Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Fanatic Fan Zeek

Feeling The Love

By Zeek

I started reading romance novels at the age of twelve when I snuck one of my mother’s hoarded books from a box on her closet floor. It was love at first word and it became a love that followed me into adulthood. Like a fanatic, I devoured every romance I got my hands on after that- category, historicals, contemporary it simply didn’t matter- I read them all.

Remember those first romance novels you read? The way they drew you in and made you feel what the characters felt? The first blush of love? The fever of passion? The burn of betrayal?

I do.

I recall being so lost in the worlds the author’s created that when I lifted my eyes from the pages- I had a difficult time focusing. I felt the atmosphere changing- and wished I didn’t have to leave the place I had been living in for the hours it took to read the book.

I don’t remember the author of the first romance novel I read, although I’m certain it was a pirate story, but I do remember the first author I started to follow like a fangirl.

Her name was Shirlee Busbee.

The book that drew me to her? Tiger Lily.

Tiger Lily sucked me in from the first sentence. Alpha hero, fiery heroine and helpless passion, it was all in there. I glommed Busbee’s entire backlist at the time and auto bought all her new ones.

I adored her characters and fell a little bit in love with each hero. Yes, I do believe the 80's were the golden years of the Romance Genre, because other authors soon followed.

Ever heard ofJohanna Lindsey? Of course you have, because she's probably the one who launched you into the world of romance.

She made me feel weak in the knees with every word her heroes spoke. Ah, sweet savage Lindsey. Lindsey who gave us Pirates, Sheiks, Regency,Cowboys and the Mallorys. She wrote them all and, in her prime, did it better than anyone else, despite the recycled titles and overblown bodice-ripper cover art that launched Fabio into the stratosphere.

In the middle of my Lindsey/Busbee fandom, I came across another author who became the only author I would still love to meet or possibly write a fan letter too … if it didn’t feel so pathetic.

*eh hem*

Jude Devereaux.

She made me laugh, cry- boy did she make me cry- yearn, feel all angsty and stay up to ungodly hours finishing her novels.

It was the Velvet Saga that grabbed me. I don’t think I looked up until I read every one- cover to cover without looking up. Believe me, I scrounged for, found and devoured each of her back titles like a crack whore on a fix.

… and then she wrote Knight in Shining Armor.

The book that broke my heart ... and remade it. No other author after that ever measured up. Her writing from back then is the litmus test I use to sort out the good from the bad to this day.

Linda Howard, Iris Johansen, Sandra Brown and Elizabeth Lowell were also authors I couldn't get enough of.

Sandra grabbed me with Slow Heat in Heaven, included in a 3 book compilation I picked up from the discount table at Walden’s Books. Sultry and slightly erotic, the Cajun hero in Slow Heat in Heaven made me burn with genuine lust. And her western titled Another Dawn is still a favorite reread after all these years.

Lowell hooked me with her contemporary cowboys. Warrior, Granite Man, Outlaw, and Fire and Rain- Now that was a series over too quickly! (And hey Elizabeth, we never did get Utah’s story!)

Johansen did it with The Wind dancer series. She had a way of wording the hero’s need that made me weak in the knees and shot fire through my belly.

And then I picked up Heart of Fire by Linda Howard. Howard with Alpha males like no one else. Strong, lusty, intense, dark men who set the standard for every military type hero to follow in the romance world.

To be sure, Linda Howard's novels I reread often, though most of these older copies are long since gone from my bookshelf.

Yep, I loved those gals way back when...

… Before something happened.

Somewhere along the way they changed on me. I no longer get as lost as I used to while reading their latest releases. I no longer get excited when I see they have a new title out and it makes me sad.

Perhaps I changed too. I grew up, maybe became jaded. Either way we grew apart and the love grew cold.

Yet there is one thing that can bring it all back to me.

Nothing gets me squealing like a fangirl more then when I get my grubby paws on books by these authors with the same coverart as when I first read them.

When I find the books from the past, it takes me back to a time when I wasn’t as cynical. When I believed that everyone could find the love of a lifetime, be healthy, wealthy and wise and, of course, have the Happily Ever After they deserved. I feel shades of the first blush of love and heated passion I used to feel while reading romance and it makes me giddy.

Now, I’ve become a fanatical collector of sorts. I search for those old books like a miner seeking veins of gold - no matter how cheesy, lambasted, and snarked the covers have become.

Doing this brings the grande dames of romance back to me.

So don’t bother about that noise you hear on occasion echoing through the blogosphere. It’s just my fangirl shriek when I found my treasured book.

Kerri Wall :: 4:57 PM :: 5 Comments:

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