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This…
Here ye! Here ye!
My Historical Romance Author Proclamation
I prefer historical romance to be, well…historical. That means I celebrate the past by staying true** to the times. Women ran the gamut of damsels in distress, wallflowers, warrior maidens (and matrons!), to the bold and brassy bad girls. Frankly, I love them all. Ditto for the men.
I love brooding heroes in dark castles and windswept cliffs. I love lone wolf warriors and alpha males of almost every stripe. Viva la variety! I have space in my heart and on my shelves for the betas, gammas, deltas…
You get the picture.
I’d rather let history be history—in all its glorious, messy imperfection. Really, that’s not unlike today. We strive for change. It’s why have conflict. But don’t expect me to rewrite the past to fit modern day feelings.
As an author, I’ve been quiet for too long. It’s time to plant my flag. I write Vikings. My research of that era is meticulous. I make no apologies for writing Viking men. Or strong Viking women. The same goes with my Georgian heroes and heroines. Much of my inspiration comes from reading real people in history. The fun part comes in writing women who challenged those men and doing it through the lens of romance.
If you want 21st century mores in historical romance, then I’m not the romance author for you. Some of my heroes are and will be *gasp* sexist by today’s standards. Why? Because history tells us most of them were.
So, if you’re looking for enlightened 21st century men in say, 18th century England or 10th century Vikingdom, then you won’t be happy with my novels.
On the other hand, if you want your historical romance true to the times, full of fun, drama, heat, and loads of banter, you’re with the right author. While you’re at it, why not tell a like-minded friend?
Got an opinion on this? Share it below. I enjoy reading diverse thoughts.
~Gina
*Random Rafflecopter drawing August 23, 2018 at midnight ET. Giveaway is worldwide.
**A post of “My Favorite Mistake(s)” will come where I own up to my research fails.
Comment
I will be moving reviews to book hub as I just learned that they have that
Great slogan. Let history be history!
Love Gina’s viking books, great adventures,
I guess you could say I “graduated” to the Romance since originally I read the fiction and some classics, mostly Austen and Bronte. I ended up reading all the Ann Rinaldi books my school had halfway through 7th grade and had my librarian get some more. I also started to discover the more romantic classics at this time along with with reading more ya books that had a romantic undertone or even a relationship. It wasn’t till high school that I really read my first true romance and I haven’t looked back. But those years of basically inhaling, I read inline to lunch, those fiction makes me want to read that close to accurate book but in these cases with a romance in it.
When it comes to heroes, well I still prefer the lesser sexist ones but I think I can blame that on 1 author and 3 different heroes of hers. I speak of course of the one and only Jane Austen along with Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, Capt. Fredrick Wentworth, and Mr. George Knightley. I know deep down due to genealogy and being a history buff that they were rare type of men to find back then but I would like to in this case to Jane’s word that at least a few existed. =)
I agree with where you planted your flag.
Thanks Venette!
Hi Amanda,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Jane Austen’s heroes. I agree, there were non-sexist men in times past. Sometimes I write them. I’ve also found some amazing trail-blazing women. I write them too. For the most part, the world adhered to different social mores: men who wanted to take care of everything, believing they ruled the world. Lots of women worked inside that social structure. I want to read and write about all of these people.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. I welcome them!
Gina
Why thank you Leah!
Thank you Lou! I quite agree.
Gina
Thanks Tina. I’m enjoying BookBub and getting more active there.
I like books to be true to history.
I love historical books. I don’t know about every one else, but I get tired of all the politically correct stuff going on in todays world. I like to read about a man being a man and strong women. We get bombarded on a daily basis about it, so my reading enjoyment comes from lighter more upbeat types of stories. Comedy and light heartedness helps a lot too.
I agree Earlene.
Gina 🙂
I am new to using a lot of things on the internet and just learned how to reach some writers. I love that you follow history rather then rewrite it. We may not always like our place in the world but even now there are certain lines as a society we do not cross. It shows how far we have come when we read the truth of the past. I enjoyed reading the first chapter of your Viking and look forward to reading more of the Georgian period from your other books. Thanks for the good read…
Thanks Susan.
History is what it is – a pageant of people misbehaving badly, or heroically, or just plain having a very good time!
Thank you so much for this. Yes, I have felt this so often in the past few years as a reader and I’ve also begun to feel more and more pressure as a writer. I like historical novels because people behaved differently. I’m not interested in reading historical novels that could be set in 2018 but with corsets and breeches.
I write books set pre-Freud which means people evaluated their lives using different mental frameworks. Men and women behaved differently because men owned most of the property and women WERE property. I think it is impressive that women managed to work within such a constricting environment and still triumph over hardship.
Let’s face it, women have had to be at least twice as tough, wily, hard-working, and creative as men throughout history–and they’ve had to work for what they wanted without drawing unwanted attention and getting persecuted (or burned at the stake, or stoned to death, or locked up, etc)
Anyhow, I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve said–thanks so much for saying it!
Thanks Minerva.