Words matter. These are the best Sarah MacLean Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Critics seem to forget that every love story is different – that there is uniqueness in even the most commonplace of matches.
When it comes to love, the English language bears no shortage of cliches.
Alas, summer sun can’t last forever. The days will grow cooler and shorter, and our skin will once again pale.
In fiction, as in real life, love might inspire acts that are at best foolish and at worst life-threatening, but in the best romances, love is the final, secret ingredient that turns mere mortals into heroes and heroines.
Of all the myriad ways we define love, there is perhaps none more honest and powerful than this: Great love is rooted in great partnership.
In seven books, I’ve written my fair share of baby epilogues. Pregnancies and births and even grandchildren have made an appearance in the final pages of my books.
Perhaps summer’s ephemeral nature is what inspires us to embrace the beach read. We tell ourselves that these twisted plots and wild characters are literary ice cream sundaes – extravagant treats that aren’t as calorie-laden when we’re wearing flip flops.
No matter how troubled a character’s history, romance novels tell us, love can be built upon it, and happily-ever-after can result. What’s more, the darker the past, the brighter the future – and the better the read.
The trick to great romance is in overcoming adversity. In realizing that love is worth some uphill climbs.
By the time I was 10 or 12, I had discovered the lure of the romance genre – and the dusty copy of ‘The Thorn Birds’ on my parents’ bookshelf.
The best partnerships aren’t dependent on a mere common goal but on a shared path of equality, desire, and no small amount of passion.
Teenagers are asking, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘How do I fit in?’ in every aspect of their lives, and the best YA romances appreciate that there is more to a teen’s life than finding love.
One of the most common criticisms of romance is that the genre is too prescribed: If every romance novel ends happily ever after, don’t the stories lack complexity? Don’t the readers get bored?
In real life, I’d say that your commitment-phobe/narcissist/bad boy boyfriend is a lost cause, but romance is shelved in fiction for a reason.
Gone are the days when heroes are emotionally locked away from the world until the end of the book, and thank goodness for that. Modern romance heroes are more complex than ever.
I never met Colleen McCullough; if I had, I probably would have cried and made a fool of myself.
I think back on that day when 16-year-old me scribbled on some silly piece of paper for some long-forgotten high school career-day project that my dream job was ‘romance novelist.’
Colleen McCullough taught me that desire is the heart of romance.
That first meeting – the one where the hero and heroine start the slow burn that takes the whole story to turn into true love – is the single most important part of the whole book. Nail it, and you’ve won yourself readers.
If you think back to your time as a teenager, everything was dramatic.
Even in 2014, when romance heroes are as varied as their genre, somewhere in them you can still always find the alpha male.
I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.
No doubt, much of the joy of a great romance is the moment when these stoic heroes crack open and reveal themselves to their heroines – the only women strong enough to match them.
‘A Rogue by Any Other Name’ is the first book in the ‘Rules of Scoundrels’ series, centered on a legendary pre-Victorian casino and her four scandalous aristocratic owners.
In books by women and for women, it should come as no surprise that heroines are the heroes of the action, finding themselves, their power and their future through love.
