My First Romance

When I was a little kid, and bored to death at my paternal grandmother’s house, I’d read whatever I could find around the house. In the basement of my grandmother’s Brownsville brownstone, there were piles of LIFE magazines, an inordinate number of which seemed to feature Lena Horne, my Disney picture books featuring Cindarella and Snow White, and one romance novel.

The Taming of Tamsin was the first romance novel I ever read, over, and over again. I must have read the book dozens of times over those long weekends between eating buttery cake, playing with her German Shepherd, and waiting for my father.

I’ve been reading a lot of romance blogs, magazines, and books about romance since finishing my first romance manuscript. Then one day, I thought of the book that started it all. For one penny and three days’ wait from Amazon I had a copy of that 1978 category novel.

Now that I’m on page 161, about 7/8 of the way through it, I’m trying to figure out what I found so compelling about the book. It has many of the elements that I don’t like in older romances, bruising, punishing kisses; spanking; bodily harm, and the heroine’s suddenly in love — the 1970s usual. But I kept going back. And it led me to better, less misogynistic books. Time and progress have been kind to the romance genre.

Now heroes are allowed to have emotions, show love and tenderness - not just the unspeaking alpha male who hurts you because he loves you. Yes Blaise loves Tamsin in the end. They get their happily ever after.  I got a lifelong love of books that only got better.

~ by foleydog on February 26, 2008.