What is the definition of a romance novel? I once went to the website of the National Romance Writers of America (NRWA) to find out. As I came to understand, a traditional romance is a story in which the main female character ends up with the main male character...or the heroine with the hero as they say. It doesn't matter what they may go through during the course of the story...they may hate each other at the beginning, or one may hate the other; one may need to save the other; one may be rich the other poor; we might have a forceful man and a submissive woman; a fiery woman and a sensitive man; there may be seemingly insurmountable obstacles between them...and on and on. When I go on the Amazon Romance forums, I see people talk about "heroes" who rape, who are overcome with jealousy, who are possessive, who are priests, cowboys, astronauts, realtors, vampires (of course)...you name it. There is literally no scenario that cannot be made into a romance except that in which the hero and heroine don't end up together. Now, I don't want to tell you how my book, The Time Baroness, ends, but I will say this: it's not a traditional romance novel. I learned from the NRWA that this kind of book should be referred to as a novel with a romantic theme (could be a mystery, historical, scifi, paranormal - whatever - but cannot technically be called a romance if it doesn't have that traditional ending). When I tagged my book on Amazon, I didn't tag it as Romance, but I did chose tags like Time-Travel Romance, Historical Romance, etc. Unfortunately, this has led some readers to buy it thinking it is a traditional romance, and, as a result, they felt surprised by the ending. Some have said they loved that it didn't have the traditional ending, some said that they wished it had ended a little differently. In the description, I call it "a romantic, time travel adventure set in Jane Austen's England." See? Nowhere do I say it's a romance. How can I be more clear? I don't think I can. I wish I could stick a big tag on it that says something like NOT A ROMANCE NOVEL. I guess I just want to say to the reader that I hope they enjoy it, hope they get a romantic feeling from it, hope they have fun with the story and get a sense of excitement from it, and I hope that they take away a sense of Jane Austen's world.
The sequel is coming out in a couple of weeks. It's called The Time Heiress, and in it, my heroine accompanies a kind of time-travel tourist to pre-Civil War New York City, where they both get embroiled in romance, and the danger of the Underground Railroad. Is it historical? Yes. Is it an adventure? Yes. Is it about time-travel? Yes. Is it a romance? No. It is sexy and it is romantic, but, gentle reader...be warned...the ending is not that of a traditional romance novel.
