My first romance novels that I read were all historical romances. I loved Dukes and Earls. I could read a viscount who totally loved the girl, all the time back in the day. In the 1990s you’d find me reading my X-Men comics on Wednesday and a historical romance on Saturday. This was my teenage years and early twenties. As a young adult, I started a pirate story because in some ways I always thought pirates related to Dukes were just hot, hot, hot. As a reader though I grew tired of reading the same books and I moved on to reading my contemporaries. Later on as I started writing, I could not find myself limiting my heroine so much with rules. I think I like to break the heroine’s spirits a bit, so breaking her spirit and then adding rules to keep her down… I just can’t. One day though, I’ve always said I will sit down to write a historical. It’s going to eventually happen, though not in the immediate future.
What I’m about to say also goes along with my day job. I teach history to public high school students. Yesterday I saw a historical author disparaging history that is taught in public schools, and bite my tongue. Hard. The implication was that history teachers sucked, and no we don’t. I will not recommend that author’s book though. Learning history gives us the value to understanding the past. It is so important because it helps us find a better future, but I’m getting off track.
This was my point. With the age of the 21st century now, why are we reading about the 19th century still? I so wish for more World War Two romances. A friend of mine, Aleka Nakis, wrote a time travel piece where a world war two soldier gets transported to the here and now. Bought His Life was good. This has me thinking that the movies are full of World War Two stories and I eat them up. I wish I was taken into that world of the 20th century that I never knew. The roles of good versus evil are so well defined. I don’t want to be depressed, but inspired with some great love story that is much closer in time to today. I don’t know what that book is that I long to read, but if anyone has a romance novel suggestion on this… let me know. I want to read it.
So why are we stuck in the Regencies for the historicals? I wish we moved beyond it. I get that many people love Dukes. I love to read them too. I just so wish there was more than that one world.
Wow I sound so jaded and in 18 days I read the only romance author I ever fan girled. Julia Quinn’s regencies always set me on fire. I wrote to her as a teenager myself on her third or fourth book, Everything and the Moon. She wrote back. For once she had a Victoria as a character where my name isn’t the bad girl’s name. She was the heroine, and okay she called herself Tori which I hate, but still she was a Victoria. I’m so excited to meet Julia Quinn on the ship that I’ll forget my earlier point entirely. So yes, I love regencies. I just wish my selection at Barnes and Noble went beyond this one time in the romance department.
