An affair to remember
As award-winning author Anna Campbell prepares to unveil her third novel, the deliciously titled Tempt the Devil, she offers her perspective on why romance literature enjoys such a cult following.
Words MICHELLE McLOCHLAN
Ruthless tycoons. Chiselled torsos. Fiery damsels. Autocratic billionaires. Step into the world of romance literature, and you
enter a world of fantasy and formula, where happily ever after is never in doubt. From Texan ranches to exotic islands, private planes to passions long held in check, it’s not the stuff of Booker Prizes. But nor does it want to be. As one of the world’s top-selling genres, romance — as it has in Hollywood — has carved out an enviable niche in literature.
Pelican Waters author Karen Schwartz, who pens historical romance as Anna Campbell (another writer with the same name beat her into publishing), says people’s desire for romance dates back to the Stone Age. “I actually think romance is the basic story,” she explains. “It’s about the continuation of the tribe. The first stories people told each other were Arwen and Argett got married and set up a tribe. That happy ending is an affirmation that, if you suffer and if you’re strong and you show courage, you’ll get a happy ending. People read romance because they want that emotional sense of satisfaction.”
Anna says most people link thoughts and talk of romance books with the brand Harlequin Mills & Boon, an old favourite in the genre and one the now 47-year-old was introduced to as a child. “My mother actually gave me my first Mills & Boon when I was eight because I had read everything else in the house that was age appropriate,” she recalls. “But that was well before the sort of level of sexual explicitness you now get. I think they kissed on the last page.”
Certainly, the genre has come a long way. From sweet romances that could only hint at passion erupting behind closed doors, modern versions run the whole gamut, from chaste relationships involving single mothers to scorching affairs that leave little to the imagination. “The range of what you can get is unbelievable,” Anna explains. “Paranormal romance is really huge at the moment, such as the Twilight series (by Stephenie Meyer). The nice thing about that is you, as a reader, can find anything you want. It’s like going to a buffet.
“What’s also interesting is after 9/11, romance literature went through the roof. Erotic romance and the home and heart books were really popular. I was talking to a friend about this and they had an interesting idea that it was people going back to basics. In the US, what’s really huge at the moment is inspirational romance, Christian romance, which has no hot bits in it at all. It’s about people
finding love through a spiritual journey.”
Anna acknowledges romantic literature has its share of critics, from those who view it as the realm of bored, unsatisfied women to those who dismiss it as not real literature. It’s talk she takes on the
chin, unless you accuse her and her ilk of writing little more than soft porn.
“I don’t write porn,” she says. “I write sexy romance. There’s a vast difference between the reason people read porn and the reason people read romance. Romance includes a lot of sex, but you’re reading it for that emotional touch. Whereas people read porn to get titillated. With the romances I write, love scenes tend to increase problems, rather than solve problems. It tends to emerge organically from where it is with the story.”
While Harlequin Mills & Boon is the world’s largest publisher of romantic fiction, it is far from the only player. Anna has published her works — Claiming the Courtesan, Untouched and the upcoming Tempt the Devil — through Avon Romance, which pioneered the historical romance category. The latter, due out February 1, is part of the Superleader category, reserved for authors whose “stellar sales allow them to compete against non-romance titles”. It’s a fitting reward given she has sold a “substantial” number of books, although she won’t reveal the exact figure.
Anna says she was drawn to historical romance because she loved the idea of focusing on a relationship. “I loved the struggles of the relationship and then the happy ending,” she confesses. “I love
fairytales. There’s actually not that much difference with Beauty and the Beast and a Mills and Boon. It’s just a bit more steamy.”
Like all good things, Anna’s success did not come easily. After writing for 27 years, and giving up once, she was finally published in April 2007. “It’s very odd. When you do publish you never realise you’ll get fan mail. And I tell you what, getting fan mail is the best,” she says, unable to contain her beaming grin. Her missives come from people around the world, including the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
“They want to know what happened to secondary characters in the story, which is lovely, because it actually means the characters were real,” she says. “There was a dog in Untouched and I had so much mail about that dog. I think I could write a bestseller about the dog. Stephen King look out,” she jokes. Anna’s fans are drawn from all walks of life. “I actually don’t know if the stereotype of stay-at-home women being the target audience was ever true,” she says.
“A huge organisation in the US called Romance Writers’ America surveyed those who read romance and basically women of every single socio-economic group read them. I think that’s partly because you’ve got such a range now. There’s a school of thought that says romance is detrimental and oppresses women, and I actually don’t believe that. I think romance celebrates women. Most of the really good romances are about powerful female characters.”
Even men are coming on board. “What I’ve noticed is that some romance authors are actually being sold in Australia not as romance, but men are reading them.” Anna says she is proud of her work and doesn’t shy away from telling people how she earns a living. “When I was unpublished I used to strike a little bit of prejudice. Someone once said to a friend of mine ‘When are you going to write a real book?’ And she said ‘When they stop paying me pretend money for all these pretend books’,” she says with a laugh. “I personally think there’s great writing in romance and there’s great writing in all genre fiction.”
She pens most of her work in her study, a writer’s paradise overlooking a quiet canal. This is where she creates the love scenes sprinkled through her novels. “You don’t light special candles or anything like that,” she says with a laugh about getting in the mood. “I think what happens is you’re so deeply connected to those characters you’re basically going through the whole story with them. And the love scenes are part of that story. I tend to find clinical is quite boring. I think you draw from every single relationship you’ve ever been in for everything. You’re the sum of your own experiences — every single job you’ve had, every time someone’s broken your heart. That’s what you’re drawing on. But it’s not you living out your own fantasy.”
All of Anna’s books are set in the 1800s and involve lords and earls as opposed to chimney sweeps and the like. But it goes with the territory. “I think having those (powerful) types of characters is part of the fairytale,” she says. “If you write a historical novel and it’s about poor people, it’s very difficult to write an interesting story. Because back then they had no money, no transport and no choice. It’s about the fairytale element — there’s always a prince.”
Anna writes a book a year, with her third novel, Tempt The Devil, hitting Australian shelves out February 1. “I’m billing this as a Regency noir An Affair to Remember,” she says. “Like the (1957)
film it’s about a very sophisticated couple. She’s a courtesan and he’s a Regency rake, and the last thing they want to do is fall in love, but it hits them like a ton of bricks. And it’s about how they have to
deal with the fallout. It’s just been released in the US and I’ve had an awful lot of mail from people who have cried a lot, which
is just great.”
Unlike her literary creations, some might say the unmarried Anna has not lived her own fairytale. To them, her reply is simple. “I’ve always been a footloose and fancy-free person. The freedom of this life is fantastic.” And it is not hard to see her true love and, ultimately, happy ending, lie in the written word. “Books get you through bad times. I’ve always read and those books have been my friend through a lot of the time. There are things about the book that are just irreplaceable,” she says.
Story: Michelle McLochlan
As award-winning author Anna Campbell prepares to unveil her third novel, the deliciously titled Tempt the Devil, she offers her perspective on why romance literature enjoys such a cult following.
Words MICHELLE McLOCHLAN
Ruthless tycoons. Chiselled torsos. Fiery damsels. Autocratic billionaires. Step into the world of romance literature, and you
enter a world of fantasy and formula, where happily ever after is never in doubt. From Texan ranches to exotic islands, private planes to passions long held in check, it’s not the stuff of Booker Prizes. But nor does it want to be. As one of the world’s top-selling genres, romance — as it has in Hollywood — has carved out an enviable niche in literature.
Pelican Waters author Karen Schwartz, who pens historical romance as Anna Campbell (another writer with the same name beat her into publishing), says people’s desire for romance dates back to the Stone Age. “I actually think romance is the basic story,” she explains. “It’s about the continuation of the tribe. The first stories people told each other were Arwen and Argett got married and set up a tribe. That happy ending is an affirmation that, if you suffer and if you’re strong and you show courage, you’ll get a happy ending. People read romance because they want that emotional sense of satisfaction.”
Anna says most people link thoughts and talk of romance books with the brand Harlequin Mills & Boon, an old favourite in the genre and one the now 47-year-old was introduced to as a child. “My mother actually gave me my first Mills & Boon when I was eight because I had read everything else in the house that was age appropriate,” she recalls. “But that was well before the sort of level of sexual explicitness you now get. I think they kissed on the last page.”
Certainly, the genre has come a long way. From sweet romances that could only hint at passion erupting behind closed doors, modern versions run the whole gamut, from chaste relationships involving single mothers to scorching affairs that leave little to the imagination. “The range of what you can get is unbelievable,” Anna explains. “Paranormal romance is really huge at the moment, such as the Twilight series (by Stephenie Meyer). The nice thing about that is you, as a reader, can find anything you want. It’s like going to a buffet.
“What’s also interesting is after 9/11, romance literature went through the roof. Erotic romance and the home and heart books were really popular. I was talking to a friend about this and they had an interesting idea that it was people going back to basics. In the US, what’s really huge at the moment is inspirational romance, Christian romance, which has no hot bits in it at all. It’s about people
finding love through a spiritual journey.”
Anna acknowledges romantic literature has its share of critics, from those who view it as the realm of bored, unsatisfied women to those who dismiss it as not real literature. It’s talk she takes on the
chin, unless you accuse her and her ilk of writing little more than soft porn.
“I don’t write porn,” she says. “I write sexy romance. There’s a vast difference between the reason people read porn and the reason people read romance. Romance includes a lot of sex, but you’re reading it for that emotional touch. Whereas people read porn to get titillated. With the romances I write, love scenes tend to increase problems, rather than solve problems. It tends to emerge organically from where it is with the story.”
While Harlequin Mills & Boon is the world’s largest publisher of romantic fiction, it is far from the only player. Anna has published her works — Claiming the Courtesan, Untouched and the upcoming Tempt the Devil — through Avon Romance, which pioneered the historical romance category. The latter, due out February 1, is part of the Superleader category, reserved for authors whose “stellar sales allow them to compete against non-romance titles”. It’s a fitting reward given she has sold a “substantial” number of books, although she won’t reveal the exact figure.
Anna says she was drawn to historical romance because she loved the idea of focusing on a relationship. “I loved the struggles of the relationship and then the happy ending,” she confesses. “I love
fairytales. There’s actually not that much difference with Beauty and the Beast and a Mills and Boon. It’s just a bit more steamy.”
Like all good things, Anna’s success did not come easily. After writing for 27 years, and giving up once, she was finally published in April 2007. “It’s very odd. When you do publish you never realise you’ll get fan mail. And I tell you what, getting fan mail is the best,” she says, unable to contain her beaming grin. Her missives come from people around the world, including the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
“They want to know what happened to secondary characters in the story, which is lovely, because it actually means the characters were real,” she says. “There was a dog in Untouched and I had so much mail about that dog. I think I could write a bestseller about the dog. Stephen King look out,” she jokes. Anna’s fans are drawn from all walks of life. “I actually don’t know if the stereotype of stay-at-home women being the target audience was ever true,” she says.
“A huge organisation in the US called Romance Writers’ America surveyed those who read romance and basically women of every single socio-economic group read them. I think that’s partly because you’ve got such a range now. There’s a school of thought that says romance is detrimental and oppresses women, and I actually don’t believe that. I think romance celebrates women. Most of the really good romances are about powerful female characters.”
Even men are coming on board. “What I’ve noticed is that some romance authors are actually being sold in Australia not as romance, but men are reading them.” Anna says she is proud of her work and doesn’t shy away from telling people how she earns a living. “When I was unpublished I used to strike a little bit of prejudice. Someone once said to a friend of mine ‘When are you going to write a real book?’ And she said ‘When they stop paying me pretend money for all these pretend books’,” she says with a laugh. “I personally think there’s great writing in romance and there’s great writing in all genre fiction.”
She pens most of her work in her study, a writer’s paradise overlooking a quiet canal. This is where she creates the love scenes sprinkled through her novels. “You don’t light special candles or anything like that,” she says with a laugh about getting in the mood. “I think what happens is you’re so deeply connected to those characters you’re basically going through the whole story with them. And the love scenes are part of that story. I tend to find clinical is quite boring. I think you draw from every single relationship you’ve ever been in for everything. You’re the sum of your own experiences — every single job you’ve had, every time someone’s broken your heart. That’s what you’re drawing on. But it’s not you living out your own fantasy.”
All of Anna’s books are set in the 1800s and involve lords and earls as opposed to chimney sweeps and the like. But it goes with the territory. “I think having those (powerful) types of characters is part of the fairytale,” she says. “If you write a historical novel and it’s about poor people, it’s very difficult to write an interesting story. Because back then they had no money, no transport and no choice. It’s about the fairytale element — there’s always a prince.”
Anna writes a book a year, with her third novel, Tempt The Devil, hitting Australian shelves out February 1. “I’m billing this as a Regency noir An Affair to Remember,” she says. “Like the (1957)
film it’s about a very sophisticated couple. She’s a courtesan and he’s a Regency rake, and the last thing they want to do is fall in love, but it hits them like a ton of bricks. And it’s about how they have to
deal with the fallout. It’s just been released in the US and I’ve had an awful lot of mail from people who have cried a lot, which
is just great.”
Unlike her literary creations, some might say the unmarried Anna has not lived her own fairytale. To them, her reply is simple. “I’ve always been a footloose and fancy-free person. The freedom of this life is fantastic.” And it is not hard to see her true love and, ultimately, happy ending, lie in the written word. “Books get you through bad times. I’ve always read and those books have been my friend through a lot of the time. There are things about the book that are just irreplaceable,” she says.
Story: Michelle McLochlan
