"A woman alone is a deserted temple, full of the echoes of her dreams"

Hidden away rather appropriately at the University of Reading is Boons Mots: An Anthology of Artless Extracts, a fifty-year old pamphlet compiled anonymously by Mills & Boon editors. Highlights include favourite lines from aspiring authors and a letter from Violet Winspear, whose novels include Satan Took a Bride, Bride of Lucifer, Devil in a Silver Room, Dearest Demon, Lucifer's Angel, Darling Infidel, The Passionate Sinner and, just as a pattern appears to emerge, Palace of the Pomegranate. Winspear asks after the future of romance fiction, with questions ranging from the eerily prescient to the timelessly adorable. We may never know what prompted Winspear to write a list so long that lettering it proved myopic, but we may also never know any of the answers.

Much has changed in fifty years, of course, and modern Mills & Boon authors show little interest in the etiquette of bedroom door positioning, but there are several thoughts that require thinking about. As always, into this void steps Bewildered Heart. 'Are the books too long by present day standards?' Violet begins. Whether present day means the historical present of yesteryear when Winspear broached this subject, or the present day of today or the present day of the future when this will be read accidentally by someone searching for Hugh Jackman photographs, romance novels have always been longer than necessary. The formulaic demands of word count do not help and while Winspear offers solutions such as shorter passages of dialogue and cuts to descriptive detail, superficial alterations do not affect the larger problems of form. Nevertheless, was this crusading writer requesting a technical discussion on inherent romance structures, or was she looking for a simple yes or no? Romance novels are shorter than the majority of other genres, and therefore the answer is simple. The books are not too long by present day standards, but should still be shorter, unless extra words would make them more interesting, as well as longer.

Perhaps Violet Winspear wrote her letter seeking statistical proof that many of the archetypes and clichés of Romance actually work. This, after all, is a manifesto asking for permission to revolt. 'Are backgrounds more popular if foreign?' she asked. 'Are heroes more desirable if foreign? Are successful heroes and virtuous heroines passé? Are heroes required to be more ordinary? Are heroines required to be more ordinary? Are established romantic ideas out of date?' As it turned out, a handful of decades later, authors eventually covered every possibility, with local characters, down-to-earth sheikh surgeons and impoverished billionaires all making an entrance to varying degrees of popularity. Given that each book sold an identical number of copies, the Mills & Boon of Winspear's age found a way to avoid measurements of fashion. Nowadays, an in depth undertaking of what sells would be possible had anyone such an inclination.

There is a wider point of Winspear's befuddlement. What is convention? With a product such as Mills & Boon, the designs that have become so universal they are the generic jokes of anti-romance criticism were created not necessarily from readership desire but from a lack of diversity. As the author herself asks, 'Are readers satisfied with the romances? Are readers stating specific requirements? Are readers stating specific dislikes?' Once the publisher begins dictating requirements to their authors based upon the findings of market research creative freedom is diminished and Mills & Boon lose the individual voices it claims to crave. Yet Harlequin is a corporate entity motivated by profit. Original work is heralded and increasingly the company has looked to branch out, creating new imprints for more daring directions.

Despite this, playing to a formula, whether real or imagined, seems safe, especially in light of the victory for Resisting the Sicilian Playboy in the most recent So You Think You Can Write competition. Why Sicilian, modern day versions of Winspear might ask. Are Sicilian playboys that much more appealing to consumers than playboys from less exotic locations? Romance fiction has traditionally tended towards the far away, idealised backdrops of abroad. Thus it has been and the standard has rarely been questioned. New subgenres emerged to allow a move away from the norm.

When it came to offering alternative visions of classic romantic tropes, however, Violet Winspear preferred an innocent damsel in an exotic location. Her heroes were the hunters, hard-muscled, sardonic, rich, frightening and fascinating. She caused outrage when she commented, 'They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape: men it's dangerous to be alone in the room with.' Beneath the cynical exterior, however, her alpha males are lost, lonely and in need of love. Due to this, her heroines are passive creations by comparison, lacking in modern ideals such as self-esteem and sexual awareness. This was partly because of the era, but her novels are marked by old-fashioned attitudes towards sex, contriving plots of kidnap and forcible marriage to relieve the heroine of desire and moral responsibility in choosing to have sex.

Perhaps Winspear saw this as a necessary means to an end. She asks her editor, 'Are we to suppose (our) readers a bit dim?' It seems a worthwhile question and is followed later by Zb, 'Are authors to suppose their readers remain mentally backward?' Assuming that a writer begins their career in romance fiction under this assumption they would be wise to periodically check that they should continue to believe it. The answer then and today, for this question and most of the others is, 'Yes, but they shouldn't.' However Winspear defined mental backwardness is unknown, but it seems unlikely that this is a ringing endorsement of the intelligence of her readership. Mills & Boon novels do not challenge their readers with such demands as complicated sentences, politics, sociology, tension, unpredictability or even lengthy words, but there are powerful cultural undercurrents to what Winspear said and did not say. She wrote seventy novels in a career spanning twenty-seven years. Her books may belong to her time, and Romance has evolved to whatever it is now. Many of queries Winspear asked remain relevant, and continue to be unanswerable.

The type-written page of Boon Mots concludes with an insight into the direction Winspear saw her genre heading. 'Are authors to suppose sex measures maturing romance? Is sex the new name for romance? Are authors permitted to rebel against the above question?' The future played out as expected. In these times no one uses romance as anything other than a euphemism for pornography. Mills & Boon is a gateway to erotica, and the most popular exponents of the sex genre are published only if they contain light bondage as an indication of emotional development. Without regular sex scenes authors and readers have no idea how successfully a courtship is maturing.

Heroes are no longer capable of rape and heroines occasionally dare to be the aggressors, knowing what they want from a man and not being afraid to ask for it in exchange for money. Romance fiction of the 1960 and 1970s would look on forlornly, shaking its head at what has become of revolution. Where are the timid virgins, they would ask? Where are the dominating alpha males exercising control through wealth and masculinity? Why aren't all the novels set on islands in the colonial Dutch East Indies? What is escapist about reality? Romance fiction of the 1960s and 1970s, however, is misguided. Not much has changed, really, the business still caters for all tastes, but a little room has been made at the edges, for those authors who were allowed permission to rebel.

"I concentrate on my bagel"

Due to it being the perfect occasion for a dubious dating decision, Valentine's Day was chosen as the day to release the cinematic adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. The adult-only erotic blockbuster has broken box office records, taking $85million dollars in its opening weekend and comfortably knocking the previous erotic blockbuster, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: Sponge Out of Water, off the top spot. Christian Grey is all about the money, of course, as well as feeding the world and subjugating women monogamously, but what said the critics and the real critics, members of the public? Receipts in the United States dropped by seventy-five per cent in its second week of release, suggesting word-of-mouth had been unhelpful. Reviews, meanwhile, have been vitriolic, but the filmmakers might have expected this, especially when considering how bad the film they made turned out to be. Despite this drop, the $23.4million earned at the U.S. box office was enough to keep the movie at the top of the charts. Sequels and spin-offs are inevitable and given how abruptly the first film finishes, there should be no doubt that the audience's punishment is far from complete.

Fifty Shades of Grey: The Movie scores a twenty-five per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Early indications suggest this is twenty-five per cent higher than initial predictions. Many critics have praised the film for not being the book, and this appears to be the movie's main strength. The major failings of Fifty Shades of Grey: The Novel were found in the writing of E.L. James. The book was long, the plotting was tedious, the sex scenes were gratuitous, the inner goddess interior monologues were infuriating and the lengthy descriptions of the hero's perfection exhausted the reader's patience. The new and exciting medium of film alleviates these problems by swapping prose for images. Who needs to hear how beautiful Christian Grey is when director Sam Taylor-Wood fills her frames with Jamie Dornan staring intensely at the middle distance, looking all handsome? Who needs to be told of Grey's opulence when behind Jamie Dornan is proof in the form of product placement? Who needs to know what Ana Steele thinks? The screenplay pares down James' five-hundred pages into two hours of moving pictures, thus removing a huge number of offending words. The remaining offending words are still offensive, but there are fewer of them.

In her review for Sight & Sound, Jane Giles begins by listing classic romances. 'Like Cinderella, Bluebeard, Pygmalion or Twilight, (Fifty Shades) is a romantic fantasy and a fairytale, a story of sexual awakening in which the innocent heroine’s inherent strengths allow her to battle monsters, in this case capitalism and a male sexuality twice-warped by childhood abuse and adolescent manipulation.' The critics have joined the filmmakers in the psychological nightmare that is attempting to find subtext in softcore titillation. Capitalism is a monster humankind cannot fight with naïve virgins alone. Still, Ana doesn't so much fight oppressive economic models as she does admire all that they buy and then marries a billionaire for a life of financial comfort. The main antagonist Ana faces, besides the crazed stalkers, ex-girlfriends, parents, college students and mechanical malfunction, is male sexuality. She does this with a straightforward ease most becoming of how women behave in erotic novels. She asks Christian to change, which he does because the narrative requires it. Then she asks him to change again, in much the same way as before, except this time he refuses, again because the narrative requires it.

Critics have noted that the filmmakers were constricted by the source material and the author's sway over all elements of the process. Giles admits, 'One suspects that Taylor-Johnson was never free even to push at the edges of sexual representation, and the film’s lack of explicit imagery and grit is one of its disappointments.' Following a similar conclusion Margot Harrison at Seven Days noted, 'A more adventurous writer and director could have turned this twisted fairy tale into a full-fledged surreal fantasy, using its inconsistencies as assets. But James, who wielded considerable control over this production, surely wouldn't have given her OK to such escapades.' E.L. James is not solely to blame for wanting the film adaptation of her novel to have similarities with what she wrote. Audiences, too, were keen that their favourite scenes were loyally translated to the big screen. Had a writing team featuring Kelly Marcel, Patrick Marber and James herself deviated from the source material, changing characters or cutting those long, redundant sequences that readers loved, the disapproval of the viewers would have been felt in box-office figures. Fortunately, Taylor-Wood stayed true to that classic scene where Ana sits at her new laptop and tries to think of something clever to write.

Speaking of which, for there to be cheap sex there must be alternatives in terms of price; expensive, modest, reasonable, bargain. There are possibly others. Fifty Shades of Grey falls across categories. On the one hand, it is sleazy exploitation, but that hand is gloved in decadence as designed by Armani. This presents an unobtainable vision of beauty and affluence to an audience just wanting to be aroused by an acceptable pornographification of status. To the uninitiated Fifty Shades may appear to be a subversive twist on the fairytale romance between prince and pauper, but it instead belongs to the Solicititilation tales of Mills & Boon. Ana refuses money from her lover-cum-owner, and his extravagant gifts are considered loans. She does not want Christian for his wealth and life of luxury, preferring to pretend there is her ideal man behind the emotional sterility and violence. His violence is not real violence, of course, but rather the fluffy kind of subjugation that is both pleasurable and sensitively-undertaken. Ana concludes her story victorious, married to the billionaire and with all the beauty and affluence that entails.

When an example of female empowerment is offered, where better to look for insightful critique than Playboy magazine? Stephen Rebello has few kind words. 'This gift to the world of schlock cinema tries valiantly to elevate the Twilight fan fiction-inspired source material to a level of melodrama worthy of ‘60s stuff like A Summer Place or Strangers When We Meet. It sometimes succeeds but just as often it sloshes around in a bubble bath of high camp a la 9 ½ Weeks.' Despite this less than impressive beginning, Rebello does admit that there are positives to be found in the glossy, fetishistic look of a perfume commercial, the film's lurid convictions and fifteen minutes of sex scenes so timid no one should be forced to shift awkwardly in front of confounded grandparents. 'The plot is as simple as its sexual politics are muddled,' he adds. Readers might have assumed this from their memories of reading, but fans of Romance fiction who missed Fifty Shades will assume this as well.

As to be expected from a Playboy article, the review ends a criticism that could just as easily be thrown back in its direction, with the sexes reversed. 'It floats in a female wish-fulfilment world of ridiculously handsome, chiseled dudes so engorged with desire that they whisk away average-looking virgins on their self-piloted private jets to their lavish penthouses featuring walk-in closets the size of Texas, drawers lined with an endless assortment of grey silk ties and, just for fun, a secret torture chamber.' Nothing says female wish-fulfilment quite like a lack of colour in decorative accessories, and yet, as we all know, there are only fifty shades of grey tie and that hardly constitutes an endless assortment. Despite this oversight, Rebello's review is consistent with those who have felt the need to weigh in on Fifty Shades. The overwhelming critical disdain was written resignedly, as nothing would stop the money train from pulling into every station. The Turner prize-winning director, the Academy Award-nominated co-scribe and the Oscar-winning producers combined their high-brow credentials for the veneer of artistic credibility, but their movie was always going to escape the box-office poison of expert opinion.

“Don’t you dare speak about the man I love that way”

The winner of So You Think You Can Write was announced shortly after contestants had submitted their entries. The champion was none other than the most predictable, Resisting the Sicilian Playboy by Amanda Cinelli. Nothing says Mills & Boon quite like a handsome tycoon overcoming resistance through a combination of handsomeness, money and strength, and the judges agreed. All those underwhelming rip-offs of Sleeping with the Enemy were no match for an underwhelming rip-off of everything Mills & Boon has ever published. For her part in the success, Cinelli receives the bounty of victory, which culminated in having her novel published on Valentine's Day 2015. Therefore Bewildered Hearts should look out for Resisting the Sicilian Playboy on bookshelves near them, taking pride of place among such titles as The Silician's Innocent Mistress, Love Slave to the Sicilian Billionaire, Bought for the Sicilian Billionaire's Bed, Captive at the Sicilian Billionaire's Command, Resisting the Billionaire, Bedded by the Italian Playboy and What the Greek Can't Resist.

The novel is available, in exchange for a modest fee, for all those who didn't manage to read it when it was free to download on the So You Think You Can Write website. The pitch introduced us to the characters and then to the plot, but the book itself tells a similar story with an equally predictable conclusion, albeit with thousands of extra and unnecessary words. Leo Valente is notorious among readers of tabloids, although the cause of his infamy is left vague. Still, wedding planner Dara Devlin needs his family estate for her client. Leo has only one request, that Dara work for him, as his entertainment-consultant and girlfriend. She accepts, as wedding planners are fearless pioneers willing to risk anything for the perfect wedding plan. What follows is largely guessable from the title, a playboy, an exotic location and some resistance. Dara's occupation suggests wedding planning, which leads us to assume the novel will end with a wedding in an exotic location.

The first chapter begins suitably enough with product placement and a heroine straddling a balcony ledge of a Milanese nightclub. Quickly come the Chick-lit asides that display a misunderstanding of how to wear footwear, 'A woman stood by her shoes, no matter how sticky the situation.' Dara is a woman only a sidestep away from being fully dressed, but there are bigger problems to deal with. Originally from Ireland, based in Syracuse and taking frequent trips to the mainland, Dara knows a thing or two about going the extra distance. Yet her latest assignment has been a series of failures. Desperation pushes her into a foolish plan, which she organises pedantically into three stages. Firstly, she must break into Platinum 1, which is either reopening or celebrating its ten year anniversary, Cinelli changes her mind. Secondly, she must find the owner, Italy's most beloved playboy Leo Valente. Thirdly, she must convince him of something. Her plan is both foiled and achieved when Leo finds her scaling a glass wall.

Leo Valente is not your standard sort of enigmatic hero. His hair is slightly askew. His eyelashes are overgrown. He has stubble. His gaze is smouldering. His voice sounds like silk, were silk able to make noise. His eyes are a unique shade of dark forest green. His chest is quite hairy. Despite these physical imperfections, he does at least have unresolved father issues. Herein lies the crux of the novel. Dara wishes to use his Sicilian castle for the wedding of Portia Palmer, the most famous English actress Ireland has ever produced, and requires Leonardo's permission. Leo has no interest in being reminded of another piece of property he owns, because this one just happens to be a metaphor for his arrogance and intimacy issues. Dara and Leo must wrestle for control of a metaphorical building that is also a building, only then will they be able to live happily ever after in the metaphorical building that has changed its metaphorical representation from his emotional aloofness to their empathetic love.

Leo has furnished the opulent Castello Bellamo with haunting memories. This explains Cinelli's follow-up prequel, The Sicilian Playboy's Incompetent Interior Decorator. Meanwhile, in the present, our titular playboy is a troubled man without paint or photographs of nice things. His father's ruthless business actions have alienated him from his homeland, the fictional town of Monterocca. At this moment, a beautiful blonde breaks into his private floor and offers him several opportunities. After all, she is on first name terms with Mr. Umberto and Mrs. Gianni Lucchesi, despite Gianni changing her name to Gloria halfway through the novel to avoid confusion when a man named Gianni Marcello turns up. With her reputation bolstered by the approval of potentially important characters, Leo realises that Dara's plans could repair his broken image among the poverty-stricken yokels of Sicily. More fundamental to life than business, family, island economy and identity, of course, is a visible bra strap. Leo and Dara have gone so long without sex the only thing they need to have sex is each other. This seems sure to happen, but a phone call interrupts their conversation and the first chapter ends abruptly, without much of a story to show for itself. Fortunately for those still interested, the second chapter soon follows and ends within a few sentences.

In the third chapter, Leo takes Dara to his favourite restaurant in Milan, known for its magic coffee cups. They talk for pages about their personalities and readers are well-advised to skip over this sequence. From there they head to the party Leo has asked Dara to organise in the few minutes between courses. Her skills at uniform designing and party-guest-separating impress Leo, who until meeting Dara had only hired inanimate objects to do his thinking for him. Yet Leo does not want Dara for her meticulous eye for detail, although he does also want her for that. No, Leo wants Dara to be his fake girlfriend, and not just any fake girlfriend, but a fake girlfriend he can have sex with and treat much like a real girlfriend. Why not just ask her to be his real girlfriend if he always intended on seducing her? Such are the vagaries of the Sicilian playboy. Still, a game is afoot. Can Dara resist? Will Dara's femininity melt Leo's heart and allow him to open up to estranged family members? Will Leo be disgusted by Dara's premature menopause or will his love prove to Dara her only physical flaw need not be an impediment to happiness? Will the wedding of the century go off smoothly, making Dara's career and allowing her to plan the weddings of whatever minor brittish royalty is?

For those wishing to read the completed manuscript, this can be achieved in the usual variety of manners. However, for those who prefer their books with all the grammatical mistakes and continuity errors left in, the winning draft submitted by Cinelli remains available online. Unlike many of entries Resisting the Sicilian Playboy defeated in the competition, its title was considered suitable enough to be retained. How much has changed in the few months Harlequin editors had to work with Cinelli can only be known by reading both original and published stories. This seems unnecessary punishment, even for those driven by an insatiable curiosity. Resisting the Sicilian Playboy is indistinguishable from the usual fare of the Modern subgenre. The indefinable certain-something that Mills & Boon look for and believe they found in Cinelli is nothing more than marketability.

"Something inside the princesse changed after giving birth"

To help prepare aspiring authors submit to So You Think You Can Write, Harlequin editors have explained how to construct the perfect novel. While this may have been redundant after the publication of Secrets Uncovered there was much that the how-to bible failed to advise on. Equally important, of course, was judging by the first chapters entered into this year's competition, no one has really learned anything despite the many lessons. For this reason, Associate Editor Rachel Burkot has written, Good Pacing: Better Than a Solid Pair of Spanx. Pacing is so important to quality writing that Mills & Boon rarely mentions it or shows much evidence that they know what the word means. Fortunately, Burkot is here to help with a series of obvious statements entirely unrelated to the topic of pacing.

What is pacing, Burkot asks. Where better to begin than with the pacing found in an instruction manual for building a shed? 'Steps have to be listed in the correct order, otherwise the pacing will be off, and you'll never get your product put together.' This is correct, albeit irrelevant. Without a floor and walls a roof will simply fall to the ground, and will not even be considered a roof. In terms of romantic fiction, the sequence of events must be ordered to best maximise emotional resonance. Traditional romance fiction prefers linear narratives with a couple of sex scenes to pad out the second act and love neither realised nor declared until the final pages often after a misunderstanding or disagreement that separates the pair for long enough for them to see that life without the other is not worth living. This is the classic formula no one wishes to experiment with, and while pertinent to writing for Mills & Boon does not explain pacing. Still, the article has more comparisons. There is an email to an old friend, cement between floors of a house, dental work and Spanx. All either require pacing or are pacing.

Yet, just what is pacing? According to Burkot, pacing romance is especially difficult because the process of courtship is, 'Less transparent, more on-the-page than in other genres, since the characters are meeting, going on dates and falling in love.' While the pacing of much fiction and non-fiction has its pacing off-on-page, Romance paces its stories with words and those words are always within the book, often printed as part of sentences. There is nowhere to hide in Romance and a lack of pacing will reveal itself by every letter appearing together as one large incomprehensible black smudge. Burkot elaborates, 'You can't have characters declare their love on the first date and get engaged on the second. That’s just not reasonable or relatable! Furthermore, the book would end at the second date.' Thus, delaying the inevitable must be what Mills & Boon thinks pacing is.

When it comes to avoiding the trappings of poor pacing Burkot has two issues. She does not want to see hero and heroine fall in love too soon and she does not want stories without conflict. 'If it’s obvious only one-quarter in that the characters are ga-ga for each other and neither hell nor high waters will keep them apart, where’s the hook to keep reading?' she asks. Secrets Uncovered delved deeply into defining conflict as the things that stop the couple from being together. Burkot explains them incorrectly as, 'Plot-wise (externally) and within themselves (internally).' Proper pacing, therefore, must be observed in both the storyline and the emotional dilly-dallying that is also the storyline. Pacing can be found within conflict, but conflict is not pacing. Nevertheless, when writing an essay on the importance of pacing without fully comprehending what pacing is, it seems sensible to stress the importance of things that you do comprehend, just as long as this advice is properly paced.

What are the benefits of including pacing in a story? For starters, there is the illusion of unpredictability. 'If you can make a reader forget that she already knows the ending of a romance for just a split second, you’ve done a fabulous job with pacing!' But what is pacing? With this sentence concluding the article it seems safe to assume that Rachel Burkot does not know either. Nevertheless, there is one valuable lesson that can be learned from favourably comparing speed and rhythm to an American hosiery company. If a romance novel is good it has either been properly placed or has an abundance of pacing. If, however, a romance novel is bad its failure may be the result of either improper pacing or no pacing whatsoever. When pacing a blogpost on the topic of pacing, a Bewildered Heart must include epiphanies at around this point to provide the piece with a reason for existing. Most readers will have skipped down to the final paragraph anyhow, safe in the knowledge that everything up until that point was filler broken up with crude innuendo.

To better understand what is clearly a misunderstood subject, we turn to Writer's Digest and an article by Jessica Page Morrell from Crafting Novels & Short Stories. She begins by asking, 'What is Pacing in Fiction?' Good question. 'Pacing is part structural choices and part word choices, and uses a variety of devices to control how fast the story unfolds.' These choices include sentence length and the use of verbs. Pace can be quickened and slowed by a variety of methods, depending on the nature of the scene. The difficulties for Romance authors stem from their preference towards a leisurely flow to the drama with plenty of stops for emotional gestation, handsomeness-noticing, skin-tingling and neuroses-having. Action scenes are rare and when they do occur they are often interrupted by lengthy summaries of what the reader already knows. Heroes and heroines are afflicted by internal conflicts created in their pasts, and this curtails narrative momentum. Writer's Digest offers an insight into action, suspense and excitement, but these words are rarely used to describe the Romance genre.

Nevertheless, what would be so bad about inventing a new form of modern romantic fiction employing some of the suggestions made by Writer's Digest? Readers would be swept along, not by wondering why the world's sexiest and most sensitive billionaire is still single, but by an author skilled at story-telling. Of Morrell's seven tips the most significant is action. 'Action scenes are where you “show” what happens in a story, and contain few distractions, little description and limited transitions.' Were Romance novels to have plot development this insight would be invaluable. The traditional Harlequin output struggles with pacing due to deeper, inherent difficulties with structure and story. A gentle pace is used to mask what is lacking. Once an aspiring author has mastered the basics they can begin to consider technical adjustments, and thus we await Rachel Burkot's next article, which will hopefully explain what the basics are.

"When her boss said Leonardo Valente was untouchable, she had accepted the challenge with enthusiasm"

The twenty-five finalists of the first final section have been clipped down to the ten finalists that make up the penultimate final section. Bewildered Heart has barely had time to gloss over the first chapters, and now the public has been tasked with reading ten complete manuscripts in a week before the next deadline. Of those previously mentioned and immediately rejected, three women-in-peril have made the most recent cut. They are Fire and Iron, Violation of Innocence and Wanting the Detective. The other seven include the Christmas-themed (Eep!) Kimani Mistletoe Mischief, the crowd-pleasing American Love For Sale and the hard-to-believe-it-is-not-already-a-Harlequin Resisting the Sicilian Playboy. Either making up the numbers or likely to win are Belfast Belle by Karin Baine, Paradise Found by Katie Meyer and T.R. McClure's A Perfect Match. You may remember T.R. McClure from such romance novels as Never Too Late and A Silver Lining.

Each of the ten finalists belong to separate imprints, which is presumably a coincidence, and although the differences between subgenres are negilible at best, some of the novels have been written for genuine niche markets. Medical™, for example, is a far cry from the likes of Modern. In the latter, the heroines have careers through which they meet handsome, wealthy tycoons, CEOs and, on occasion, pirates. Medical Romances make their heroine's careers related to medicine, while the heroes are handsome, wealthy doctors or surgeons. So You Think You Can Write has one such offering, entitled Belfast Belle. What fate lies in store for its inexperienced heroine, Lola Roberts? As she begins work on the ward she comes into conflict with her sexy French registrar. He sees Lola as a pink princess, which may be a technical term, and does not want the hassle of his job or sex with a beautiful woman. Despite this, sex is inevitable, but like all Frenchman Henri believes himself undeserving of happiness. What is a night of passion without a happy ending? Perhaps Lola can answer that through a combination of sex and maybe some technical jargon about a stethoscope.

The pitch for Paradise Found is classic Mills & Boon, perhaps explaining Katie Meyer's decision to aim for the Special Edition imprint. An orphan wants to save the community of Paradise Isle from a ruthless property developer. Nic Caruso, of Caruso Hotels, drives his rented car, wearing his rented suit, on his way to his rented room in Paradise Isle. This is no vacation, however, but rather a working vacation, which sounds a lot like work. He is here to tear down this idyllic small-town community and replace every building with a corporate hotel, ski resort, sunbatheing lounge, business centre, retail district and sixteen banks. Driving towards a bridge he spots a badly injured dog, dying on the side of the highway. After a great deal of philosophising he saves the dog. Dropping her in at the veterinary clinic he meets technician Jillian Everett and what follows appears to be foreseeable.

Few aspiring entries sounded more like a Mills & Boon novel than Amanda Cinelli's Resisting the Sicilian Playboy. It is as if the title has been pulled from a marketing meeting of marketing experts intent of finding the most clichéd words possible in the least amount of time. There is implied exoticism, a playboy and a playboy's favourite trait in a woman, resistance. The pitch begins as a reader might assume, 'Dara Devlin needs Leo Valente’s help if she wants to keep her job and plan the wedding of the year.' Not her own wedding, of course, although by the end of the book it will be. Everything is in place for a classic tale of romance, with a woman blackmailed into bed by a foreigner. Their no-strings affair takes a turn for the problematic, however, as Leo falls in love. But wait! That's not the end? It sounds like the end. 'Dara cant have children and vowed never to marry,' Cinelli continues. There is more than just an apostrophe missing for this unhappy couple. Will Leo prove to Dara that her pledge is silly and cure her infertiity with his magic penis? Does Leo happen to own a small orphanage filled with his illegimate offspring? What kind of resistance involves sleeping with the Sicilian playboy? So many questions.

Love for Sale is a Harlequin American Romance by the patriotically named Chase Ewing. There are few things less Yankee Doodle Dandy than a retired rodeo champion and Love for Sale offers Luke Crawford as its hero, a retired rodeo champion turned single father and ranch-owner. Still, even the characters of Harlequin American have felt the pinch of the economic meltdown and Luke is faced with the ultimate decision. Does he cash-in on his child or his home? By choosing the latter he meets ambitious estate agent Katherine Hastings. A lifetime of love seems relatively straight-forward at this point, but first Kate must find a buyer. Will Luke want to sell now that he has found a new and improved wife and mother for himself and his kid? With a title that promises solicititilation and a pitch that fails to deliver it, the enticing combination of ranching and property management makes Love for Sale a strong candidate for victory, assuming the voting public are lovestruck estate agents with a penchant for Westerns.

Fighting the good fight for Heartwarming is A Perfect Match. 'When east coast event planner Lacey Hoffmann first lays eyes on the tall, dark and dusty cowboy standing between her and her morning coffee, sparks fly.' Presumably because he has got dust in her beverage, but as this writing competition has been keen to illustrate, cowboys are the ultimate female desire, especially when they couple their aesthetic with a well-paid career. In this case, Clay McDaniel is a horse clinician from Texas. Not one for east coast coffee houses, he and Lacey head for his ranch. Still, the course of true love really only runs smoothly on the pages of romance novels, and even these two must overcome some problems. She fears her parents will divorce. He owes a debt to his brother. These sound like external conflicts. Internally they are, in so many ways, opposites and they live in different parts of the country. Might she relocate, given her preoccupation with cowboys? After all, despite their numerous differences they appear to be a perfect match. We know this because A Perfect Match is the title of the book.

Kimani Romances feature the African-American and multicultural characters that are not allowed to appear in the other imprints due to old-fashioned values such as racism. Making up the numbers for reasons of political correctness this year is Mistletoe Mischief by Carolyn Hector. Threatening the status quo even further, Mistletoe Mischief adds a non-white Christmas and a possibly homosexual Santa Claus to the mix. When the aptly-monikered Duke Rodriguez reveals Santa to not be a real mythical fabrication he seeks to put things right with assistance from Macy Cuomo, an over-worked holiday decorator. The holidays are always busy for holiday decorators, but Duke and Macy find time to gaze at one another and speak. As their attraction becomes more palpable, so, the reader might hope, will some kind of plot. So You Think You Can Write has achieved its objective of finding ten passable novels. If history is anything to go by, every author will be contracted, but one must be rewarded as the champion, because Mills & Boon insist upon happy and predictable endings. That'll be Superromance Man Maid then.

"Who would name their son Heathcliff and Rhett in this day and age"

The twenty-five finalists of So You Think You Can Write can be helpfully separated into ill-fitting categories. This allows Bewildered Heart to deal with them in groups, and the first group will be known as Women-in-Peril, due to their thriller overtures. There are two from the Harlequin Intrigue subgenre, Remembrance by Tanya M. Burnstad and Wanting the Detective by Leah Maser. There are two Historicals, Agent of Desire by Katherine Dane and Fire and Iron by Autumn Shelley. Representing Harlequin Romantic Suspense are Violation of Innocence by Jeannie Hall and In Desperate Search of Peace by Analiesa Adams. Finally, there is Impulse, by Ison Hill and for the Kimani™ imprint.

Where better to begin than with Remembrance, a mystery thriller featuring a hunted heroine suffering from amnesia, a retired Special Forces soldier and their mutual attraction that might just save both of them for reasons that aren't initially apparent. The first chapter begins with several unnecessary adjectives and the introduction of the psychopath who wants Sarah Morgan dead, much against her own wishes. After an opening light on plot but heavy on words, the story switches to something else entirely, and the reader is left to guess at what might be happening, thus fulfilling the secondmost important duty of the Intrigue subgenre. To call Remembrance somewhat incoherent would be too straightforward a sentence, and therefore would not do justice to Burnstad's prose.

Wanting the Detective, meanwhile, sounds suspiciously similar to every other mystery thriller ever written or filmed. This time, however, it is the heroine with special in her job title, as Lucy Reynolds is a Special Agent visiting Atlanta to track down her missing sister. Her personal investigation only brings her into conflict with Kurt Milton, the sexy police detective already on the case. Lucy will do whatever it takes to bring her sister home, but Kurt doesn't play by the rules when lives are at stake. She's enigmatic. He's untamed. Together they sound objectionable. Will sparks fly? Will a human trafficking ring be burned to the ground? Will that leave any evidence with which to prosecute? The first chapter begins promisingly enough in the location all romance novels should start in, a sleazy strip club, where the feisty heroine accidentally arrests her future husband, a cop claiming to be there working undercover. Still, at least they have a charming anecdote about how they first met to tell the grandchildren.

The woman-in-peril subgenre works well in the Historical imprint, as those were the days of damsels, where distress lurked around every corner. We begin with Fire and Iron, set in the classic Midwest, not far from John Wayne country. Incomprehensible sentences aren't the only thing troubling US Marshall Brit Tracey. There is too much murder going on in the town of Jennings, Wyoming and he is directly responsible for much of it. He shoots first, as half the saying goes, and the second half of the saying doesn't really apply to him. After what seems like a great deal of scrolling down the reader is introduced to both the plot and the heroine. "Crazy Mollie", otherwise known as 'Irish' Margaret Shannon O'Shea, is a cattle thief and convicted killer. Brit must transport her across country, all the while falling in love with her and bringing them both closer to the man who framed her for murder. Fire and Iron is not your typical romance. It is told from the hero's perspective and the opening chapter features many more references to urine than readers will be accustomed to. Still, completely ignoring the structural instructions the publisher suggested and making references to urine has never hurt an aspiring author previously.

Katherine Dane begins her pitch in confident mood. 'Perfect for the Harlequin Historical Series, Agent of Desire is a sexy historical romance filled with intrigue.' If only Harlequin Historical Intrigue Romance was a genre, then this would be just right. Agent of Desire may sound like a perfume you wouldn't buy for your grandmother, but if this competition has taught us anything it is that titles can be deceiving. Hampstead Heath, London. The year 1817. Lord Crayle meets Sari Trevor. Trevor, known for wearing a distinctive Asian drape, is not your standard historical heroine, according to the pitch. She robs carriages, and as the story begins, she is about to rob the carriage of Lord Crayle for all its jewels, money and the Lord's mother's ability to tactfully approach difficult subject matter. When judging the quality of writing, a prospective novel must pass the opening line test. Does, for example, the opening line make sense? Agent of Desire begins, 'Sari rubbed her gloved but frozen hands together painfully as hid among the beeches lining the London road.' Next.

From Harlequin Romantic Suspense comes Violation of Innocence. 'Raised in a cult and forced at twelve to marry its leader,' the pitch begins, pessimistically. Things improve, however, as some years later Lynea Kreig escapes to a college town and falls for her professor, an accident-prone expert on cults. Working together love is kindled, but somewhere lurks her husband, with homicidal vengeance on his mind. Violation of Innocence is either a retread of Sleeping with the Enemy or a powerful redemptive tale of a husband sacrificing everything to win back the beautiful woman he has loved since she was a child. The first chapter gives little away, too busy introducing numerous characters who may or may not be important and who may or may not soon be murdered.

Speaking of thinly-veiled retreads of Sleeping with the Enemy, In Desperate Search of Peace sees Lisa Hill flee her crazy ex-fiance, who has turned his back on engagement to focus on his new passion, drug addiction. Much like Lynea, Lisa finds love in an idealised small town, Lake Duchess, on the Washington coastline, but still adjacent to a lake named Duchess. Sheriff Ryan Jacobs takes a shine to the mysterious newcomer, but his work is, 'complicated by his growing feelings her.' In a world where not even sentences make sense, how are emotions supposed to? Still, author Analiesa Adams should earn credit for the most unexpectedly romantic line of dialogue thus far. 'Don’t hide from me. You fucking whore, get out here. Stop this shit.' What has happened to our once sweet and innocent romance genre?

Impulse imagines the greatest obstacle any hero faces when attempting to win the heart of the heroine, a restraining order. Payton Jordan may be unable to spell her first name, but she has a successful career as a news anchor for Channel 6 Detroit. She has good looks, a trademark smile, the ability to read, skin and hair, everything a television personality requires. Still, nothing says celebrity more like a demented stalker, and Payton has one of those to boot. The opening chapter splits its time between Payton at the police station, and the stalker watching his favourite show, the news. Where is the hero, as mentioned in the pitch as criminal psychologist Sterling Hughes? As it happens, he doesn't appear to be anywhere, unless he turns out to be the stalker, and that seems unlikely. The pitch says Payton will escape to the relative safety of Atlanta, apparently the human trafficking centre of the United States.

All of these seven first chapters appear suitable for Harlequin, given their complete indifference towards editing. If they make it through to the final ten and their full manuscripts are offered to the public there are pitfalls each will have to avoid. Women-in-peril, as plot devices, appeal to author, publisher and reader. For the writer it affords them more than just the woman-meets-man formula of Romance to inform their structure. The case brings the hero and heroine together, gives them something to talk about and pushes the story-line forward even while the romantic plot inevitably sags. While providing momentum, the thriller aspect breaks up the scenes of feeling-having and family history-sharing with sequences of possible excitement.

The challenge for the writer is in finding a balance between high-octane thrills and saccharine sentiment. Romance comes before intrigue, after all, as there are plenty of other bookshop shelves for readers seeking action and adventure. The tonal shifts require a nuanced touch to give credibility to complex emotional responses to life and death danger and candlelit dinner in an Atlantan restaurant. Given the stakes of the subplot, attempts at levity and romance can display a flippancy that is not consistent with the severity of the situation. After all, is it in poor taste to end a novel with a couple kissing on a pile of corpses?