Romantic Suspense Panel presented by Bronwyn Parry, Sandy Curtis, Shannon Curtis & Helene Young.
Often considered a difficult genre – needs to have equal amounts of romance and suspense.
Tension and conflict between characters is always present.
- need to have climax for romance and climax for suspense (both genres) if you are writing romantic suspense
- emotions can be forced to the surface by putting the characters in high stakes danger situations
- a Happily Ever After ending is not obligatory in Romantic suspense, but many authors seem to prefer writing it
- not marketed very well in Australia – publishers don’t seem to know what to do with them here
- even big publishers like Harlequin use different covers in Australian than they do in US or Europe
- they were often being shelved with crime novels – ‘cosy mystery’ readers who read for character were unhappy with the grittiness but those who read gritty crime as an intellectual section were put off by the romance elements
Craft:
- make the reader want to read more because you create a question in their mind ‘what is going to happen next?’
- let the reader experience everything (see, hear, smell) through the pov of your character
Note: I also won a bottle of wine and some timtams for asking a question of the panel – in my case it was about different PoV, and using deep 3rd person vs first person. None of them use first person.