I was a happy little SFF reader as a kid. Swords, monsters, dashing about on epic adventures, etc. Then I read Kathleen Woodiwiss’s A ROSE IN WINTER… And I was ruined! Ruined forevuh, I tell you! Just as a romance heroine meets her hero and no other man can ever again be enough for her, so I swooned into the arms of romance novels and my heart was won.
(Which is not to say that I don’t — like some wayward Beatrice Small heroine — occasionally step out on my beloved romances to dabble with some other worthy genre.)
Romances had all the things I loved about SFF — high stakes, strong characterization, occasional swords, and LOTS of dashing — but there was also kissing! And romances offered one major component I didn’t always find in my SFF back in the day: the woman’s story. In romances, the heroines were adventuring…
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