Lost and Found is out!

When we picked the tag line for the Naughty Nine, “Breaking the rules between the covers”, I'll admit I was thinking of my book Lost and Found, which is out this week with Samhain.

Last week at the Bradford Bunch, I talked about this book and how it crosses genres and sub-genres, combining elements of women’s fiction, romance and erotic romance, and earlier this week I blogged at Cynthia Eden’s blog  about breaking the “romance rules”.

The Romance Writers of America provides this definition of romance:

Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending.

A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.

An Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

It’s the “struggles” that make each romance unique. We know there’s going to be a happy (or optimistic) ending, but there must be obstacles the characters overcome in order to get to that happy ending. The obstacles that can stand in the way of a couple falling in love and being together are endless. In this case, I chose to write about a very difficult one: one of the characters is already married.

Another key word is “relationship”. Relationships are an integral part of all our lives. A romantic relationship is probably the most significant because it is so deeply emotional. There is great reward but there is also great risk. Relationships fascinate me. I’ve written stories that explored relationships that get a second chance (Worth Waiting For), relationships that change (Friends With Benefits, Rigger) and relationships in crisis (Lost and Found, and my unpublished Breakaway). Certainly the issue of cheating and infidelity makes for a powerful crisis in a relationship,

One thing that differentiates romance from women’s fiction is the ending. Where romance definitions include an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending, including the relationship between the hero and the heroine as well as resolution of other plot points, women’s fiction can end with a woman not in a romantic relationship. One would assume that there should still be an emotionally satisfying ending, whether it’s happy or not.

By that definition, and without including spoilers here (!) Lost and Found is a romance. Two individuals fall in love and struggle to make the relationship work, and there is an emotionally satisfying (I hope!) and optimistic ending – but it may be different than you expect.