Defend Romance! Reading, Writing, and Randomness for February 2025

Oh, hey, this is like two weeks late because I had a LOT of thoughts this month. So I’m just getting right into it!

Reading

• Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

• In the Weeds by B.K Borison

• Love and Other Conspiracies by Mallory Marlowe

• Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

The discourse(TM) in the romance world has reached a tipping point where it’s moved into the mainstream in the form of think pieces about Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm, released a couple of weeks ago. Yarros’ Emperyean series follows a vaguely medieval but also kind of modern world at war. The bravest (or most foolish) in the society enlist themselves in a military college where, if they survive, they might get chosen by a dragon to bond with, and get a share of the dragon’s magic with it. That’s the story you enter in Fourth Wing, the first book in the planned five book series. But it’s not the story you wind up in by the end. At least, not entirely.

One of the numerous articles out in the past couple of weeks has become a focal point for a lot of the conversation. Its title: “Rebecca Yarros, Mother of Dragon Smut.” I’m not going to link to it here because [insert biggest eyeroll at that title] and also it’s not a great article (it’s a listicle, really). But just that title alone has hit on a lot of the divisive conversations when it comes to the Romance genre in literature at the moment, including:

• Women aren’t serious readers because they’re just reading glorified porn.

• Won’t someone think of the children? Books about dragons or with drawn figures on the covers are tricking our children into reading pornography!

• Women don’t write real fantasy; they just write romance with dragons and fairies and magic, oh my!

• People who read open-door romance novels are addicted to porn.

My short responses to each of these points can summarised in two words:

• Fuck.

• Off.

Yeah… I can’t leave it there, so here are some longer responses.

Women don’t write real fantasy; they just write romance with dragons and fairies and magic, oh my!

I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with reading fantasy in my life. I’ve never been a fan of Lord of the Rings, but Star Wars is one of my earliest fandoms (I will defend it as Fantasy more than Sci-Fi until I die!), especially the now retconned Expanded Universe. I always had a love for fairy tales and, moving into teen and adulthood, fairy tale retellings. But when a fantasy world captures me, MAN does it capture me hard.

I bought Fourth Wing over a year ago, a paperback picked up at Heathrow coming home from Christmas because I’d been hearing people rave about it. I finally picked it up and started reading it this Christmas and finished it by the time I’d arrived back in the states 10 days later. Its sequel, Iron Flame was on Kindle Unlimited and I picked that up on New Year’s Day and finished it in three days. A lot has been made of the sex sex sex in the book, but that’s not what had me tearing through them (really, there’s only ~3 sex scenes in each). What drew me in was the depth of the story and the world building. It’s hard to talk about the depth without going into spoilers, but suffice it to say, it’s incredibly relevant to these “historic times” we’re living through — and that is fully intended by the author.

The third book, Onyx Storm, expands that universe and mythology even further and also reveals Rebecca Yarros as an absolute GENIUS at plotting and foreshadowing. There are so many questions left unanswered at the end of OS, but I have full faith in Yarros that there is intention behind what we know and what we don’t know and trust that everything will pay off in the end. If that’s not masterful literature, I don’t know what is.

Women aren’t serious readers because they’re just reading glorified porn. 

First, fuck off with the “serious reading” bullshit. Do you want to know what the best-selling genre of books is? It’s romance. Onyx Storm in less than a week of release, sold faster than any other book in the past twenty years. It made more than any single movie at the box office in the same period of time. It takes two hours to watch a movie. It takes thirty fucking hours to read Onyx Storm and millions of people spent a week or less doing just that. Romance is, single-handedly, funding the rest of the publishing industry right now (and has been for a LONG time). You wouldn’t have your Pulitzer Prize winners without your Emily Henrys and your Harlequins because publishers would not have the money and the nerve to take on books that might not sell without the guaranteed money that Romance brings in. Honorable mentions to mystery and sci-fi, too, but Romance is the real GOAT.

Next, do you want to know what the sexiest thing about most romances (open and closed door) is for myself and most women? Love interests having open, trauma and therapy-informed conversations about what scares them and what’s driving them away from each other instead of a third-act breakup. Fictional men worshipping at the altar of a woman’s body and focusing on her pleasure. A man 👏🏻 who goes 👏🏻 to therapy 👏🏻 and does 👏🏻 the 👏🏻 work 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻. Conversations about consent and protection. Is there an element of idealization to these stories? Absolutely. But idealizing relationships that feel safe, secure, and respectful? Sign me up. And while I’m on that topic, I’m going to skip to addressing that last point.

People who read open-door romance novels are addicted to porn. Sex does not equal pornography. Depictions of sex do not equal pornography. Pornography is a social construct, to begin with, but even if we acknowledge that there is such a thing as pornography additiction, reading open-door romance does not equal that. What open-door romance (and feminist-minded pornography) does do is help people explore their sexuality, help people understand what might bring them pleasure, help women, in particular, understand that their pleasure is valid and deserved and that they are more than a vehicle for reproduction.

Read that again: it helps women understand that they are more than a vehicle for reproduction.

That is why open-door romance is scary to the right. That is why it’s becoming a catalyst for the most recent iteration of scare-mongering about what’s corrupting the women and children. Because it challenges the idea that sex is only for reproduction and women should not be concerned with whether its pleasurable for them or not.

Even if you don’t like romance books, YOU MUST FIGHT FOR THEM! You must fight for their authors! Because the folks who want to restrict content are starting with romance, but trust me… they won’t stop with it.

Writing

F1 Romance Progress

Over the holidays, I hit a bit of a block. I realized that I needed to know my F1 Season before I could really write much more of the story. So I sat down and plotted it out — when the races are, what the breaks are between races, what are the important plot points (both relationship and driving) that happen at each race? Once I’d completed that… the words FLOWED. Y’ALL! I think Plotting might be… a good thing?

My first draft goal was 40K words — primarily, I wanted to get the bulk of the relationship story down with that. Great news… I’VE MADE IT!!! At around 38K words, most of the relationship was down and I’d started on the race scenes.

My latest tally (Feb 15th) is just under 52K words! And the most exciting thing is that I’m learning such great things about my side characters and building their worlds, too. I’m so excited about this and I really can’t wait to share it with folks!

Other writing

A couple months ago, my critique group picked names, occupations, and character traits out of a methaphorical hat for a challenge. The goal was to use at least one (if not both) of these characters to write a short story with a theme of inequality.

I have a confession: I have failed at this challenge.

I’ve started two iterations of stories, gotten about 1500-2000 word down for each of them, realized I hated what I was writing, and stopped. My characters are a vet and a musician. But that’s not the problem. I could write a meet cute and a sweet little second chance love story between childhood friends who went different paths and a pet pig qho brings them back together, easy peasy.

It’s adding the layer of inequality on to that that’s throwing me at the moment.

I’m not going to write about racial inequality — that’s not my story to write. Writing about gender or economic inequality (inequalities that have been or currently are my stories to tell) feels… too heavy right now. Not that I shy away from social commentary in my writing (there’s a good feminist rant at the heart of most of my romances), but right now, as the news is cycling from horrible event to horrible event, chipping away at essential freedoms, trying to write about real inequality feels like too much. For me, at least. I know many other writers who thrive in moments like this, who process their despair through words.

I’m not there right now.

And taking the opposite tack and trying to write a “light” inequality… or flip the dynamics around somehow… it feels trite and unfeeling.

Maybe I’ll come back to this challenge again sometime. Maybe I’ll finish it out and have a story I hate, but that’s actually finished at least. Maybe I’ll turn the situation into something else. Maybe I’ll get to the point where I can write this inequality story. But right now, I’m throwing in the towel. And that’s okay.

… and Randomness

• Bookshop.org now sells ebooks!!! I’ve been wanting to try to divest myself from Amazon for my reading for a while now. But the ease and portability of my kindle was a little too hard to give up. I got an iPad Mini for Christmas, with the aim to replace my kindle with it. I use Libby for most of my reading anyway, and can just use the Libby app instead of reading with kindle. But for books I wanted as ebooks, I hadn’t found a good solution yet. Enter bookshop.org! I’ve already started stuffing my account there. I’ll still use the kindle app for what I’ve already bought there, but as many new ebooks as possible, I’ll be buying through them and kicking back to The Read Queen bookstore in Lafayette, CO.

See you again in a few weeks!