Susan Amanda Kelly on Romance Readers

According to the Romance Writers of America, the romance genre makes up thirteen percent of adult fiction sales. In money terms, that translates into more than one billion dollars in sales. But romance readers and writers are treated like the embarrassing cousin of genre fiction, the relative you secretly unfriend on Facebook.

A Google search for ‘why do women read romance’ returns one-hundred-and-thirteen million results. The articles are a vigorous defense of the habit, explaining that ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ women read romance. Other articles claim ‘feminists’ read them too. Really, they’re not ‘emotional porn.’ There are assurances that romances are harmless right next to warnings that your partner reading a romance spells danger for your relationship. Somewhere out there is the unspoken assumption that caused this flurry of defensive articles: romance readers are dim throwbacks consuming emotional porn to make up for unsatisfying relationships rooted in their unrealistic expectations!

I searched for ‘why do men read detective novels’ which returned 24 million results, less than a quarter of the number of articles about romance readers. The articles I sampled were not a defense of a detective fiction habit. We don’t assume that detective fiction readers are dim cop-wannabees consuming judicial porn to make up for the lack of order in their lives.

Romance teaches you about love. Most importantly, it teaches you to expect to be loved. It teaches you to respect and to demand respect in a relationship. It teaches you about sex. Desire is normal. You can wait for The One, not wait for The One, or enjoy lots of Ones. It teaches you that you can survive hard times and that soon, it will be a new day and the sun will come out. Romance is about the triumph of heart.

So take up your pitchforks, romance readers and writers. Turn that treasured Fabio cover into a giant protest poster. Let your bosoms heave. Flip your hair. Let’s march on the newspapers who won’t review romance, and the journalists who write defensive articles about our habit. We’re loud and proud and pink and we’re coming for you!

Title: On The Run by Susan Amanda Kelly
Genre: Romance / Adventure / Comedy

Synopsis

Minerva Coolidge, a top east coast lingerie model, has been ordered home to the west coast by her over-protective, occasionally psychotic family. Daddy’s outlaw motorcycle club is embroiled in a war and Minnie is too valuable a pawn to leave in play. But Minnie refuses to give up her new life. She’s about to star in the biggest fashion show of her career. Her brother asks an old army friend, Big Mike, to guard her until they can fetch her home. Minnie thinks Big Mike is too big, too muscled, too tattooed, too tough… too everything. He’s exactly the kind of man she moved across country to escape; the kind who thinks he knows what’s best for her; the kind who doesn’t belong in her glossy, perfect, new life; the kind she shouldn’t want…

Big Mike thinks keeping a nitwit fashion model safe long enough to hand her over to her family should be easy for an ex-biker, ex-Special Forces commander who outweighs his charge by at least one-hundred-and-fifty pounds. Except the pretty nitwit isn’t a nitwit. Each time he takes his eyes off her, she flees, plunging headlong into trouble. Big Mike quickly realizes he doesn’t want to take his eyes – or his hands – off Minnie Coolidge…

Purchase On The Run on Amazon

About the Author

Susan Amanda Kelly loves making up stuff in her head. She drives her husband to distraction by suddenly stopping, mid-conversation, and staring off into space. She once spent five hours at sea, on a boat, muttering: “Where would he hide the body?” She hopes the video footage of that trip has been wiped. She finally decided to put the characters that inhabit her head, onto paper. It was like opening the door on a lunatic asylum… glorious bedlam. She hopes her readers come to love her characters as much as she does. She writes funny romantic adventures. And her husband is convinced her male leads are based on him. Not the body-hiding psychopath, of course.

Connect with the author: Website | Newsletter