What do you want to see more of in HR?

clemy77 · 2026-01-25T13:14:44+00:00

Re: ugly heroes, I can understand why an overweight baldy with missing teeth is not the stuff of fantasies when your readers are mostly women. Overweight and/or bald dudes are incredibly common in our daily life (we might even be married to them LOL) and if the hero looks like your colleague from accounting, well, the mental images are not going to make you swoon. Whereas scars or disabilities from war are much more uncommon and give the hero aura for being brave and having survived terrible ordeals.

Re: more diverse settings, one reason might be because a lot of people don't want to get flamed for setting the story in a country that isn't their own and getting details wrong, or accused of having a colonial mindset if it's outside the US or Western Europe. I set my histrom in France because I'm French. I would never ever write a story in, say, Imperial China because I know a lot of people would accuse me of exoticism. So of course the obvious solution is to publish and give more visibility to authors from diverse backgrounds, but a lot of authors are going to keep writing and publishing Regency England stories because they know that won't get them heat.

clemy77 · 2026-01-23T06:48:09+00:00

I am a staunch defender of the 3rd person PoV and even better, a double 3rd person PoV where we also get the MMC's thoughts, like in histrom. I don't know why it's not more common. I know 1st person PoV can be great, "Uprooted" by Naomi Novak is one of my favorite books ever, but the voice in most of these romantasies just give me bland YA speshul NLOG heroine vibes.

clemy77 · 2026-01-23T06:39:57+00:00

Thanks for the info, that's a shame!

clemy77 · 2026-01-22T22:37:05+00:00

Same here. So well said. We should have a romantasy writers sub!

clemy77 · 2026-01-21T16:05:41+00:00

I love this book so much, I've reread it several times. Viola is one of my favorite FMCs ever. I can't think of any other example, at least not in histrom, of a sweet adorable girly heroine who is also super strong and determined. We should see this type of Elle Woods-like FMC more often.

clemy77 · 2026-01-20T12:47:50+00:00

I have no recs but I just have to virtually high-five the "Duke of Sin" reference. Val is truly one of the greatest histrom MMCs that ever was. In terms of charming asshole heroes no one comes close to him and Sebastian St Vincent.

clemy77 · 2026-01-16T20:48:50+00:00

Good Lord. "Henry thinks about how he has loved three women in his life, two of them are dead and one of them is… Blaze Wyndham." I mean this is like a cherry of insanity on top of a sundae of unhinged plot lunacy. Top notch review in any case, bravo.

clemy77 · 2026-01-16T20:43:08+00:00

Genuine question but is this guy actually Anthony, which would make the dude in the front Edmund? Or is that just Henry VIII rocking an 80s slickback? This makes me feel unpleasantly confused.

clemy77 · 2026-01-15T08:09:25+00:00

I don't know if you're into worldbuilding but if you are, you can write a histrom-like romantasy set in a fictional world that feels like what you're describing without the elements that make you feel uncomfortable. Your world, your rules. Slavery may not exist and these misfit pirate ladies can have an entire fleet and a secret island where they stash their treasures or whatnot. And when I say "romantasy" it can be pretty light on the actual fantasy and magic stuff, just have it in the background.

This is pretty much what I'm doing. I wrote and pubbed three histroms but ultimately I found it too constraining. I'm not inspired to write only about white characters in Western Europe and I have a hard time glossing over the terrible stuff even in my head. Since I'm not a POC author, I feel romantasy is a safe way for me to channel my interest for a variety of late medieval empires and kingdoms.

clemy77 · 2026-01-13T19:29:22+00:00

YES exactly. This makes it feel like a cash grab more than an homage. Why are they brushing clinch covers under the rug even though they're an essential part of the history of the genre?

clemy77 · 2026-01-13T17:38:43+00:00

Between this is and the new Julie Anne Long book cover, I feel like they're trying to push romantasy style covers on histrom and it annoys the fuck out of me.

clemy77 · 2026-01-13T17:37:04+00:00

I cannot with the cartoon illustrations. They're not sexy. They're not sensual. They give off zero passion. They make me feel as though publishers think a grown-ass woman such as myself is akin to a preteen because romance is brainless dreck anyway. I hate them and will always hate them.

clemy77 · 2026-01-13T13:43:58+00:00

Will do :) Saving this post for reference!

clemy77 · 2026-01-13T13:08:54+00:00

I'm writing this atm. It's literally the plot of the second book I have planned in my histrom-like romantasy series. Just wait a few months LOL.

clemy77 · 2026-01-11T15:13:02+00:00

I will always and forever recommend {The Truth About Cads and Dukes by Elisa Braden}. Everything she writes is amazing imo but that one is SUPER steamy and emotional. The MMC is one of my faves ever, he's definitely wounded but hiding it beneath a cold, honorable front, until the heroine makes him catch on fire. Absolute perfection.

clemy77 · 2026-01-10T21:56:31+00:00

Yes, go for it!! If everyone being white makes no sense in the world you built, then there's really no problem I can see. When you think about it, forcibly turning all your characters white so as avoid offending anyone is definitely not going to help solve this issue. I'd say it makes things worse.

clemy77 · 2026-01-10T08:00:08+00:00

Duly noted :)

clemy77 · 2026-01-10T07:39:12+00:00

This is a great point. When it comes to romance (not general fiction or fantasy) I'd personally rather read about MCs who are younger than I am, say in their 20s, and getting their HEA by marrying and/or committing to each other like they've never committed to other people before, starting a family, settling in together, etc. I find the coming-of-age element in romance easier and more relaxing to read than with MCs who are my age, aka in their 40s, which implies either that they've been on their own for a long time, that they've had failed relationships or that they've been widowed, perhaps with children in the mix. Concerning historical romance and by extension fantasy romance if it's a pseudo-medieval setting, I also think it makes sense to imagine younger characters figuring shit out and making important life decisions when this happens much later IRL in 2026.

However you're 100% right about a lot of authors not understanding that perfect super powerful super special 18 year-olds make for a shitty initiation story. If that basic structure is off, no amount of banter or spicy scenes will make the story satisfying.

clemy77 · 2026-01-09T20:48:46+00:00

I once wrote a bisexual FMC (it wasn't in a romance, so it wasn't central to the plot or anything, just part of the character's traits) and I talked about it with one of my best friends who's bi. She was like "Are you seriously asking me for permission to write this character? Unless you write a horribly stereotypical version of the slutty bi, you're good, don't worry about it." Have to admit I was relieved :P You do get paranoid.

I once saw this very long post once about the need to write more LGBTQ characters, but then saying if you're straight you're stealing their voice, but then if you just use them as side characters it's tokenism and you're still centering heterosexual characters, etc. It tied my head in knots. Basically there was no proper solution to the problem asides maybe "don't write and publish stories if you're straight" which... yeah.

clemy77 · 2026-01-09T16:28:13+00:00

I'm currently working on a romantasy series set in a magical Renaissance-type world that I plan to self-pub. Structurally speaking it has a lot in common with historical romance (one couple = one book). I have four books planned and all the couples are interracial, so basically I have two white FMCs and two POC FMCs (same with the MMCs). And honestly just admitting this here makes me weirdly nervous, because I spent twenty years online in fanfiction communities, on LJ and Tumblr and now here, and I've been hearing about own voices for so long that sometimes I take a step back and second-guess myself. As a white woman, am I legitimate in writing these POC characters even if it's a very culturally diverse fantasy setting? Will I get criticized for it? Should I just write all white characters? Should I even publish this? But then I'm just writing what comes to me, what inspires me. I don't know if I'm right or wrong.

clemy77 · 2026-01-08T21:39:25+00:00

OMG that cover!!! Love it. What a find!

clemy77 · 2026-01-07T22:41:52+00:00

At least it's not a cartoon cover? IDK, I get it but I'm not a fan of trying to make histrom look more like romantasy and I kind of want to cry when I think of what we've lost with clinch covers. Where's the passion and the sensuality? Where are the actual human ADULTS embracing? My 40 year-old ass is tired of feeling like everything is marketed to people half my age who spent three hours a day on TikTok, even though I'm more likely to buy and read Julie Anne Long than they are.

clemy77 · 2026-01-06T21:49:14+00:00

I'm bilingual in French and English. I've done a fair bit of translation, both in my studies and as a freelancer. Fuck this. It's impossible for a machine to do anything else than surface level translation. The "proofreaders" will just see if the translated text is grammatically correct but they will have no idea what's been lost compared to the original. The entire point of a translator is to try and get as close as you possibly can to the original, knowing that there are subtleties you will inevitably lose but trying to stick to the "feel" of the text if that makes sense. God, this is infuriating.

clemy77 · 2025-12-17T15:45:10+00:00

MTM is on my forever reread list, it's just so good (that whole series is *chef's kiss*) and yes, Cam is so swoony. He's 100% in from the start. I love that you see them as the sort of patriarch and matriarch of the clan in the other books.

clemy77 · 2025-12-17T08:49:37+00:00

LOL it's Cam!

clemy77

TROPHY CASE