Passion and Prose

Politics and Prose had what was billed as the first ever romance panel on Friday. As a local member of the romance community, I had met most of these authors before, which led to the feeling that this was just a great night with friends. Historical romance author Diana Gaston moderated, and led romantic suspense author Mary Burton, contemporary (and other) romance author Alisha Rai, contemporary romance author Tracey Livesay, and historical romance author Sarah MacLean through questions about writing romance. They talked about how romance was something that grabbed them early as readers. Livesay in particular mentioned that reading romance taught her to look for partners that treated her well and provided orgasms. Burton said romantic suspense allows her to write about the hope of love and the hope and happiness of justice. They talked about how much fun the research is, but to learn when you are researching just to avoid writing. Rai said the joy of the romance community is that she can find people to have dinner with wherever she travels. She said she was reminded that her job is to keep writing hope to fill up some reader's well. Livesay mentioned her next book involves amnesia, which we all know made me super happy. When asked about reader letters, MacLean said she heard from one woman who had her first orgasm after her husband read her book. Livesay said she heard from folks who had friends or kids in interracial relationships and found, reading her books, that it might just be okay. Rai said people felt seen reading about brown heroines or depressed characters for sometimes the first time in their life. Burton said people would tell her they read her book while going through cancer treatments. And Politics and Prose is also starting a Romance book group, which sounds great, and hopefully will lead to more great events like this. This also covered the evening.