Slash & Burn

I picked up a "traditional" romance novel the other day. You know, with the busty heroine wearing the hero's shirt? And of course the hero is bare-chested, because he only has that one single shirt and he was gallant enough to give it to the heroine that was nearly captured by marauding village-pillagers. Weird how the hero has a dungeon of gold coins, but only that one shirt.

Anyway.

I used to devour those novels by the dozens in high school and my early college years. I would visit my local used bookstore and scour the shelves for whatever genre was appealing to me at the time: pirates, Native Americans, cowboys, British royalty. Some of them were okay, some sucked, and some were excellent. But you know, I never figured that just a few years later, I would be thinking, "This book would be so much better if that heroine was, you know. Male. And acted like a man."

Think about how much more rich and colorful the traditional M/F romance novel could be if there were two hot-headed men in the lead role. Actually, there are plenty of people who are thinking this same thing, as evidenced by the rise of the small publishing houses on the web that are specializing in M/M romance. I just wish someone had discovered this back when I was reading dime-store romances. Now, the novels I write are the ones I wish I could have read years ago.

And my heroes have more than one shirt.