triflesandparsnips:

star-anise:

rhysiana:

des-zimbits:

There’s something definitely… ironic… when a bunch of fanfic authors sit around and laugh about how “trashy” and “shitty” historical romance novels are.

Like honestly, this is part of why I haven’t written more of any of my historical AUs: if you’re gonna laugh about it and talk about how ridiculous and lulzy the genre is, I do nooot want to crank out more for you to be snidely ironic about.

If I’m writing something, it’s because I believe in it. Even if I know it’s cracktastic and not up to high artistic standards–I’m doing it because I believe that spontaneity and play are important in creative communities.  But it knocks me down every time someone acts like the stuff I make is worthy of contempt or mockery.

I have some thoughts about this! Because before I got into fanfic back in, like, March of this year, I had spent the previous six months getting heavily into historical romance and following a number of the current big names in historical romance on Twitter. And let me tell you, those authors? They know their shit. There is no discrete genre that takes its craft *and* its publicity as seriously as romance. I was a witness to the shit show that was the controversy about the SFWA newsletter, and let me tell you, when the dust cleared and people started actually trying to be constructive in their thoughts about how to create a real professional publication? They pointed to the Romance Writers of America, because their newsletter treats all its subscribers like the professionals they are.

And the historical romance writers? They are even more amazing to me, because they do so much incredibly detailed research. Even if their book ends up being a fun, rompy, very-nearly-AU, you better believe they know their historical facts. Do you know another genre where the authors regularly teach themselves to sew and wear accurate period clothing so they can describe ball scenes correctly?

Anyway… I feel like I’ve picked up a huge amount about the craft of writing from both the fanfic and romance writing communities, both of which are generally dismissed for containing sex and feels, so instead of writing each other off, let’s band together! In that spirit, if people would like to read some kickass historical fiction, allow me to recommend some authors:

Tessa Dare: Her Spindle Cove series features a small English coastal village functioning as a haven for
women in need of refuge, whether it be due to scandal or spinsterhood or
poor health or any other oddity, such as excessive independence of
spirit. However, I think my favorite book of Dare’s so far may actually be the latest one in her Castles Ever After series, When a Scot Ties the Knot,
(which can be read as a stand-alone,) because it features a young woman
who establishes a career as a scientific illustrator after avoiding
marriage by faking engagement to a soldier she made up… except all those
letters she sent off into the void to sell the story to her parents
actually went somewhere. So adorable! So hilarious! There’s even a
romantic sub-plot featuring lobsters.

Eloisa James: This particular author is, for her day job, a Shakespeare professor, so you best believe she understands research. Her books are… amazing. Her Desperate Duchesses series is set in the Georgian period (ie, when Hamilton is going on across the sea), and if you long for some men with equally ridiculous fashion sense as the women, look no further. But that’s just a side note; the thing that really makes her books stand out (to me, anyway) is how well she can write unhappy married couples realistically overcoming miscommunications, sometimes years in the making, to fall in love with each other, either for the first time or all over again. Furthermore, in her Fairy Tale retellings series, she doesn’t romanticize what it’s like for virgins with no sex ed to try to navigate their way through things. (Seriously, read Once Up a Tower, it will change your whole conception of romance novels.)

Courtney Milan: Read her Regency-era Brothers Sinister series. The whole thing. The female characters in these books! They are the best! And the male
characters, too, yes, they’re good. But the women all have such
amazingly interesting lives and stories! There’s a chess champion, an
intentionally socially off-putting heiress, a female biologist (and the
man who presents her work to the public), and a suffragette newspaper
editor. Plus the ebook “box-set” comes with all the side-character novellas already
interleaved. And each book has historical notes at the end, which I found fascinating. I love the balance Milan creates between witty character banter and their attempts to address serious societal issues of the times. (She’s also started a modern series about a not!Apple tech company that I am eagerly anticipating the next installment of. Interracial couples! Trans characters! Trading places plot devices!)

Sarah MacLean: I was instructed to start with Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake,
which I did, and oh, the wonderful hijinks that ensued! As if the title
wasn’t a clue. These are again Regency romances with intelligent,
dissatisfied women who decide to take their lives into their own hands. The Love by the Numbers series then leads into the Rules of Scoundrels series, and while each book tells its own romance, you’ll pick up so much more background gossip between the characters and amazingly delicate and interwoven worldbuilding if you read everything in order.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Not actually usually shelved in the romance section, since what Kowal writes are historically-based fantasy novels, but her attention to detail is impeccable. She’s the one who taught herself to make Regency gowns and does all her readings in period costume, down to the shoes and undergarments. She built a custom spellchecker to flag any word not actually used by Jane Austen for her first series, which started as pastiche but quickly gained its own momentum. The worldbuilding is meticulous; everything is period-correct Austen/Regency, until it’s not, because she created a magic system that works with the time and culture, but also changed the time and culture just by existing. She thought about everything. Her new series is set in WWI, and looks at how the war might have been different if spiritualism had been true, ie, what if there had been a corps of women receiving battlefield reports from recently deceased soldiers? I just finished this one, and the level of detail is true #authorgoals.

Meljean Brook: These are actually steampunk romances (rather than true historicals) with an amazing amount of alt history
worldbuilding, but the impression that stuck with me after reading them
was that Brook was putting on an absolute master class in how to do
character-driven plot. Nothing in these books is gratuitous. No detail
of the world is ever revealed unless a character has a reason to be
thinking about it, no interaction the two people involved in the romance
has is done simply for the sake of drama. The people are the story–and they just happen to also be police detectives and sky pirates and treasure hunters. Brook has also clearly put a lot of thought into the various power
structures of her world, and while the books can be viewed through the
lens of romping adventures on airships, she is also addressing serious
themes such as the aftermath of slavery and colonialism, racism,
ableism, and attitudes towards homosexuality.

I could go on, but I’m going to stop here. I have a lot to say about books, clearly.

I also love Alexis Harrington, who writes detailed, wonderful, thoughtful books set in places like Oregon, Washington, and Alaska in the late 19th and early 20th century, and Joanna Bourne, whose series on British spies in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France is absolutely amazing.

All of this, and more. Every trope you love in fanfic? You can find it in romance novels. And I mean that in a completely non-lolzy way – it’s *fantastic*.

But more importantly: The idea that romance is some kind of lesser art than other genres should sound really familiar, guys.