Romance Report
October 28 – November 3, 2019

R

One day in Romancelandia lasts approximately 1.3 Earth years. Now imagine a week. To help you keep up, we’ve gone through the tweets about last week’s highs (and lows) of representation in romance to bring you our Weekly Romance Update.

These tweets are from or about issues affecting BIPOC, LGBTQIAP+, and/or otherwise underrepresented writers, reviewers, and list curators. If you’re not already, please follow these accounts and be sure to always retweet the original post.

Continuing the discussion about historical romance from last week, May talks about how the “marginalized characters in histrom is unrealistic” argument from some corners is a double-bind.

KJ Charles writes about the distinction between historical inaccuracies and actual harmful misrepresentations.

Tamsen Parker wrote about writing characters with depression while also dealing with her own depression.

Funmi calls for more attention to be paid to Black indie romance authors writing about mental health issues. Those are the kind of romance think pieces we could use more of.

For thoughtful reviews if black indie romance, Katrina says Funmi and Jazmen are doing amazing work.

And a friendly PSA: Google is free; emotional labor shouldn’t be.

Now for something beautiful to put in your eyeballs. We are in love with these covers! Keep them coming, Harlequin!

We hope you have a week filled with books and joy and all the good things! And if we have missed anything important, please let us know. Our DMs are open. You can also submit anonymous feedback at bit.ly/RSJfeedback.

If you appreciate the work we do, please consider buying us a ko-fi to help fund our giveaways of romances by underrepresented authors bit.ly/RSJkofi. Thank you!