“The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

Now how’s that for an appropriate Easter title! It’s all about renewal, represented to different people by different things, but renewed life is the common theme.

It’s also my take on the romance genre. The death of romance, pah. What’s down? Sales of mass market paperbacks. But what’s up? Sales of trade paperbacks and ebooks! I don’t believe for a minute that romance is in a downward trend. I think people’s buying habits have shifted to different formats, but it’s still romance that’s selling in trade and ebook. Um, and hardcover. Let’s not forget that one.

I hear all these grumbles about how this, that and the other thing is “killing” the genre. Romance doesn’t die easily. It’s about something central to who we are as human beings, the need to love and be loved. And it’s also about faith in the future, the “happily ever after”, the idea that life can be good and the future can be good. Not gloom and doom. So all this gloom and doom mumbo jumbo is just, well, anti-romance!

Yes, it’s hard to find a really, really good romance. It’s hard to find excellence in ANY field, which is why it’s sought after by consumers and strived for by the worker. In the case of romance, the worker is the author striving to get it right, to deliver the goods and achieve excellence and the consumer is the reader who wants the promises inherent in a romance to be fulfilled. There are awards and so on to recognize excellence in every field of human endeavor precisely because it isn’t the norm. The norm is “pretty good”. (And frankly, I find even a bad romance more enjoyable than two hours of TV or a bad book in any other genre. The last bad SF book I read made me foam at the mouth.)

I believe in love, and happily ever after, and that the future is a good one, because we have the power to change both the present and the future. As for me, I’ll just keep striving for excellence. Even if I never achieve it, it’s a worthwhile way to spend my time here on Planet Earth while I enjoy being married to my hero. That’s my happily ever after! I wish you all renewal and your own happily ever after on this Easter.