Tag Archives: thrillers

Puppy Love : Guest Blog by Jane Godman

Jane Godman, author, Libertà Award Winner

Jane Godman
Libertà Award Winner

Cover of Secret Baby, Second Chance by Jane Godman

Jane’s Prizewinning Book
Click image for Amazon

This month, we’re delighted to welcome a new guest, the winner of the Libertà Books Shorter Romantic Novel Award, Jane Godman. Jane writes thrillers and paranormals for Harlequin Mills & Boon and St Martin’s Press and self-publishes historical and gothic stories as well! Quite a range and certainly enough to keep her very busy.

Jane Godman is much travelled too. Born in Scotland, she’s lived in Germany, Wales, Malta, South Africa, and England. Jane says she still gets the urge to travel, but these days she prefers to head for a Spanish beach, or a European city that is steeped in history.

When she isn’t reading or writing romance, Jane likes cooking, spending time with her family, and enjoying the antics of her dogs, Gravy and Vera. For more about them, read on…

Puppy love — Vera’s Story

Jane Godman's Cairn terrier, Gravy

Gravy

He was unlike anyone she’d ever met before. A darkly handsome Highlander, with perfect features and melting brown eyes.

She wasn’t even going to try to pronounce his name, but it was intensely attractive to her.

Aloof and distant, he ignored her efforts to be friendly, turning away when she approached, and sometimes even leaving the room when she walked in. Continue reading

Love among the Thrillers: Alison Morton guests

Alison Morton, author of Roma Nova series of thrillersToday, we welcome our first guest blogger of 2017, Alison Morton, author of the acclaimed Roma Nova series. Her novels are set in the alternate reality of a breakaway Roman state that survived the fall of the rest of the Empire — and it’s run by women! There are six novels in the series, all edge-of-the-seat thrillers, but all involving at least one love story as well. So Alison is well qualified to blog here on the subject of…

lovers - but can love survive in thrillers?Love among the Thrillers

Love. Ah, love! Nothing like a breathless heroine falling into the arms of her strong, yet conquered hero.

Yes, heroes are conquered by that heart-pounding, visceral but tender feeling as much as heroines are. But that’s just in romances, isn’t it? The classic “happy ever after” ending?

Er, no. Continue reading

Wanna Wallow, Dear Reader?

Georgette Heyer’s endings

Re-reading some of my favourite Georgette Heyer novels recently — Dame Isadora snagged me as the minion to do the research for her blogs because she, being a Very Important Personage, had Better Things To Do — I was struck by how often Heyer brings her lovers together at the very end of her novels, sometimes on the very last page.

bride and groom pre wallow
Heyer might give us a chaste embrace. She might even give us a fierce kiss or two. And she often adds a shared joke.
But that’s about it.

What we don’t get in Heyer is a lovers’ wallow.

What’s a wallow?

I’d describe the wallow as a shortish section at the end of a love story where the reader sees the lovers together and passionately in love — both of them trusting and relaxed and happy. Sometimes the lovers are married, sometimes they have had children, sometimes they are simply enjoying each other.

wallow on tropical beach

 

 

It’s the Happy Ever After ending shown right there on the page for the reader to savour.

 

 

Some readers love a wallow. Some readers even feel shortchanged if a novel doesn’t have one at the end. But readers still love all those Heyer novels that don’t have the merest hint of a wallow. So…

Does a love story need a wallow?

Continue reading