• about
  • books
  • contact

GIULIA TORRE

~ reading and writing romance

GIULIA TORRE

Monthly Archives: October 2014

REVIEW – Kiss of a Tyrant – Margaret Pargeter (1980)

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Harlequin Romance, Hero Archetypes, Romance Cover Art

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1970s harlequin, 1980s harlequin, 1980s romance, best romance novels, Boon Harlequin, category romance, contemporary romance, cover art, giulia torre, Harlequin, hero, hero archetype, retro romance, retro romance novels, romance book review, romance cover art, romance novel cover art, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, romance writing, romantic hero, vintage romance

Kiss of a Tyrant PargeterKiss of a Tyrant by Margaret Pargeter
Harlequin Romance #2375

The virgin’s vindication. One of my favorite tropes. If you don’t know of it yet, it’s a good one. It culminates with the hero – an angry man of the highest order – as his head snaps up to look in mute horror to study the face of the maiden beneath him after he’s inadvertently stolen her virginity. The inadvertent part is important.

But not as important as the hero’s grim belief that the heroine is not a virgin. And dammit, she should be.

What if I asked you to prove you’d never belonged to another man?

Such is the way with Kiss of a Tyrant.

Sloan Maddison is an Australian alpha male who finds himself in the English countryside where his widowed mother contemplates returning to live. In a country inn, he meets interior decorator Stacy Weldon. Stacy is “on leave” from her career, helping her mother and sister at the inn after being nearly raped by her boss. She is wounded and angry and not optimistic about her future.

Sloan is attracted to her. Pretty sure he wants to marry her. So uses his mother’s illness as an excuse to carry her off to Australia. But on the way out the door, he gets wind of that “affair” with her boss. And he’s hopping mad about it. She must have asked for it, and along the way, collected other affairs that now debases their own kindling desire.

The hero’s she-must-have-asked-for-it motivation is a hole in the plot that has widened over time. But it’s easy to jump across. Because Sloan is sexy in the way only an angry pants hero can be. Mean, misguided, and hard to get. Oh, but in love nonetheless.

The wrap-up is a bit holey, too, and would have been for readers even in 1980. Sloan is mean to Stacy up until the final moment, but claims he had known of her innocence for the preceding two whole days before the final page. He wanted to see if she could really adapt to his remote Australian way of life. Huh.

Sloan is mean as a billy goat. But, alas, sexier. So I can forgive the holes, even if Mr. Angrypants can’t.

REVIEW – The Angry Man by Joyce Dingwell (1979)

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Harlequin Romance, Hero Archetypes, Romance Cover Art

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1970s harlequin, Boon Harlequin, category romance, contemporary romance, cover art, giulia torre, Harlequin, hero, hero archetype, retro romance, romance book review, romance cover art, romance novel cover art, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, romance writing, romantic hero, vintage romance, wolfe island

The Angry Man Joyce DingwellThe Angry Man by Joyce Dingwell (1979) Harlequin Romance #2318 The Angry Man. How could I not?

First, a detour to cover art. I am working with an artist on the cover of book two of the RiverLust series, Simon’s Story. It’s called Swan Bay. I don’t believe you can paint a handsome man on the cover of a romance novel. Beautiful heroines? Yes. But the heroes always come off wrong.

Point in fact: The Angry Man cover hero is bleak. Crocodile Dundee with a longer face and shadowed, sunken cheeks. His hair is some kind of a poofy gray 70s mullet. Go ahead. Take a look at the cover of The Angry Man. Does he look angry to you? See that slight lift of his upper lip, over there on the right? The way his brows are furrowed together as he regards the heroine? Yes. The lovely doe-eyed one.

He is not angry; he’s sardonic, bemused. The man on this cover looks more perturbed than angry. Which is the perfect summation of Joyce Dingwell’s hero in this book.

English Polly loved her neighbor, who loved her sister, so her uncle sent her away. To Australia. Where after working on a statistics team as the resident non-statisician, she is told she has to stay another six months, because her former lover’s courtship of her sister is going more slowly than anticipated. So she takes the position of paid companion to Mrs. Clemance, young and beautiful wife of Thorn Clemance. Thorn is an ag specialist for a pharmaceutical company. A medical herbalist. But the beautiful Mrs. Clemance is not his wife. It’s his cousin’s widow. The hero is, in fact, not married. We learn this as the heroine does, and it’s a breathless beat.

Look at me, MissKendall, look at me, tell me what you see.’ ‘I-I don’t understand you.’ Polly tried to retreat a step, but he advanced, and at once they stood barely an inch apart. I think you do understand. I think you see a man who is a no-half-measures man. I think you see a man who would not be put off with subtleties, evasions and half-truths from any woman he made his wife. I think you see a man who would demand an entirety, a fulfillment, a conclusion, a completion.’ A pause. ‘I think you see a man who would be demanding four, not eight walls.”

Oh, dear. Here’s looking at you.

The ultimate logic of conflict? Unknown.

There is an ancestral puzzle requiring a flow chart to comprehend. And, for some reason, Thorn couldn’t tell Polly about his cousin’s widow’s recent sanitarium visit, her convalescence in his home, or the will that required that before she inherit, she must remain unmarried for two years. Which would have explained Polly’s charge to keep the young woman away from men.

The hero is in fact exactly like his picture (and the reader). Confused and frustrated. Not an awful book. Joyce Dingwell (b. 1908) wrote 80 of them. She knew how to write.

But for this one, in the end, I am left with only a single, bright nugget: Upon first introduction, her toes were dipped in the river until he found her and hauled her out. A shark had taken the hero’s dog from that very rock, only a week earlier.

There is no cure for a shark attack…When you put your gear on we’ll get back.’ ‘Gear? I’ve only removed my shoes and my pantyhose!’ He shrugged, saying almost uninterestingly: ‘Put ‘em on.’ Incensed, feeling a fool, hoping at least he would look away as she did so, Polly complied. It was not easy to wriggle discreetly into pantyhose, and she wished he would wander off. A tactful man would have. But he didn’t, he stood there right to the final hitch.

The final hitch? This whole line of books is worth reading for the settings. These girls get to go everywhere.

SWAN BAY cover sketch – Book Two

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Romance Cover Art

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

best historical romance, cover art, giulia torre, swan bay, thousand islands, wolfe island

Working again with Tracy Hetzel of Long Blue Straw on the cover for the Wolfe Island follow up, Swan Bay. Again, set in the thousand islands of upstate NY in 1893. Though historically ‘accurate,’ the setting is fictionalized representation of Thousand Island Park and the surrounding region.

This is Simon’s story.Swan Bay sketch Giulia Torre Longbluestraw

For text and image teasers, visit my Wolfe Island Pinterest Board.

My husband proposes that this be called the RIVERLUST series. Which is funny. So may just stick.

REVIEW – The Travelling Kind – Janet Dailey

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#sexysentences, 1970s harlequin, 1980s harlequin, 1980s romance, category romance, contemporary romance, cowboy romance, Harlequin, harlequin presents, Janet Dailey, romance novel reviews, vintage romance

TThe Travelling Kind Janet Daileyhe Travelling Kind – Janet Dailey (1981)
Harlequin Presents #427

She noticed his kit before she noticed him. A firm leather saddle, smooth from riding. A promising start indeed. I’m a new country gal, and I love me a cowboy.

Charley Collins works an Idaho ranch with her brother, who has just broken his leg, so she needs a hired hand. She gets in her old truck and drives around looking for one.

She finds Shad.

No. No comment.

Shad Russell is a drifter. As the teaser promises, “Falling in love with a man like Shad would be asking for heartache.” He’s a loner, never settling in one place for long.

In the mean time, she hires him and he sleeps in the bedroom across the hall.

I’d never read a Janet Dailey book before. She wrote a romance for every state in the union. I’m embarrassed to admit that in 1981, I don’t know how many books that means, but somewhere close to 50. In the year The Travelling Kind was published, Harlequin saluted her as “the world’s No. 1 publisher of romance fiction!”

A little taste of the no-good-for-Charley drifter…

His mouth came down those last few inches to settle onto her lips with tantalizing ease. A sweet rush of forbidden joy ran through her veins as her hands slid around his neck and she melted into his arms. A steel band circled her waist to press her tighter to his length while his other hand tunneled under the thickness of her hair to cup the back of her head. The driving hunger of his kiss parted her lips, giving him access to the most intimate recesses of her mouth. She was caught in a whirl of sensation, all golden and consuming.

Although a stew of familiar now, this is a pretty great kiss for 1981. But with this book comes a few cock-blocks. Namely, the neighboring rancher, Chuck, who wants to marry her. Yeah, Chuck and Charley. Chuck is neither smart nor sexy. When Shad finally does leave, after Charley’s humiliating sobs (humiliating for Charley and the reader) and shouting at Shad that she won’t wait for him, she doesn’t. And she gets engaged to Chuck.

Until Shad returns two months later, the night of the engagement party. “I know I hurt you when I left but – Aren’t you glad to see me?” Banal cowboys must not be my thing. Because when he walks away, and Charley returns the ring to Chuck, I just want Shad to keep on drifting.

Sex in our Ears – Listening to Romance

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Audible, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

audible, audiobooks, books on tape, orality, readlouds, romance, test of speech

If the medium is the message, what does it mean that for the last several years, more and more readers are listening to books read aloud?

If the narration is good, I will listen to a book multiple times. If the narration is poor, or if the words do not hold up to the test of speech, I do not finish.

Yet not everyone can listen to audiobooks. Quintessential readers in my life cannot. They lose the plot, get distracted. Perhaps for the same reason readers avoid films of their favorite books. They prefer the voices created in their own heads to the ones put there by others.

The more I’ve listened to books, the more I hear my stories as I write them. When these stories are aloud between your ears, does writing becomes something different? Transcription. Dictation.

Writing with the ears. Not world building, or ensuring that, if your characters are outside, that there’s a bird, some rustling leaves, or the sound of a chainsaw. But actually hearing the story in your head as you read. As though so much space exists between your ears that the characters can stand up, walk around, and echo.

Orality. Literacy. Age-old questions. Can you listen?

Giulia Torre on Facebook

Giulia Torre on Facebook

Pages

  • about
  • books
  • contact

Archives

  • April 2022
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2016
  • December 2015
  • October 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Goodreads

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • GIULIA TORRE
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • GIULIA TORRE
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...