Usually it is not amusing when someone steals your writing. It’s a matter for heated phone calls, for cease and desist letters, and for expensive lawsuits. But the plagiarism scandal du jour is actually funny. Seems a sex advice column had a new writer, and the writer, not having received any letters with questions yet,  … Read more

Usually I try to keep to a light tone to these entries, even if I have something serious to say. But the flap over Cassie Edwards, a longtime writer of florid historical romances featuring Native Americans, is not something to ignore or just joke about. Internet search engines have allowed some alert readers to discover  … Read more

Here it is, early January, and everybody is dieting. Or maybe everybody has already fallen off their diets, which were sworn to on New Year’s Day while nursing a holiday hangover. Too much partying. Too much buying of gifts. Too much decking the halls. The period after New Year’s Eve has become a traditional trough  … Read more

At this time of the year, most of us have just given presents, written cards, or e-mailed all our friends and our relatives with the season’s greetings. Sometimes the lists have to be pared. We have fallen out of contact with someone. Or their lives and ours have diverged and we find we have nothing  … Read more

Finished your Christmas preparations? Turns out you can thank the Victorians for Christmas Day becoming a big deal as a family celebration. Prior to their time, there wasn’t the major compulsive present exchanging and family feasting in our country on that day. The Victorians are about as well known for excess as they are for  … Read more

I just remembered a manuscript that I read many years ago, and I can’t resist sharing. But so as not to sully my prior blog entry, I’m making this a separate one. Yes, I once read what possibly was the worst cute meet for a hero and heroine EVER. He was being treated at a  … Read more

The cute meet is a cliché of romances. It goes something like this: The heroine is having a bad day. Not only has she snagged her absolute last pair of pantyhose already, but she’s late for an important business meeting—probably a job interview for a job she desperately needs in order to support her orphaned  … Read more

When I look for a romance to read, the author’s choice of locale matters to me. And to most readers. It isn’t enough to describe a romance hero as a haughty Spaniard. It’s important to describe Spain, to show the place that made this man this way. A story about a coolly remote Frenchman would  … Read more

Friedrich Schiller was a German playwright of the 18th century who delighted in making up behavior by historical figures that simply never happened. And he did it so well that even today, other dramatists prefer his false version of events to the truth. And so does the audience, whether it be for a play, a  … Read more

At my dentist’s the other day, I wondered why he wasn’t playing the usual 1950s rock and roll he likes. He said indignantly, “There’s no 1950s music left!” Broadcast radio today is very straight-jacketed and owned by very few companies. Somewhere, some executive issued a memo, and now it’s nearly impossible to find a station  … Read more