Guest Blog by Meghan Kelly: I Write Romance Novels

As our first guest blogger to the Cynical Sarcastic, I'd like to welcome Meghan Kelly.  Meghan is a local Raleigh area author.  So far in her career Meghan has published two novels:  Cursing Fate and Clockwork, both of which are available for purchase thru Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and CreateSpace.  Meghan is a founding member of the Proud Failures Writing Group and is also a talented graphic artist and photographer.  She's got some great work presented online at http://callipe-jones.deviantart.com/gallery. Remember to show some appreciation folks and check out her work as well as post some comments!

So, without further ado, take it away Meghan!

I Write Romance Novels by Meghan Kelly

I write romance novels.  This is the most painful admission I can make when meeting someone for the first time.  This is my dirty little secret. 

I’ll be the first to admit, I do not look like a romance writer.  Most likely, I look like someone who should be writing dystopian post- apocalyptic tales filled with violence and zombies.  Lots of zombies.  And I do, on occasion, write such things with varying degrees of success. 

But when it comes down to it, I write romances.  I write love stories. 

There is a stigma attached to the genre of romance that is pervasive and enduring.  Romance novels = bodice rippers.  Full of gooey purple prose and unrealistic heroes and marathon sex scenes that are written with ridiculous euphemisms that would make any decent writer beg for mercy.  One of my personal favorites as an example – “purple headed warrior” for penis.  No, really; I’ve seen that in many books and laughed my ass off each time. 

I have read my share of bodice rippers.  Actually I’ve probably read a dozen other people’s shares as well.  I devoured these books as a teen and my first forays into novel writing resulted in the same cliché and metaphor heavy prose that now makes me want to vomit. 

So if I hate that sort of thing, you might ask, why the HELL do I write it?

Romance writing is a billion dollar a year industry.  1.35 billion in sales in 2010 according to Romance Writers of America.  That’s a hell of a lot of money for what some people consider to be a genre strictly for lonely housewives and crazy cat ladies. 

Romance is not the bodice rippers of yesterday anymore, children.  Some of my most vocal readers are men.  Contemporary romance has blown up the bookstores and pointed out that love comes in all shapes and sizes.  The writers I admire the most when it comes to romance; well I hate them as much as I admire them.  Nora Roberts is an industry giant and cranks out five books a year.  FIVE.  She has written over 200 books in her continuing career.  That’s mind boggling.  And yet, her plots, besides being the standard ‘boy meets girl’ variety, are intriguing (admittedly, some more than others) and her characters are not over the top fantastical beings, but REAL people with odd quirks and jobs and worries.  And Nicholas Sparks… well, that brilliant bastard can even make me cry and I’m as cynical as the Cynical Sarcastic. 

That’s not to say that the books of large-breasted, fiery-haired vixens, over the top heroes and improbably acrobatic sex no longer exist, they’re still produced in droves.  Just walk into your local bookstore and play ‘spot the lurid cover’.  They’re just not the only game in town.  And I’m terribly pleased.

So… why do I write romance if I don’t even like to admit I do it?

The easy answer is because I’m good at it.  Romance is what comes easily for me.  Is it what I want to write?  Yes and no.  I won’t say I don’t want to write love stories.  That’s in my blood and tattooed on my soul.  I’ve been brain washed by a lifetime of fairy tales and I like it that way.  I believe in romance and in the fairy tale.  I believe in love and heroes.  So I will always write about that.   As cynical as I am, as bitter and jaded I get, in the end, I still believe and hope I always will. 

Sex and attraction and unlikely plots are not the point of romance novels.  Love is.  The hope for it, the finding of it, the losing of it.  Love is the point and I’m all for it. 

I just won’t write the flowery, sickeningly Hallmark version of it because that, my darlings, is not how I’m made.  My heroes aren’t going to save the girl and then drop onto one knee and propose.  (Okay, maybe one did, but that was his own fault, not mine.)  My heroes are flawed and broken, just like my heroines, and their stories aren’t pretty, because I put them up trees and throw rocks at them until someone bleeds.

But at the end, it boils down to love.  And love is the most powerful and marketable thing out there. 

So, yeah.  My name is Meghan Kelly and I write romance novels.