“Africa does things to some people; the very air and strangeness possess a lure which no amount of vicarious experience can shatter”

Following on from our discussion on the importance of location in romance fiction, all that was missing was a selection of examples and a thorough examination of those books. Thank goodness, therefore, that we have been reading Mills & Boon novels these last few months. It is time we put this research to good use and perhaps even learn something. Many Harlequin subgenres have a clear location implied by their category. Medical Romance must, by its definition, involve places where medicine is practised, unless the doctor is possibly on holiday at a beach and must administer CPR on a beautiful widow's heart, resuscitating his own capacity for love in the process. Well, look at that. One paragraph in and we already have a great idea.

Here at Bewildered Heart we don't read Medical Romance, of course, because we crave relatable characters in habitable locations and sick people alarm us. So instead we read the likes of Learning Curves by Joanne Rock, Roughing It with Ryan by Jill Shalvis, and Finding Nick by Janis Reams Hudson (Heh heh heh). These are all Harlequin entries involving quaint examples of small town Americana, in states such as Arizona and Texas that may or may not exist. Learning Curves concerns a college graduate and a garage owner-cum-lecturer. Neither location speaks volumes for glamour, although a garage offers a little raw masculine sexuality if the reader ignores their own experiences of visiting garages. Can love blossom in the most unlikely of places, Joanne Rock does not have to ask, because on the pages of a Harlequin novel is the most likely place for love to blossom.

Finding Nick is a fish-out-of-water tale with a stylish New Yorker slumming it in a friendly, carefree Texan town. These tales don't use location as prominently or successfully as they might have had the authors been interested in heightening or contrasting their romances with a wider picture. Roughing It With Ryan is more urban, but revolves exclusively around the nondescript apartment building in which the heroine lives, relegating the drama to the instantly forgettable. In The Rugged Hero's Beautiful Blonde Chick the leads rarely leave the bedroom, but we agreed we wouldn't speak of that title again.

In fact, there is little evidence to back-up Julie Leto's argument that romance writers give much attention to their backdrop. There certainly appears a lack of contrast or embellishing. Even the clichéd history of exoticism and glamour seems to be disappearing from the pages. These stories are decidedly middle-class and domestic, serving to illustrate the obvious characteristics of the leads. The single Romance Romance example we have, The Dad Next Door, gives the reader the barely glimpsed shores of Squam Lake. The emotionally-wrought arguments take place in kitchens, on porches and in the back of a shop. When you have characters who are living and not looking for love, the author never forces her leads out of their physical comfort zones. The romance evolves while day-to-day life goes on.

This is a modern development, because in previous years Mills & Boon was dedicated to aspirational wealth and glamour, a genre of escapist fantasy in location as much as story. The 1965 Kathryn Blair novel, appropriately named Bewildered Heart, is set in the sultry jungle of Murabai, Nigeria (Please note, Murabai does not exist). The protagonist is truly out of her depth, an unconventional face in a strange, beautiful, but scary country. The reader is introduced to the heroine through her descent into this unrecognisable world, which is sketched out through the heroine's intrigue and neuroses. The exotic location is unimaginable to the reader, and becomes a selling point for the book in itself.

Nowadays, we have The Playboy of Pengarroth Hall, where the location is used with a typical heavy-handedness to shade in the cold, distant hero, his house and grounds representing his wealth as well as his fastidious personality. Susanne James' story is as archetypal a Mills & Boon as one could hope to read, if one would ever hope for anything such as that. Our heroine falls in love with the location first, and then slowly warms to the hero once she realises he owns the land. Their first kiss takes place in a darkened bedroom, an intimate moment of empathy in a church and his marriage proposal in a small park in central London.

Cindi Myer's Wild Child's filthy parade of childishly-described sexual acts all occur on a beach and the usual locales that surround a beach, such as beach-side houses, beach-related shops, beach-huts and the ocean. The author makes no attempt to imbue her prose, setting or characters with any originality and so Wild Child ends up as a substandard postcard written by a fourteen year old boy. This is a shame because while a beach is one of those stereotypical, unimaginative locations Julie Leto warned us against using, its tropes are open to such subversion that a writer could fill a beach with the most unlikely elements and invent something creative.

Recently we read One Night with the Rebel Billionaire and with this still fresh in our memories we can examine scenes on an individual basis, because as we have seen there appears a general ambivalence toward a single location, but rather the writer prefers to have her characters constantly roving to new and exciting exteriors with views. In MacKenzie's Promise, for example, our leads run from beach house, to restaurant, to hotel, to different restaurant to secret island getaway and on, all places shot through with a sense of luxury, in frothy contrast to the events of the book, which involve kidnap, murder and bad dialogue. It is difficult to know whether this contrast was intentional, but let's sleep tonight assuming it wasn't.

The location for Trish Wylie's One Night with the Rebel Billionaire is the Martha's Vineyard mansion where the majority of the events take place. The book opens on the mansion's beach and ends in the guest house. This is indicative of the titular billionaire, a sign that our characters need not worry about their finances, and can instead focus solely on their emotional retardation. On the way to love, key scenes take place in office buildings, supermarkets, grassy patches of land and in a small aeroplane. As aspiring Mills & Boon authors, how do we make sense of this seemingly arbitrary use of setting? Julie Leto told us to think carefully about where to set our scenes and then use words to describe how they look, but what we have seen so far seems thoughtless. After all, it is impossible not to set them somewhere.

As romance continues its stunted growth toward being the runt of the literature, location has lost that desirable, thrilling aspect that once marked Mills & Boon as the leader in escapist entertainment for women. This change in writing and location is consistent to the changing attitudes writers have taken towards their characters. Men are no longer mysterious, brooding, potential rapists controlling large portions of African jungle or mountain ranges in Wyoming. Today men are capable of marriage, domesticity, cooking, fixing sinks and raising children without the support of whiskey. For the reader to be satisfied by the happy ending she must see the hero in his element, doing manly things such as love-making and being sexist, while believing him capable and content to wash up the dinner things and watch whatever is on Living for the rest of his life.

Mills & Boon exists to publish female-driven plots. We no longer live in a man's world (although we still live in a man's world) and it is deemed sexist for the heroine to submit to the love and lifestyle her man is accustomed to. The popularity of such books as Pleasured in the Billionaire's Bed and The Brazilian Boss' Innocent Mistress challenge this. Does the virginal girl end up moving to the rainforest to become a reclusive Brazilian billionaire, or can she retain the dignity of women somewhere by claiming the parts of her single life that made her she? Are we to believe innocent girls await demanding billionaires with really luxurious beds, ready and willing to give up their old lives for all the man has? Romance writers can't think much of women if that is the case.

Once you marry a billionaire playboy what does he become? A millionaire husband? If a hero is defined by his bachelor status the story has its work cut out to convince us he will be ready for the tribulations of matrimony. Therefore location moves into the home, and while these men live in mansions, beach villas and country estates in Cornwall, their glorious houses still have faulty plumbing, dirty crockery and extra bedrooms for the inevitability of offspring. Is there a place and an inclination for the likes of Jack T. Colton in modern romance? Surely his swagger, quips and facial scarring can find a way back into Harlequin's pages and its readers' hearts? Just because he doesn't strike us as the type who would give up his dangerous quest-filled existence for a life in suburbia it doesn't make the moment where he kisses the girl any less romantic.

'I feel pretty, oh, so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and bright! And I pity any girl who isn't me tonight.'

And so, you've created a twenty-seven year-old woman as the idealised version of your-twenty-seven-year-old-self and then given her a quirk, such as cooing at babies in supermarkets (but only supermarkets, for anywhere else is creepy), and a physical flaw, such as frizzy hair on especially hot days. Then you've created your ideal man from a possibly embarrassing photograph of Hugh Jackman and loaded him with the kinds of characteristics and physical traits all women agree upon as desirable in a man. Once you have your heroine and hero the next step for your Mills & Boon romance is the story and location. Location is important. The romance genre has a history of exotic and glamorous settings, the sorts of places where running into an enigmatic, ruthless and handsome sheik is a plausible occurrence. After all, the perfect man is a well-hidden breed, and rightfully so. We can't have the manifestation of the perfect partner swanning around urban shopping malls. He must be chopping wood in isolated snow-covered landscapes or flying overhead in a helicopter building a multi-million pound empire to use to lovingly force a woman into his marriage bed.

Fortunately for those undecided on such issues as location Julie Elizabeth Leto is here to help. You may remember her from The Domino Effect, that terrible book Bewildered Heart read and hated. Well, as with so many authors of terrible books we have read and hated, she posts essays on her website explaining how to write terrible books we will someday read and hate. There are many essays, but for now let us concern ourselves with  Where Am I? The Importance of Setting to Your Romance Novel. 'A lush tropical island. A dark, candlelit restaurant by the ocean. A remote cabin in the foggy mountain tops. With little imagination, romantic fantasies bubble out of settings such as these. What better place could possibly exist to set your romance novel? Plenty of better places - trust me. Those listed above are easy and no one ever said that writing well was easy.'

If you're not going to say it, someone should. Writing romance isn't the same as writing well. However, an early point to Julie Leto, as most of her examples are tired and formulaic. Still, a remote, foggy candlelit restaurant on a tropical island sounds delightful, although the service would be poor and the menu mostly fish and coconut. 'Your job as a writer is to create settings that will not depend entirely on images and emotional responses the reader already possesses, but those that will take her literally to a whole new world.' Well, not literally. 'Do I mean science fiction? Not necessarily.' It's not necessarily sci-fi. It's not sci-fi at all. You're misusing the word literally. Stop that.

Leto's reference point is Make That Scene: A Writer’s Guide to Setting, Mood and Atmosphere by William Noble, and according to Noble setting is vital for three reasons, 1, it adds vividness to the story, 2, it influences the characters and 3, it plays a vital role in the story. Now, while this may sound like the nonsensical throwing around of technical words for the benefit of no one, there is something worthwhile to be gleamed for this and that is, location is vital. Without it your characters would wander a desolate world of existential blankness with no dimensions or gravity. Except that itself would be a location. In fact, it is the location of the Tron movies. Leto goes on, 'If a setting you’ve chosen doesn’t interlock this tightly with the story you’re about to tell - if it’s just a backdrop as changeable as stage scenery - you may not have chosen the right place for your story to occur.' We appear to be hammering on about the importance of setting, but it's worth remembering. Setting a tender love story in a futuristic world of bareknuckle-boxing on an oil rig made from cardboard would be stupid. Although tender love can blossom anywhere, so let's not rule out inspired bursts of originality, eh, article?

'West Side Story is essentially Romeo and Juliet set in a different time and place. Fourteenth century Verona becomes 1960s New York City. The circumstances and plot remain the same, but the audience doesn’t seem to mind. The changed setting meant changed characters, and together they flushed out fresh elements to the basic plot of forbidden, star-crossed love.' West Side Story is one of the most romantic American movies ever, according to our friends at the AFI, so good example, Julie. West Side Story is a silly film, where the forbidden element of the love isn't credible or particularly well-thought out. Then again, the silliness might have had more to do with the constant singing, homo-erotic dancing and egotistic vanity.

'Contrary to popular myth, Poe was not a drugged-out weirdo who wrote gross stories about blood and gore. On the contrary, he was a master craftsman whose attention to detail in his tightly woven narratives contradicts any possibility of a steady use of hallucinogens.' At this point it is easy to become concerned for Julie Leto's grasp on reality. But thank God she's here to defend Edgar Allen Poe from the vast majority of literary experts who revile him as nothing more than an old-timey version of Eli Roth. With Poe's reputation restored, let's see what the drugged-out weirdo had to say. 'In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction…' Let us hope Leto didn't take Poe's review of Hawthorne as a personal attack on her own novels, but we can surely sleep peacefully under the notion that she doesn't consider herself a skilled literary artist.

'In our novels, the preconceived or single effect is romance, coupled with the overall mood of the book (i.e., suspense, a historic richness, or humor). Genre and sub-genre - your targeted market - must be taken into consideration when you plan your overall effect.' We appear to have narrowed our choice down to either Modern, or Romance. The single effect, therefore, is romance, with the mood being romantic. Romance plus romance equals double romance, thus Romantic Romance, our preferred sub-genre. Thus the setting must be evocative of romance, the sort of place people go to fall in love, which also has the effect of helping people fall in love. Suitable locations would include a lush tropical island, a dark, candlelit restaurant by the ocean or a remote cabin in foggy mountain tops.

'Should the setting enhance the single effect, or contrast it?' It turns out that there are unlimited choices open to an author when choosing location. Perhaps a contrasting background would work more strongly, for example somewhere that does not instantly produce love make might the impending love even more powerful, through contrast. How about finding love in the most unlikely location? But surely, you cry, a remote cabin in foggy mountain tops is unlikely. What kind of single man will hang out there with anything other than murder on his mind? You're right, and possibly a little paranoid. In The Domino Effect, our spy heroine was thrust into the surprisingly easy-going locale of a Chicago nightclub, with all the mystery, sexiness and poor lighting one would expect from such a place. Clearly Leto wanted to enhance the effect. Had she contrasted it, her tough-talking, hard-living, sexy spy might have had to seek out traitors at a nursery school, or a petting zoo. Quickly, Google, write that idea down.

Leto moves onto how to set a scene, saying, somewhat curiously, that a writer must use words to describe things. 'To most of us, there is only one way to establish setting - through description by the author.' Most of us, Julie? We can assume the rest are illiterate, or screenwriters. If the writer has decided against inference through story and dialogue, instead insisting on straight description, we return to William Noble, who has another list of three things. 1, Colours, 2, Shapes and 3, Textures. Well, that is hard to argue with. Noble asks us to, 'Imagine ourselves in the scene: it is we who do the looking and the absorbing, and we know what will strike us most forcefully. We seek ‘key details’ with this method, ever mindful that use of detail can overrun us if we aren’t careful.' Indeed. Readers don't read Mills & Boon for the fancy language and poetic insights. If they want good writing there's a much smaller shelf a few rows down. We're here to serve them with a straight-forward story of romance with lashings of romance against a backdrop of romanticism. What does it matter if we don't know any appropriate words besides romantic?