What fun to be featured today as a guest of Www.RomanceJunkies.com. Though they chose a tongue-in-cheek name, their elegant site reveals a multitude of cross-connected authors and readers actively engaged in every aspect of Romance Fiction.
Founded in 2003 by Kat Brown, the site now has 60 reviewers, scores of author links, ten categories, and 2,500 loyal followers who communicate with one another on a regular basis through forums, and 1 million hits per month.
A key part of the site is the Romance Junkies Blog, where I’m the featured guest today, www.RomanceJunkies.com/RJBlog/?p=1150, as are my new books When Hummers Dream (free e-book this month) and What the Heart Knows (hardcover next month). The blog is run by Kim Atehue-Eusella (a romantic French-Italian blend of her family name and that of her husband). An avid romance reader who balances her fiction-time with a full-time job, a husband and three kids, Kim fits perfectly the profile of so many of my readers: over-scheduled, multi-faceted, and cleverly committed to using good fiction to carve out some “me” time.
Kim’s questions for me on the Romance Junkies blog were terrific! Some were real writer-questions about plot structure and creative scheduling. Some were about Romance Fiction versus Women’s Fiction that’s romantic (where I fit in.) Some were about characters—do they surprise me; do I control them; which are most difficult to write.
And then Kim and I talked about why women read romantic fiction. I always find this kind of data interesting, because of the Reader Meter I’m creating. (More on that later). Her own reading, Kim reported, is “An escape from the rat race of real life. It’s relaxing, because it makes you think outside your own experience. It puts you in a different world.”
So escapism is at one end of my Reader Meter. What’s at the other? Value, inspiration, education. Kim went on to claim that side of the spectrum too. “You learn a lot, because authors bring different settings that I might not otherwise visit. Their books let me go somewhere else I might never have been.”
So Kim—and many of her blog followers—will be the next travelers to my little town of Milford-Haven, where I know they’ll find adventure, relaxation and, of course, romance!
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