And here’s where I thought the thought that became this novel: If someone set a romance plot side-by-side with a “real” story about love, would the struggle to dominate or be subordinated be the same in both worlds? Would both narratives suggest that a power struggle was central to sexual satisfaction? To love? Would both stories slip over a line and become deadly, or would they describe someone’s salvation? In other words, are romances true?
The novel is a romance about romances. It takes place in two settings: Romancelandia, and the post-WWII world of emerging cosmetics industries. Its heroines discover that the forces of evil often have a magnetic, sweet, bluntly sexual pull. They allow themselves to be pulled, and find that when they reach the edge of what’s safe and known, there’s an almost overwhelming urge to jump. Pleasure and danger—they’re an indelibly bound combination familiar to any hiker who plucks a dog-eared pink paperback to carry into the woods along with her bear spray. That’s romance.
Bring on the pirates.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my editors, Amy Einhorn and Caroline Bleeke, who were never wrong. Thanks to Bill and Liv Blumer at Blumer Literary for standing firmly by this book’s side (as well as mine). Thanks to Terry Grobe, Pat Mulcahy, Judy Karp, and Mark Feldhusen for reading and responding in ways that shaped the work. Information about the cosmetics industry is taken from written accounts of the business, particularly the parts of it shaped by Mary Kay Cosmetics, Elizabeth Arden, Madame Helena Rubinstein, and Charles Revson. Thanks to Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan for their Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance. The Jerry Weist collection informed some of the fantasy art descriptions. May his remains end up, as he wished, on Mars.