Used to be that few if any historical romances were set in France, particularly prior to the Revolution. I remember an article from the RWR a few years back titled along the lines of, “What’s Wrong with France?” If I recall correctly (and I likely don’t) the article talked about taking risks that could pay off – no one wrote about sports figures as heroes until Susan Elizabeth Phillips came along, so who knows if you’ll tap into the next big thing?
French settings for historicals, however, were different – because if you know your history, you know what happens to many of the royals of France. Same with other historical revolutions and tragic events. In the end of a romance set in Rome, the hero and heroine go off to live in Pompeii and my first thought was, “Y’all need to move!” It’s like throwing cold water on my nice warm fuzzy happy ending.
France and sports aside, I had an email from a reader who had an interesting question about a similar risk in characterization and setting. Emily asks:
I’m formulating an idea for romance novel at the moment, but I’m wondering if I’ve shot myself in the foot right out of the starting gate in deciding to make my heroine HIV+, and aware of the fact. Given that I’ve yet to see a romance novel that so much as winks at herpes or even something curable like gonorrhea, I was wondering if it was pointless to even begin to tackle the idea. I’ve heard of True Love overcoming all odds, and I’d like to see that theory tested. COULD love overcome something so massive as Lingering, Painful Death in a Thong and Holding Champagne? Granted I’d already begun working on how I would or could justify ANY sexual contact, and there’s definitely no simple answer in sight.
What are your thoughts?
My thoughts: HIV status and STDs are two different matters entirely, and oddly enough, in my opinion, the former that’s presently incurable is more of a possibility for a romance novel hero or heroine than the other, cured or not.
I think there are a few HIV+ heroes in gay romance, but in the gay community, being HIV+ is less likely to be read as an automatic Death Sentence. There are many who have been HIV+ for decades, and I’m willing to bet that there are some romances wherein one of the characters is HIV+.
However, no matter how you slice it, HIV+ status gets in the way of a guaranteed happy ending, because there’s an implication that the person will die and the reader knows the likely how and why.
That said, I know one of my very favorite movies, Jeffrey, starring Steven Weber, is about a gay man who finds love with an HIV+ man – after he decides that sex is too complicated in the age of AIDS and decides to give up on love and sex entirely. That movie had multiple couples dealing with HIV status of varying severity, and it is still a poignant but absorbing story with a wonder set of romances in it. And I believed in the happy ending without hesitation.
But as for STDs, like gonorrhea or chlamydia, I’d say that much harsh reality gets in the way of the happy ending even more, both in the sexual sense and the conclusion to the novel. The mental image of pus or weeping sores or a little burning when you pee? So not romantic. Even if it’s curable, even if it’s in the past, that kind of mental image wouldn’t work for me – and it would taint my perception of the hero and heroine.
This is all speculation, however, because I haven’t read a romance wherein the hero or the heroine had a tango with some antibiotics after a night with Mr. or Ms. Social Disease. I am curious what ya’ll think – is this an insurmountable romance taboo? Or has it been done and in the hands of the right author, anything’s possible?
As the real life wife of an Airborne Soldier who spends his free time as a volunteer firefighter (yeah, seriously): I, um, kinda *need* to believe in those ones.
I can let you know right now the odds of selling that story are impossibly high—against. People in publishing have also lost friends to HIV, and they’re well aware it’s hot button and too much of a downer for their target audience.
One of my friends had a REALLY well written novel where the heroine is searching for her lost brother. She had to have a kidney transplant or she would die. There was romance, adventure, the works. But, she never found the brother, he was dead. She went off to make the most of the time she had left, so it had a wonderfully upbeat ending.
It was rejected every single time.
In frustration, she changed the kidney disease to a metaphysical one (infected with an always fatal demon-mark) and suddenly the publishers are fighting over who gets to print it.
That book (originally “Looking for Lewis” morphed into “Ill Wind” the first of the Weather Warden urban fantasy series by Rachel Caine. She’s got a shiny new contract to produce the next three books.
I’m just sayin….
I could imagine and STD as a complication in a contemporary, but not in a historical. A character with syphilis in the pre-antibiotic era would just make me remember the photos they showed us in health class of what happens after 20 years. And that’s not including the “go batshit insane” part.
P.N…Yeah, well she lost track of her plot. I haven’t read the last several and probably won’t read the next three either.
For myself, if the reader reviews were really good, I would choose HIV over NASCAR any day. It’s all about good writing, so a newbie likely wouldn’t have enough name recognition to get read.
The title Ill Wind makes me think Caine’s book is about disgestive issues.
Teddy Pig wrote: “Well, I do like vampire romances, but I do not equate a fictitious infection with a blood sucking eternity to a real incurable sexually transmitted disease that will eventually kill you. Not especially when it has been a huge part of my life as much as it has.”
I didn’t mean that everyone should think of them that way or that it was even a good thing. It was a random thought that leapt into my brain while reading comments. I don’t think every author or reader of vampire (or werewolf or whatever) fiction thinks of it as a metaphor for AIDS or any other incurable disease – vampires have been around a lot longer than AIDS has and even longer than people going insane from syphilis, though probably not as long as the plague.
I was originally thinking along the lines that vampirism is infectious and incurable (in most legends), that vamps are usually described as killing more people than they turn into vamps, and that vampires are feared and shunned (though those who are HIV+ are no longer feared to the same degree as in the 80’s). Oh, and vamps have to feed regularly on human blood and will be weak and sickly or even die if they don’t have it.
The metaphor definitely breaks down when the vampires get super powers and get to live forever instead of taking meds several times a day and having a reduced life expectancy.
I was discussing this topic with my husband, who helpfully pointed me in the direction of a Monty Python song on this theme. It’s called “Medical Love Song”. The lyrics are here and explanations of all the medical conditions mentioned in the song can be found here.
I just sold a book where one of the heroes passes gonorrhea to the other, both unaware until their medical check-up.
The passer had no real choice in his contracting it. The recipient got a stern lecture from his doctor for not practicing safe sex as much as he should have.
So no, STI not interfering with happy ending, just giving a chance to make some character development happen.
As I read primarily for escapism, my preference in romance books is a balance of fantasy/fairytale and realism, with the fairytale elements winning out by a hair. What tips the balance out of whack one way of the other is very subjective. Fer instance A Man Like Mac is a *romance* I would be interested in reading, but for the most part I have *no* interest in reading a romance with STDs as a element of storytelling. Although… I could see it playing out to comedic effect as outlined by someone in an earlier comment in this thread. Goes without saying that the STD in that case wouldn’t be something as serious as HIV.
Please make the distinction between a “disease” and a “disability.”
Sometimes, they converge: MS, for example.
But to lump HIV/STD’s with, say, paraplegia is just ignorant.
(I have a distinct bias in making this observation; my wonderful husband is a paraplegic, and he thought “A Man like Mac” was just a little too “detailed” when I read some passages to him. He didnt’ think it was romantic.)
Having read the end of Ill Wind, the um…not exactly 100% permafatal ending of it makes me think that had something to do with it selling as well. If you throw in paranormal aspects, the heroine has a chance to survive (somehow…), and thus it’s less depressing.
That said, it boggles my tiny little mind that Ill Wind started out as a realistic novel. Whoa.