I’ve been thinking about romance novels again…the cheap, tawdry, mass produced kind of romance novels for sale in grocery stores and airports all across America.  Several years ago I began to read romance novels, and wrote a few performance scripts based on a few different types of romance novels:  historical romance, romantic suspense, and erotic romance.  

When I stole this romance novel, “Date with the Devil”, from a coffee shop in Reno, Nevada, I didn’t know how dark and twisted the romance genre could get.  My friend read the entire novel out loud to me on the long drive back to Seattle.  Here is the description: 

Marooned!

Diedre Forsyth responded to the intimate caress of a dream lover, then awoke to discover herself half-clothed and in the arms of a savage stranger! Sterling Jakes had rescued the delicately pretty woman from drowning, but how could the martial arts master tell her they were alone on a tropical island and would probably never be found? Already she’d lost the pale, protected look of a proper Bostonian. But nothing had prepared Diedre for the barbaric thrill of Sterling’s survival training, nor for the spellbinding seduction she so desperately yearned for and yet deeply feared. She ran from the risky promise of his primitive mating ritual, knowing he would stalk her and stake his claim. He was the hunter and she the hunted - but the prize belonged to them both. Sterling was a man of secrets and shadows - but if they ever escaped Paradise, would the courage he’d shown her she possessed be strong enough to hold him?

The book contains several rape-ish scenes, handmade leather shorts, a cave with its own home-brewed beer pond, and ends (no joke) at the Best Western Fantasuites Motel’s Cave Room.

Thank you, Olivia.  Thank you.