- Colorado Fireman
- Smoky Mountain Danger
- Blame It On The Bachelor
- The Last Bachelor
- A Touch of Persuasion
- His Gentle Embrace
- Lady Folbroke's Delicious Deception
- Lord Bentley's Dangerous Desire
- The Rake and the Heiress
- The Lord and the Maid
- Forever Claimed
- Eternally Yours
- Trouble in a Pinstripe Suit
- Seduced by a Starched Shirt
- Cupcakes and Killer Heels
- Sushi and Stilletos
- Operation Midnight
- Mission: Man
- The Paternity Proposition
- The Bedroom Proposal
Good luck! (For answers, check here.)
Lest we forget: There is a line of romance novels set in the world of NASCAR (http://www.harlequin.com/store.html?cid=600)
ReplyDeleteSuitor, even scarier: there's a limited line called "Babies & Bachelors USA" - each book was for a different state. Feast your eyes on Massachusetts and New Hampshire (complete with creepy dolls on the cover).
ReplyDeleteI am 100% in favor of niche marketing and long-tail strategies, especially when they spawn genre fiction aimed at increasingly discrete demographics. I eagerly await my university's harlequin romance 3:1 - Love in Spite of the Ratio.
ReplyDeleteMy best guess is that it's a trick question - they're all real.
ReplyDeleteTangential, but still related to titles: I showed my kids the TiVo description of Mansquito the other night. It reads: "While trying to find a cure for the West Nile virus, a scientist turns herself and her subject into mutant insects." Their response: (a) outrage that the movie was not called Womansquito, and (b) further outrage that Jack Prelutsky has never built a followup to Scranimals around a Mansquito.
And then I told them about Sharktopus.
I used to work in romance. There's a whole genre of baby/cowboy/bride books, aka "series romance", as opposed to single titles. Generally published by Harlequin, there are pretty strict guidelines as to page count, level of sexytimes detail, etc. They often feature a baby, a cowboy or a bride, or some combo of the three. the Nascar line is actually a brilliant line and branding extension. My understanding is that there's also a serviceman/woman subgenre, to boot.
ReplyDeleteOnce you get into single titles, well, you get some really interesting albeit less official subgenres. I'm talking not just paranormal, time travel, or historical, but stuff like Western, Scottish/kilts, Regency-set (not to be confused with Regencys, which are like faux Jane Austen and no sex), Vikings (and their subgenre, time travel Vikings).
We sorted through no fewer than a dozen banker's boxes worth of Harlequin/Silhouette titles for our library book sale last year. We were amazed by all the different series. There was one that appeared to be a mermaid theme? Those covers were EXCELLENT.
ReplyDeleteDo you really need a description for Mansquito? Doesn't the title pretty much say it all and determine "yes, I want to watch something called Mansquito?"
ReplyDeleteMermaid-themed romance (depending on the level of explicitness of sexytimes) raises some interesting questions.
ReplyDeleteFish top or fish bottom, namely.
ReplyDeleteExcuse me for forgetting, but the one we used to make a greeting card featured a merMAN. A different, albeit still interesting, set of questions.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I do not understand this baby angle. Assuming that it's not a baby-cowboy-bride love triangle, is the baby a romantic obstacle? A mcguffin? A prop? A mid-novel plot twist? I don't expect to understand the attraction of a lot of these themes (vikings, NASCAR), but in this case I don't even understand the theme.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I take it all back, because GO HOUSTON BABIES.
I'm fairly certain that depending on the particular book the answer to all of those questions is yes, although not necessarily at the same time.
ReplyDeleteDoes Raising Arizona count?
ReplyDeleteOMG, did you go to the same university I did?
ReplyDelete