This Tucson author is riding the romance novel wave

There was a time, and not long ago, when Colleen Hoover could stroll unnoticed through her own hometown … which is saying something since Saltillo, Texas, has a population of 300 people.

Authors of romantic fiction all used pen names.

Their books were shelved in the back of the bookshop, back near the Westerns.

Well, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Hoover is the No. 1 selling author in the world, romance novels dominate the bestseller lists, and the genre is changing the way the book business is done.

What in the name of Jane Austen is going on here?

“I think people are now seeing why people like me have been loving romance novels for a long time,” said Tucson author Jen DeLuca. “They’re fun. They’re easy to read, and when you finish, you’re as happy as the main characters are.”

DeLuca’s name is now on the cover of four romance novels, the latest being “Well Traveled,” which was released last month.

To her, a good romance story is like a cup of hot chocolate on the nightstand. “If you’re going through troubled times and need a place to escape to, you can’t beat a good romance,” she said. “You know where it’s going, and you can’t wait to get there.”

All of DeLuca’s books have been set in Renaissance Faires, familiar territory since her days as a volunteer tavern wench in Florida.

“I wore the uncomfortable outfit, talked with the bad accent, the whole deal,” DeLuca laughed. “Eventually, I realized I’d taken a part-time bartending job in the middle of nowhere and wasn’t getting paid. What was I thinking? But I always thought it was a pretty romantic setting. Women in attractive dresses? Men with swords? Eventually, that’s what I started to write about.”

DeLuca said she’d always loved to write — “When I was little, my mom would staple sheets of paper together and I’d write books about dogs and girls who took naps” — and the rhythms of a romance novel were familiar.

“I’d read hundreds of them before I sat down to write one,” she said. “I just wrote a book I wanted to read.”

Her timing was good. The romance wave had already started to build when she released “Well Met” in 2019.

Initially, the surge had begun with the emergence of online book groups. Hoover’s first book, “Slammed,” was pushed to the bestseller list by an army of digital followers who called themselves “CoHorts.”

“Since the big publishers weren’t pushing romance sales, readers started doing it,” DeLuca said. “By the time I came along, the tide was already rising — and then BookTok happened.”

BookTok invited readers to share video reviews of their own favorite titles on the TikTok app. Soon, it became clear that millions of them loved romantic fiction. Even the Big Five publishers saw the light. DeLuca, for one, is published by Berkley Books – a division of Penguin Random House.

Critics complain that romance novels are formulaic, which they are, but DeLuca suggests the formula is what draws readers to the books.

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“The romance novel makes this promise,” she said. “The story will end happily. The couple will fall in love. So whatever the story might be, you can go on this roller coaster with me and feel confident we’re not going to crash. We’ll all get home safely.”

Besides, DeLuca said, isn’t there a formula in place in other genres, as well? Don’t all mysteries need to be solved?

Romance writers have added at least two new acronyms to the lexicon of literature. All romance novels must lead to “HEA” (happily ever after) or “HFN” (happy for now).

Another new term is “spicy-ness,” the word BookTokers use for erotica.

Every author has their own level of spicy-ness, and everyone has their own way of telling a story, but all romance books must take us to the corner of Happy and Hopeful.

DeLuca’s own rules are more nuanced.

“To me,” she said, “the characters are key. You have to like my characters. You have to believe in them, want good things for them. I want to hear that happy sigh when you close my book, so I spend a lot of time working on my characters.”

DeLuca and her husband Morgan, a production manager for Dixon Studios, moved to Tucson in 2020. They are still exploring their “new” hometown.

“We got here just in time for the lockdown,” she laughed, “so we’re still exploring. Where should we go this weekend?”

DeLuca suspects they’ll be here awhile, and is confident her genre is here to stay, too.

“One great thing is that romance readers are voracious,” she said. “We’ll read Colleen Hoover and then look around to see what else is out there. It’s a great time right now for all of us.”

Footnotes

Thanks a million! Pima County Public Library has announced that a record 1 million digital books were checked out by cardholders in 2022. This includes e-books, audio books and all other digital content. That number ranks 51st among all public libraries in the United States. All readers with a library card have access to its digital collection.

The top three e-books borrowed by library members were “The Judge’s List“ by John Grisham, “The Four Winds“ by Kristin Hannah, and “The Last Thing He Told Me“ by Laura Dave.

The top three audio books were “Where the Crawdads Sing“ by Delia Owens, “Pride and Prejudice“ by Jane Austen, and “Educated“ by Tara Westover.

The Tucson Festival of Books has posted its schedule of author presentations of the festival website, tucsonfestivalofbooks.org.