I write romance novels, so I'm a terrorist?!

You there, with that copy of Too Hot For TV in your hand, and you over there, reading In Bed With The Doctor, and you reading His Sexy Bad Habit, me, Brenda Jackson and several other romance novelists are ruining your heart. Or, if you believe the clown who wrote this crap, leading you straight to hell.

How dare we, the evil romance novelists, write about men who love and respect women? Or even worse, write about men who please women when they have sex? And what in the blue hell were we thinking about when we put the sweetness of a woman's orgasm on paper? Evil. Damn near terrorists. How could we give women stories to take them away for the harsh realities of world that demands so much and gives so little?

The romance novel follows, the researchers argue, a typical pattern. The hero is almost never, they say, a blue collar worker, a bureaucrat, or someone in the traditionally feminine occupations (hairdresser, kindergarten teacher, etc.). He is competent, confident, and usually wealthy. He is, in short, an alpha male.
But, they argue, this alpha male is typically a rough character who learns to be tamed into kindness, kindness to her. Thus, you wind up with not only the strong silent cowboys with the soft interior life, but also these days vampires and werewolves and Vikings.
And all of this is moving toward the climax of the romance story: the "happily-ever-after."
"Romance novels rarely have a sequel," the book concludes. "Once the hero and heroine are joined in love or matrimony, they get their Happily-Ever-After, presumably with a bevy of children and domestic bliss. Further adventures would violate the female fantasy of true, committed, eternal love."
And the problem with this is what?
This summer, people started a war against romance novels. The first shot fired said romance novels were as addictive as porn. (I guess that's why I'm super rich like Hugh Hefner. . .NOT!)
Then there's that term I hate: bodice ripper. Really? The Huffington Post, usually on point, made a huge issue of a typo in a romance novel--sure it was funny, but did they have to go all ripper?

People make assumptions about the readers of romance novels and as one of those readers, let me tell you something — put your ASSumptions where the sun doesn't shine.
I'm sick and tired of so called scholars beating up on the one genre of literature that's still selling when literary tomes are collecting dust. I'm sick of people thinking writing a romance novel is the most simple thing in the world to do. Umm, no. And I'm SICK of the disrespect that romance readers and writers receive in the mainstream press.
If you don't like happy endings, with your miserable ass, then don't read a romance novel. Problem solved, terror code dropped to green.

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