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6 Things I Learned from Romances

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Romance heart in the sand6 Things I Learned from Reading Romances

I've mentioned it before, but when I set out on the Central Galactic Concordance journey, I read a lot of romances so I'd know what romance readers expect. Because my CGC universe also has mental talents (hence the title of my latest book, Minder Rising), an element that usually appears in paranormal romances, I made a special study of them as well. Here are six things I've learned from reading them:

romance plot devices
  1. If you want to attract a predator shifter, learn how to bake. Wolves and bears in particular have a weakness for any and all baked goods and the people who make them.
  2. All terrestrial males (and most vampires, shifters, and demons) have big-screen entertainment systems. Alpha males use them to watch sports; beta males watch movies; geek males play computer games, usually ones they wrote.
  3. Don't buy that antique mirror, ring, painting, or locked diary, regardless of how much they call to you, unless you're dying to find out what it was like in the days when they had no electricity, antibiotics, or indoor plumbing. And if you succumb and buy the object anyway, whatever you do, don't put it in your bedroom where you can dream about it.
  4. If you're rich and male, you earned your money by hard work, ruthlessness, taking a risk, and being smart. If you're a vampire, you've also made smart investments over hundreds of years. If you're a shifter, your pack/pride/herd is also wealthy. If you're rich and female, you inherited it, and are probably spoiled (but not too spoiled for your bodyguard to fall in love with you).
  5. If you're a billionaire, you have control issues, usually stemming from people who want your money instead of you, and occasionally because your parents sucked at parenting. You want people to love you even when you hurt them, tie them up, and degrade them.
  6. Don't touch the magic sword, unless you want it to try to eat your soul, shine like a blue-light special beacon, or make you a killer. Exception: it's OK if the sword belongs to that smokin' hot male main character — that's a different kind of magic sword.

What lessons have you learned?