Pardon my dust. I've got cyber-decorating fever from the website redesign in progress and coudln't resist playing with things here. Of course I misplaced a bunch of my links so if you were there before and aren't now, I'm putting you back. I'm still an HTML doofus but getting better.

With recent book buying, UBS and B&N browsing I've been doing lately, I've had a lot of booky things on my mind. Combine that with various brouhahas in the online romance community and I get thinky. There may be rambling in the days ahead, but I need to do some mental housecleaning to get brain in gear for going into geurilla mode to finish OitS over the summer.

First up -- inspirationals. CBA fiction. Love it. Inspirationals and/or CBA fiction are not always "sweet." I hate "sweet." Conjures up images of fwuffy kitties with yellow bows on teenytiny flowery backgrounds and grownup people who would be shocked, shocked, I tell you, at the thought of where babies come from. It connotes, at least to me, something more suited to the youngsters who aren't yet ready for big grownup stuff . Light. I could be alone in my perception, but it's my space, so I can say what I want.

My books would likely be classed as "sweet" by current ratings standards because I don't use graphic sexual content, but as the DH said, "if someone picks up your book looking for something sweet, they might get a surprise." Uh, yeah. I think so. I like angst. I like drama. Bad things, sometimes very bad things, and sometimes Very Bad Things (tm) happen to good people on the way to HEA. I may not point the camera into the bedroom, but I do acknowledge that there is one. The same as I acknowledge that my story people do have a spiritual aspect to their lives. This may take a bigger role in some stories than other, but it's there. It's the relationships, the emotion that I like to keep on top.

Maybe it's time for some different terms? Both romance and CBA fiction (I know why the term inspirational is uesd, and will blog on that later; put a sticky note on it, as I will be back) are going through growth and change. I dunno. Got that itchy feeling about it, so I'm thinking.