Entertainment—whether it's books, music, TV, movies, or art—is a way for people to connect to those around them, escape from those around them, find an emotional touchstone, or simply entertain themselves. And since it's all entertainment, it's natural that the subgenres would blend into each other (it's not an accident that we cover TV and movies at Heroes and Heartbreakers as well as books—romantic fiction is spread across genres!).

It makes sense, then, that authors would get inspired by music, and vice versa. Many authors create playlists for the books they're writing, using the songs as a sort of Pavlov's dog to get them into the creative process. For example, in a post she wrote about the tracklist she did for Chaos Burning, Lauren Dane (whose twitter feed is filled with what she's listening to at the time) said,

Music is one of the things I use to keep my head in the story despite constant interruptions from kids, other books to deal with (copy edits, final pass pages, promotion, all that jazz).

[We got the beat...]

Lost Girl’s Dyson has had his fair share of ups and downs over the duration of the last three seasons. Now, with his love for Bo returned and Lauren seemingly out of the way, it looks like our favorite wolf is headed for an upswing. Sadly, we all know that things are never that simple, leaving Dyson’s future as anything but certain, especially when it comes to Bo.

Though hints have been made about Dyson’s age and events he’s lived through, we still don’t know much about his particular brand of Fae. Does he have a pack? It hasn’t really looked that way, but viewers definitely need more information before drawing this conclusion. What we do know is that he can growl with the best of them and posture in an alpha way about his relationships and their potential longevity.

It is also with some confidence that I can say there are as many fans of the Bo/Dyson combination as there are of the Doccubus union (especially around these parts). So, if you’re firmly planted on Team Wolf Man, rather than spending your time whittling wooden poppets to ensure the emancipation of Bo’s heart from Lauren’s medically certified grasp, here are some suggestions to help pass the time.

What to Read

Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson series. Mercy herself can transform into a coyote, but it is the wolves around her, particularly Adam, that demand the attention here. It seems that Mercy can find her way into all sorts of trouble, but with a werewolf and its pack being so close at hand, help is never far behind.

[Moar werewolves, if you please...]

No matter how many books you own or the size of your to be read pile, most of you continue to look for new books to read. Before online publishing and retail, chances are you browsed bookstore shelves at least once a month, if not more, to find your next great read. If you found an author you liked, maybe you did research on the author’s backlist or read excerpts in the back of books in order to supplement your to be bought list. Next, maybe you went to the author’s website to find out even more and to learn of future books.

But the book discovery process has been complicated by the changing landscape of the book market. The reduction of brick and mortar stores, shrinking inventories, advent of digital-first publishers, explosion in the sales of ebooks, dominance by online etailers, and the rise of self-publishing have all radically impacted the way that we discover new titles.

[How do you find new books?...]

Our reading matter says a lot about who we are, which is why recommending books to friends is such a nervewracking process. What if my friends hate my favorite characters or think I'm a weirdo for loving something in the first place? None of these worries apply to fictional characters, though, so here's what happened when our favorite characters from Westeros were let loose in a bookstore, and told to choose one book to pass the time between betrayals, beheadings and sexposition.

Cersei Lannister picked Madonna of the Seven Hills and Light on Lucrezia, Jean Plaidy’s duo of novels about Lucrezia Borgia. For obvious reasons, Cersei identifies heavily with Lucrezia!

Jaime Lannister was initially tempted by Kristin Hannah’s The Things We Do for Love, but settled on Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy, featuring Guy Crouchback, an idealist who discovers that war is hell. Based on Waugh’s own experiences during World War II, there are also hilarious moments in the books as well as great poignancy.

[These choices sound fitting so far...]

What's more awkward and anxiety-inducing than running into an ex-lover? It’s never going to be pleasant, and depending on who-dumped-whom, it can be downright painful. If it hits you like a gut-wrenching slap from the past, it’s not going to be something that you could easily brush off and forget.

We see this “meeting of the exes” in romantic comedies, and sometimes the television’s canned laughter can highlight the hilarity of the situation, while we’re cringing on the inside. In romantic dramas, we don’t need the canned laughter. Just leave us with the cringing and heartache. (Did anyone else go insane, during the Sex and the City series, whenever Carrie ran into Big?) Whether it’s running into your ex or running into your partner’s ex, remember that you’re supposed to take the higher road...unless you’re in a romance novel!

Romance novels can have extremely gratifying “ex” scenes, especially if the hero is meeting the heroine’s ex. In Romancelandia, the “running into the ex” situation usually looks like this:

[You know how it goes...]

Today we welcome author Rainbow Rowell to Heroes and Heartbreakers. Rainbow’s new release, Eleanor & Park, is an intimate account of two people falling in love for the first time. Rainbow herself points out that the main characters in her first novel, Attachments, spent most of the book apart, and she is just so over that. We asked her to share her thoughts on the most satisfying love stories ever, and she told us that, for her, it’s all about depth. Thanks, Rainbow!

I think when I was younger, I thought it was romantic when characters took an entire book or movie—or TV series—to find their way to each other.

I swooned over those first kisses that began just as the credits rolled . . .

Not anymore.

Now, if two characters take the entire story to finally kiss—I’m too fed up by that point to care. There are exceptions, of course, but usually these romances make me feel manipulated, jerked around. Bored.

This might seem hypocritical to anyone who’s read my first book, Attachments. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the main characters in Attachments spend most of the book very apart. In fact, it might have been writing that story that pushed me over the edge.

When I started writing, Eleanor and Park, I just wanted to get past all that. Eleanor and Park don’t fall in love right away, but they meet on the second page.

That’s what’s interesting to me now—and what formed the basis of the relationship in Eleanor and Park—not how characters get together, but what they do when they are together. I want to read and write about people falling in love, and people don’t fall in love in separate rooms.

[You want to see them earn that happy ending...]

I never danced seriously myself and didn't watch ballet; it was too slow, and there are no words. Then my kids started to take ballet. It very quickly turned into something serious. My elder daughter danced with great dedication for many years, taking class six days a week. All those classes came with parent observation—endless classes where you watch a room full of girls point their feet again and again while I sat on plastic chairs and wooden benches. But slowly (really, it took me years), I began to find the beauty of it. The more I learned, the more I appreciated the art. But—don’t tell my kids—class is still hideously dull to watch.

One of the things that made me grow to love it so much was the passion that of everyone involved: students, teachers, performers. Even the receptionists. Everyone there thought no amount of time, effort or money was ill spent. It’s easy to get caught up in the obsession.

That kind of passionate dedication makes for fascinating characters in a book. And for even more drama in romance, the dancers are ending their dance careers for one reason or another.

Ballerina Bride by Fiona Harper is probably my favorite ballet book for the way it portrays the life of a dancer. Allegra should be at the top of her career, but she’s floundering—personally, professionally, and artistically. Harper nailed that love/hate relationship that many dancers have with their art.

It might look effortless from the outside, but from the inside it was hard and demanding. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t pretty or nice. A fierce kind of beauty that asked for you very soul in return for greatness, and then devoured it without compunction.

[And then there's Finn...]

I blame Shakespeare.

Oh, the idea certainly predated him—Ancient Mythology, for example, is thoroughly populated with gods who disguise themselves as everything from some woman’s husband to a shower of golden rain in order to win their heart’s desire, or at least get some. And in absolute terms, Shakespeare’s women in disguise far outnumber his men—Portia in The Merchant of Venice; Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It; Viola in Twelfth Night; Hero in Much Ado About Nothing; the list goes on—but it is heroes in disguise with which we treat herein, and, as is the case with pretty much every romantic plot and subplot we see used today, this one has its roots in Elizabethan drama.

Because sometimes—pretty often, in fact—when it comes to Romance, it’s the liar who gets the girl.

In my list of Top 10 New York-Based Romantic Comedies, published in these pages lo, these many years ago, I made mention of how, at the end of You’ve Got Mail, the fact that Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) is able to so easily forgive frenemy Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) for knowingly being her secret pen pal crush is kind of hard to take, but “… you just let it go, let them have their moment, and try not to allow thoughts of their next fifty years of arguments culminating in ‘You closed down my mother’s store!’ enter your head.” It’s like that with so many of these tales; the fact that the hero has been lying to his heroine all this time can only be considered appalling, but on the other hand he really loves her now, and so allowances must be made.

[Love conquers all (objections)...]

Released in theaters on Valentine’s Day (because the kids need date movies, too) was Beautiful Creatures, the latest—though assuredly not the last—paranormal YA adaptation to hit our screens this year. Based up the book of the same name by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, it is the first installment in their Caster Chronicles series, the filmic version of which stars a host of pseudo-high-schooler hotness, plus the likes of Emma Thompson and Jeremy Irons. Should you go and see this movie? That, I cannot yet say, since it hasn’t yet made its way to my Australian shores. But should you read these books? Yes, yes, and yes again. At least, assuming you have any interest in this particular subgenre.

For a start, there is much that is unique about the Caster Chronicles—and when was the last time one could genuinely say that about a paranormal YA release? Oh, sure, the tropes are all present and accounted for, but let’s face it, we’d be disappointed if they weren’t: our heroine is a woman of great specialness; she and our hero have an instant, unexplained connection; there are eccentric families to contend with; there are dark secrets to be revealed; and there is an approaching Major Crisis, which only love can conquer. But where Beautiful Creatures and its three sequels (and one novella) differ from most everything else of its like on the shelves today is that our first-person voice is male.

[That is more rare these days...]

Happy Inauguration Day for our U.S. readers! (and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, too). Washington, D.C., is completely abuzz this a.m. with President Obama Inauguration 2.0. Speaking of swearing-in... What about in our romances? Actual swearing. In our romances.

Swearing can be excellent comic relief or stress—all that pent-up sexual tension! Swearing can also add a level of severity to a romance. Case in point:  The Black Dagger Brotherhood (BDB) is a minefield of F-bombs, sometimes for comic relief, but mostly for expressing anger and displaying testosterone.  

Sometimes, swearing in romances can add an extra urgency to the speaker’s message, and the payoff is even greater when the conversation is sexually charged. The characters are so overwhelmed with emotion and at such a loss for words, only profanity can help deliver their message. Our historicals can get bloody passionate and our paranormals can get fucking insane. Fans of Zsadist in the BDB series might remember this heart-aching scene:

“Make Love? Make Love?” He spread his arms out. “Bella... all I’ve got to offer you is fucking. You won’t like it, and frankly, I won’t like doing it to you.  You’re so much better than that.” —Zsadist, Lover Awakened

Damn. Did that make your heart skip a beat? (Or did the F-bomb ruin it?)

[Only you can say...]

It started with the release of Lauren Willig’s Garden Intrigue, an amazing book that switched back and forth between historical and contemporary—perhaps the very last place to find a Star Wars reference. But there was one.

It wasn’t something I really thought about again until June. After seeing Brad Paisley’s geektastic concert at Jones Beach, a country music show peppered with more references to science fiction movies and anime than a person could shake a stick at, I read Virginia Kantra’s Carolina Home. It was a lovely contemporary set in the Carolinas that created a firm foundation for a family series. And yet, for the second time in one month, for the third time that year, I came across an unexpected Star Wars reference. That made me think. The bottom line was that neither the Kantra nor the Willig were marketed to an audience that would be assumed to have the basis to understand Star Wars references. And yet there they remained, untouched.

It was food for thought until October. Because on a table in the middle of the Marvel booth at this years New York Comic Con, there were three different comics. One of them was a comic that was co-produced with Benefit, the cosmetics company. The content was discussed all over the universe, with strong voices on both sides of the debate. But it was there: Marketing comic books to people who up until that point, would never have been considered a target audience for comic books. And at the same time, marketing makeup to people who stereotypes insist wouldn’t be interested in it. Especially not to the degree that spending money on benefit cosmetics would require.

[Is the tide turning?...]

What do TV's Downton Abbey and Anne Calhoun's Liberating Lacey have in common?

Leading ladies with more wealth than their leading men.

In historical settings,  heroes who have more wealth and power than their heroines are the norm, and this makes sense, but in 2012, perhaps less so. Yes, women continue not to crack the glass ceiling at the very top, so I don't foresee wealthy women taking over Harlequin Presents novels—or those starring billionaires or multi-millionaires—anytime soon. But with more women than men graduating college and becoming doctors and lawyers, wealthy women are less of a rarity. 

In Downton Abbey, Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, was among those property-rich, cash-poor titled Englishmen who married an American heiress to secure and maintain the Earldom and Downton Abbey, the family's historic estate. Cora became the Countess of Grantham upon their marriage, and over time they came to love one another.

[A convenient AND loving marriage—nice...]

Like many of us, I've always been fascinated by magic and those who could wield it. I grew up watching Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie; I adored the comical situations these magical woman managed to find themselves in, showing that while magic was fun and entertaining, it’s not the end all solution to problems. As I got older, I enjoyed a darker storyline as on Charmed. This series follows three sisters who are the most powerful good witches of all time. Their prophesied destiny is to protect innocent lives against evil beings such as demons and warlocks. Each sister possesses unique magical powers that grow and evolve, all while they attempt to hold normal lives. The appeal was the normality of these characters. They worked, dated, mowed the lawn—no different than any other household on the block. Only, they also created spells, worked magic, and battled evil. Other shows I enjoyed that were created with witch/wizard characters and plotlines were Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Legend Of The Seeker, and Supernatural.

In literature, I find my taste in magic and fantasy runs just as dark. J.R.R. Tolkein, Terry Brooks, and Anne Bishop all feed my need for wizards and witches who walk a fine line between good and evil. Not always the nicest of characters, these characters are often thought as anti-heroes when in reality, they are merely doing what is required of them: Creating evil in order for good to triumph. More often than not, the protagonist in question is willing to sacrifice everything to save their friends, family, and sometimes the world, even when the methods they choose are not the norm.

[The sacrifice play makes up for a lot...]

When I was a kid, my mother and I had the regular habit of going to Sunday matinees after church. Then when I was in college, I worked at a video store during summer and holiday breaks, as did my husband. Between the three of us, we can quote thousands of movie lines. My favorites are comedies from the '80s and '90s.

I can watch a good movie over and over, just as I can read a good book over and over. My paperback books are well-worn, and well loved. I’ve even had to buy second copies of some of my favorites, specifically Julie Garwood’s The Prize, Peter Mayle’s Anything Considered, and Linda Howard’s Mr. Perfect. It's money well spent.

But if you’re like me, you can identify great books from a couple lines of text—or, at the very least, a couple great lines are enough to whet your appetite for more. Let’s test out that theory with a couple of movies first.

[What's in a line?...]

We've asked author Elisabeth Barrett to join us today to talk about why she thinks the smartest guys are also the sexiest. Elisabeth's new release, Blaze of Winter, features a tall, smart, and handsome novelist nicknamed “The Professor,” a masterminding whiz who plots his own happy ever after with a sweet stranger. Thanks for visiting, Elisabeth!

(See the end of the post to find out how to enter for a chance for behind-the-scenes limited access of a Net Galley review copy of Blaze of Winter!)

“Brainy's the new sexy.” —Irene Adler, Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia (Ep. 2.1)

I was going to call this post “Hot for Teacher” until I realized that all the hot professors I know probably wouldn’t appreciate being called out in a public blog post for attributes other than their intelligence. So I settled on “intellectuals” – it gave me a broader range with which to work – as a platform to discuss why intelligence is so sexy.

[Never underestimate the appeal of a big...brain...]

Today we welcome author Darlene Marshall, whose new novel Castaway Dreams is now available, to talk about the enduring appeal of castaway stories, and some of her favorites. Welcome, Darlene!

We’ve been fascinated by stories of castaways on desert islands ever since Odysseus washed up at Calypso’s feet. The idea of being out of place, struggling to survive against the elements, reinventing yourself, is a theme explored again and again in literature from The Odyssey to The Tempest to Robinson Crusoe to Lord of the Flies. Many of us read Island of the Blue Dolphins in American schools, a somewhat unique castaway story in that its protagonist is a woman.

It’s also a theme explored on stage and in film from the earliest days of silent pictures, with too many films to mention here. From literature we have a hand-tinted film of The Tempest in 1905, the first Robinson Crusoe movie in 1926 (my personal favorite is 1964’s Robinson Crusoe on Mars with Adam West in a very small role as the hapless 2nd astronaut), and Lord of the Flies in 1963. 

[Everyone loves a good castaway story...]

We asked H&H blogger Robin Bradford to share secrets from her day job as a librarian, where she’s the one deciding what books are bought for her library.

When asked to do a column on how I decide what books to add to the library collection, the task seemed both easy (I do this 40 hours a week) and impossible. There are collection development policies, and patron requests, choice of formats and item availability. There are differing philosophies: classic collection vs. contemporary and fresh; fewer individual titles but lots of copies of popular books, vs. a deep collection with fewer copies of the same book; hardcover titles only vs. trade paper vs. mass market (regular or premium tall edition). Did I forget to mention audiobooks? (Digital or CD or MP3 or Playaway?) And if you’re at all interested in libraries, you know the ebook battle that’s been going on the past few years has been epic, with no signs of settling any time soon. When faced with trying to describe all of that in a blog post, I nearly cried. So, here is a basic overview of things I consider when deciding what to add to our collection.

[Something tells me it may boil down to...]

Just a couple of years ago, I first read one of Georgette Heyer’s lesser known—indeed, often thought Lost—works, The Great Roxhythe (of which, read much more here). Set in the latter days of Charles II’s reign, it tells of a fictional courtier to the King who helps set in train many of the more notable political events of the day. Now, while this is far from my favorite Heyer—indeed, it is among my very least favorites, and I completely understand why the author herself refused to have it reprinted within her lifetime—it did impel me to do one thing but few of her others have: further research.

Before reading this novel, I knew barely anything about Charles II. I knew he had been sent into exile as a youth (another Heyer, The Royal Escape, deals with this), and that the song “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” is about him. I guess I could also have claimed passing acquaintance with his luxuriant locks, his love of a particular breed of spaniel, and his famous succession of mistresses; plus, I vaguely recalled a Robert Downey Jr. movie featuring him one time. But after reading this novel, I started reading up, learning all kinds of fun facts to know and share: my favorite being that, while he died without a legitimate heir, he had twelve illegitimate kids, one of whom is an ancestor of both Princess Diana and Camilla Parker-Bowles…and that Prince William, should he ascend the throne, will be the first direct descendant of Charles II in the more than three hundred years since his reign. (What? It’s interesting.)

[Calling all history buffs...]

I confess, despite its popularity, I’ve never seen the American version of The Office. The reason is this—I’m a huge Ricky Gervais fan. What I appreciate about his comedy is that he’s not afraid of being disliked; indeed, he revels in making his viewers uncomfortable. And within this discomfort is his edgy genius. I could be wrong, but I have a hard time believing that the Steve Carell, who always seems to emanate a certain ineffable sweetness, could ever match Gervais’s appallingly insensitive David Brent or would even try.

Just as Gervais doesn’t seem to care whether he’s considered likeable by his audiences, so too, British leading men also seem less concerned with appearing ‘perfectly’ handsome. I’m willing to bet you won’t see Clive Owen or Daniel Craig become freaks of plastic surgery like Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger in a desperate attempt remain box office beefcake. (Though of course, there will always be exceptions; I recently caught sight of Roger Moore in a made-for-TV Hallmark movie and he looks like the crypt-keepers fat-injected, botoxed older brother.)

There is something eminently more interesting about the imperfectly handsome hero. Perhaps its because we imagine we have a better chance of snagging him than we do of someone as eerily ageless and good looking as Tom Cruise? Or maybe it’s because the hero’s physical imperfections seem to be a reflection of the internal flaws that make him vulnerable, appealing, and ultimately worthy of the heroine’s redemptive gift of true love.

[Perfect’s boring...]