Read all about it: Love is everywhere.
Transported on sailing ships to tropical islands and on spaceships to alien planets. Hiding in the hearts of soldiers and spies during hot and cold wars. Bubbling up between same-sex BFFs who never suspected, or always did. Lurking within weird creatures who lurk within dark forests — or even government bureaucracies — in places such as Southwest Washington.
“There’s definitely a Northwest connection,” Vancouver romance writer Peggy Bird said. “It’s our mysterious woods, from Sasquatch to ‘Twilight.’ ”
This evening, eight local writers of the world’s top-selling book genre — the romance novel — will bring some literary love to Niche Wine Bar in downtown Vancouver. Bird and fellow Vancouver author Delle Jacobs are among them; the others are Oregon authors Rosalie Redd, Maggie Lynch, Wendy Lynn Clark, Judith Ashley and Louisa Kelley.
Yes, they’re all women. That’s who writes and reads romance fiction, Bird said. “There’s no question about that,” she said. “I know of a handful of men who write in this genre. I’ve had a couple of male friends who read what I write. But they won’t allow me to use their names because it’s too embarrassing.
“It’s fascinating that I read all the thrillers written by men but men don’t read the romances written by women,” Bird said. “I guess they’re not sufficiently testosterone-fuelled. But romances are the largest-selling genre, by billions of dollars. And that’s fueled by women who read many of them per month.”
Why so popular? Because love is so popular, Bird said — and because it provides a pleasant escape. That’s true of all genre fiction, not just romance: It takes a messy, heartbreaking world and sweetens it up with some delightful, and universal, fantasy fulfillment.
“Everybody’s looking for some sense that the world works right sometimes,” Bird said. “In a mystery, the bad guy always gets caught. In a Western, the white hats win in the end. In a romance, they live happily ever after — or sometimes happily for now, at least.”
There’s a romance sub-genre for every taste, Bird noted: Christian-spiritual, time-travel, Gothic-horror, historical and “Regency,” crime and suspense, contemporary and realistic. Not surprisingly, today’s fastest growing sub-genre is gay and lesbian romance, Bird said.
“What intrigues me about that is that I know several women writing about gay men, and doing quite well with it. I wouldn’t even care to guess what that’s all about,” she added with a laugh.
Rapunzel no more
About five years ago, Bird, who has been writing short stories and memoirs for years, was working on what she meant as a mystery novel. But her lead characters kept doing something unplanned: falling in love. Bird decided to go with it. When she submitted the finished manuscript to her agent, she was informed it wasn’t a mystery at all. It was a romance.
“It’s funny, I hadn’t read much romance other than Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters,” Bird said — all of whom lived in England nearly 200 years ago and wrote mannered, melodramatic soap operas (both serious and satirical) that starred passionate, repressed women — and even more passionate, repressed men.
Helpless repression is mostly gone from current romance fiction, Bird has discovered. “It’s quite different than in the old bodice-ripper days when the heroine was always just waiting around to be rescued from dragons by the hero,” she said. Today’s heroine “is an independent woman who rescues the hero herself.
“There is still some Rapunzel in her tower, but that’s much less common than it used to be.”
Fireworks ratings
Bird is looking forward to introducing seven active romance authors, plus herself, who’ll explore the diversity and imagination of the modern genre. Their stories of sweet love — and animal attraction — range from spiritual quests played out across fantasy landscapes, through paranormal adventures among shape-shifting dragons in downtown Portland, to gritty crime dramas featuring handsome detectives and sexy suspects. You might even hear a little bit about the unexpected, amorous adventures of a middle level manager for the city of Vancouver.
That’s Bird’s novel, “Sparked by Love,” and it hits us exactly where we live: Shannon Morgan’s job is herding all the cats necessary to pull off Vancouver’s annual Fourth of July fireworks show. But Leo Wilson’s art installation project near the fort is a problem, and when artist and bureaucrat finally face off, romantic fireworks ensue. So do numerous complications, including creepy bosses and creepy exes.
How fiery are the fireworks? “Sparked by Love” earned a “Sensual” rating from Crimson Romance, Bird’s publisher. Many romance publishers use a “heat rating” of some sort to give readers fair warning about the explicitness they’ll discover between the (book) covers; the first step on Crimson’s stairway to heaven is “Behind closed doors,” meaning you’ll read about some hugging and kissing, but clothing stays on.
Next comes “Sensual,” meaning “following the couple into the bedroom,” Bird said. “It’s explicit but that isn’t the main point of the story.” The hottest rating, “spicy,” means truly erotic — in other words, if you deleted all the sex, the whole book would experience significant shrinkage.
“Sparked by Love” features local settings like Officers Row and Esther Short Park, the Kiggins Theatre and Firehouse Glass; it’s the first in a six-book, calendar-following series called “A Holiday for Romance.” Bird’s other main series is “Second Chances,” starring seasoned protagonists who have experienced love’s ups and downs — and they’re ready for more.
“In modern romance there is a slant toward older characters,” Bird said. “As baby boomers I think we want to keep reading about people close to our own age.”
