home, I found it, was told I couldn’t read it, so I promptly hid in the closet with a flashlight. All would have been fine if I hadn’t been stupid enough to ask my sister what a “manhood” was.
My love affair with romance novels continued throughout my teen years. I watched for every Woodiwiss, and will never forget the thrill of seeing a TV commercial for her third book, Shanna. I kid you not, I just sat there goggle-eyed, never having seen (or never remembering) a commercial for a book, and that it was one of “those” books that my mother was forever telling me I should quit reading, well, I felt validated! 
I am probably the exception to the Woodiwiss rule in that I really didn’t like Shanna that much. She was such a witch. I had really loved The Wolf And The Dove–Aislinn was such a strong heroine, but strong without descending into shrewishness, like Shanna did. 
Then came Ashes In The Wind (my editor Brenda Chin’s favorite of the Woodiwiss books) and I was in love again. Here was a feisty heroine who was every bit as strong as the hero, a rich backdrop, a noble but wounded hero and an entire cast I truly cared about.
Then came A Rose In Winter which took my breath away–the ultimate beauty and the beast story. I still love Christopher Seton and it is that book which has held up the best for me. I can reread Rose In Winter and still get that “ahh!” feeling that I had the first time I read it, (even though I mentally count the number of doors called “portals” and the number of eyes and breasts called “orbs.”) 
I’ll stop there with Woodiwiss. I never enjoyed another of her books. Can’t say why, I honestly don’t know. But her first five were simply beyond compare for me at that time.
There was another popular author during that period of early Avon supremacy, who didn’t achieve Woodiwiss’s stature or success, but whose books I came to love even more. Laurie McBain’s books absolutely floored me. 
I discovered her with Devil’s Desire, but she didn’t really come into her own until her second book, Moonstruck Madness (another of Brenda’s faves! She was a real tomboy and loved seeing the heroine dressing up as a boy, kicking butt and taking names!)
For me, I loved McBain because she always wrung every emotion she could possibly get out of me until I was utterly dry. I would find myself swept away by the romance, admiring the strong heroines, loving the to-die-for heroes, and yet, at some point, sobbing my face off because she’d gotten me into such an emotional state and had then yanked the rug out by killing off some character I’d fallen madly in love with.
In Tears Of Gold, it was the heroine, Mara’s, rascally, gold-hungry brother Brendan.
In Wild Bells To The Wild Sky (which I just reread about a month ago!) it was the heroine’s parents, whose romance takes up the first quarter of the book. And in this book, the hero’s name is (wait for it… ) Valentine Whitelaw. Could you just die? He was a privateer, with jet black hair and an earring, and oh, my God, he was divine! 
In When The Splendor Falls…well, just about everybody dies (it was a Civil War book) but I especially mourned the heroine’s brother-in-law, who came home from the war to find his beautiful young wife dead, and himself the parent of an infant. 
And then he dies too! Any other author would have him finding another HEA or dedicating his life to being a good father, or whatever, but McBain didn’t take the easy way out, and even while I was cursing her for it, I knew it couldn’t have happened any other way.
Books just don’t grab me like that anymore. Those early romances where the tragedy and the joy were completely intertwined, where the writing was rich and the characters so incredibly vivid literally swept me away. Made me ignore homework, housework, all the stuff I was supposed to be doing, stay up until four a.m., just keep turning those pages. That very rarely happens to me with any book now. And yet, when I reread Wild Bells To The Wild Sky, that is exactly what happened all over again.
Can I confess: I was a dumpster diver during that period. I worked at a shoe store in a mall when I was 16, and right next door was a Walden Books. Our dumpster was next to theirs in the back of the building. And oh, my God, when I went out there one day and saw it entirely FULL of books with the covers torn off, I wanted to scream at the sky, “Oh, the humanity!”
I, uh, shoved aside the empty pizza boxes, the slimy Hardee’s cups, the half-eaten Dairy Queen sundaes, and…shopped. Came home with a trunkload of books (knowing nothing, at that point, about covers being returned for credit and those books reported as destroyed.) Eventually, since they had no covers, I’m quite sure I did toss them. But I read every single one first. The author might not have gotten the royalties, but a whole bunch of them gained a new voracious reader.
Believe it or not, this was how I discovered another of my early faves: Cynthia Wright. She wrote really good colonial romances. One of my faves was a Scarlet Pimpernel homage Surrender The Stars (much like Jude Devereux’s much later title, The Raider). The hero is in disguise as a dandy/fop and is trying to win the heroine that way, while secretly seducing her as his real-life persona. My favorite Wright was called You And No Other, and it was a fabulous book set in the French court of Francois II. (I think!) Couldn’t find either of those covers, unfortunately.
There are a few other titles that stand out for me.
The House of Scorpio by Pat Wallace. I LOVED this book. 
It was set in a world that was divided by astrological signs. Sun people lived in the desert and water people lived in rainy climates. There were six complete romances in the book, about six sisters separated at birth. Each one had a very Victoria Holt “gothic” feel, despite the astrological stuff. I have been watching for that book for years…whenever it shows up online, it’s like fifty bucks or something. Maybe someday I’ll go ahead and bite the bullet for it, we’ll see.
Angel In Scarlet by Jennifer Wilde. I wasn’t a huge Wilde fan, especially with books like Love’s Tender Fury, where the heroine ended up with the JERK hero instead of the wonderful secondary love interest, who the hero kills in a duel. But Angel In Scarlet was a lot of fun. Wilde’s heroines were tarts and indentured servants. 
They had affairs (that shocked me when I first read one–the heroine sleeping with someone other than the hero? Yow!) And this one, in particular, had the heroine marrying someone other than the hero, and they’re both completely ostracized from society for it. (She’s an actress, he’s a Lord.) He throws a ball to introduce his new bride and NOBODY comes. But he doesn’t care. He takes her into his arms and dances her around the ballroom for the entire night to their own private orchestra. It was a lovely scene, and again, I wish he had been the hero…but I didn’t hate the actual final hero in this one as much as I did with Love’s Tender Fury. 
Okay, I’ve gone on and on here. I tend to get carried away when reminiscing about this stuff. I could talk about Devreaux’s Velvet series or Lindsay’s Mallory’s (her book Man Of My Dreams was my favorite, where the Duke was disguised as the stable boy… ) or Garwood or Judith McNaught…well, you get the point.
But now I want to hear from you! Where’d you get your start? What books do you really remember? Any you re-read to this day…and how have they held up?
And here’s a toast to the late Kathleen Woodiwiss, who started it all. I genuinely thank the woman to introducing me to what has been one of my greatest pleasures, personally and professionally: romance fiction.
Don and I don’t usually do anything big for Valentine’s day, because I honestly don’t need flowers, candy, an expensive dinner, or even a card, to know that he loves me. But I do have to say that this year will be hard because while I don’t need anything materialistic to celebrate Valentines Day, I do miss the fact that Don isn’t here with me physically (so does the dog, who has been moping horribly since he left last week! 
). He’s only been gone a week, and I’m already counting down the days until he’ll come home to visit. 
It’s harder than I thought!
We’ve had her for 9 months. Just when I thought we’d never train her … yesterday she went to the door three times and asked to be let out!!! I know there’s a lot of work to be done. And I’m not celebrating her being completely housebroken just yet. And with this 40 MPH wind and freezing almost zero degree temps, I don’t kid myself that today will be as good as yesterday. But we’ve made a huge start!
