Remember Y2K? All those pre-New Year’s warnings about what might happen to the world’s computer systems? People were pretty calm about it, but many thought, hey, better safe than sorry, and stocked up on toilet paper and non-perishables. But as it happened, the giant looming what if turned […]
Most writers get into the Romance genre because they read it, and they read it because they love it. Each writer is drawn to the genre for different reasons, of course. Whether the concentration on character; the focus on primary relationships; or the essence of the triumph of […]
Romance and sports don’t mix. That’s the conventional wisdom, anyway. It’s one of those weird rules, hidden and unarticulated, that seem to underly any given genre. It’s a tenet that gets passed down to new writers, not as gospel so much as in the form of a mild […]
If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard that writing is a lonely profession I would (to misquote Stephen Colbert) have a hell of a lot of hypothetical money. But phrases don’t become cliches without reason, and the truth is that many writers spend a great […]
It kind of goes without saying that the Romance genre is full of tropes and archetypes (though just to be clear: the happy ending is not archetype, but architecture). Some come in plot form: the rags-to-riches story, for instance, a modern take on the Cinderella mythos. Sometimes they […]
We have saying in our bookstore: Frontlist may bring customers through the door, but it’s the backlist that brings them back. Book lovers are completists. Bookstores that can fill the gaps in their ever-increasing collections quickly become favourite stops. There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of putting it […]
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The Cultural Gutter 