“A woman with backbone, a woman with brains and ambitions – and breeding”

Nora Roberts has written over two hundred romance novels. She began her career with Silhouette over thirty years ago, having been first rejected by Mills & Boon when they began scouring the United States for authors. By the time she had found the international success few romance writers achieve her publisher had been bought out and Harlequin cashed in on a novelist attuned to her reader's desires, canny with a franchise and with a relentless appetite for work. Beginning in 1985, Nora created a new dynasty, a multi-generational family of the wealthy, attractive and powerful, allowing her an endless series of books and short stories about the MacGregor clan. Not to be confused with the Mackade Brothers, The Stanislaskis, the Calhoun Women, the Cordina Royal Family, the Stars of Mithra, The Donovan Legacy, The O'Hurleys and the goings-on of Night, the MacGregors are led by Daniel Duncan MacGregor and wife Anna Whitfield. They met and married in print and went onto have three children, who also got their romantic stories told, having numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren that would fill Roberts' writing obligations for the next few weeks and shape the destiny of fictional American politics and culture, a country controlled by an affluent, white elite.

What followed became known as Playing The Odds, Tempting Fate, All The Possibilities, One Man's Art, For Now, Forever, In From the Cold, Rebellion, The Winning Hand and The Perfect Neighbor. However, Roberts and Daniel Duncan could not be stopped, offering us two collections of revealing briefs; The MacGregor Brides and The MacGregor Grooms. These are not the same stories told from differing points of view, but rather six further romances between one of the world's most celebrated families and the offspring of other incredibly rich legacies. Daniel MacGregor is sick of not seeing everyone he knows married and living in a mansion with countless kids, so he sets about playing secret matchmaker for his gorgeous and talented descendants. In The MacGregor Grooms' opening novella he trains his demented eyes on grandson Daniel Campbell (DC to his friends. Hi, DC!), sister of Julia and son of Alan MacGregor, former President of the United States. Roberts helpfully adds a Family Tree in the glossary. DC is a devilishly handsome and highly successful artist, who has moved back to Washington because of his name. He lives in a luxurious two-storey apartment overlooking the C & O Canal, where he paints sound tracked by the tough urban poetry of John Mellencamp. Despite having everything his glamorous lifestyle lacks a few items that DC would rather not have, namely a wife, some children and an interior design scheme.

From the moment DC was born Daniel had picked out the perfect partner for him. Now, having allowed legality to catch up with his dastardly games, the time for romance is afoot. The only trouble is DC does not want to settle down, so Daniel will have to play this carefully. He ropes in family friend “Aunt” Myra, the actual Aunt of one Layna Drake, heir to the Drake Department Store fortune. Layna has also recently returned to Washington D.C. to work her way up the corporate ladder and one day take control of the family business. Daniel asks DC to accompany Layna to a business function, purely as a favour to Myra. DC reluctantly agrees, but it soon becomes clear that he and Layna have many things in common; they are both exceedingly beautiful, successful and wealthy, they are both controlled by manipulative ageing family members, they both live locally and both have no interest in relationships, preferring instead to focus on their lucrative careers. All best intentions are torn asunder, however, when they see each other for the first time since they were innocent infants, running free down the hallways of the White House. Layna has developed from a willowly waif with hair like a dandelion to a stunning womanly creature of perfection with blonde hair, and still thin. Meanwhile, DC has retained all of his hair and become taller, thus overcoming the two challenges all men face when under-taking growing up.

Despite the stars aligning for an illicit clinch in a bathroom cubicle DC and Layna are able to control their baser urges and focus on struggling through the evening without any awkward instances of falling to the floor as watery liquid. Instead Layna has a short conversation with DC's parents, who happen to be there, and then they dance, sultrily, their bodies fitting together as if they had been designed to meld into one. Heart rates soaring unrealistically they call it a night without having to admit that they like one another. Foolishly, and perhaps only because Nora's ending demands it so, DC cannot resist some playful home invasion the following day. Finding Layna listening to classical music, wearing a hat and planting flowers in the garden he sketches her face and asks her to an art exhibit at the Smithsonian. There the third chapter ends with merciful succinctness, leaving Bewildered Heart to comprehend what so many millions of readers enjoy in the work of Nora Roberts. Her early fame seems remarkable, as nothing happens in Part One of The MacGregor Grooms to differentiate it from the romance canon, except Roberts seems less willing to baulk her prose out with heavy-handed emotional revelations. There are the standard clichés readers will have resolved to accept as inevitable, including mentions of DC's masculine hands and Layna's realisation that only a thin layer of silk saves her from skin on skin contact. The attraction between hero and heroine is carried out with a formulaic predictability, yet the novel's most obvious accomplishment is the subversive manner with which Roberts brings her leads together.

Mills & Boon Romances are keen to avoid secondary characters and plot contrivances, instead pushing ideas such as fate, soulmates and true love to the forefront of their stories. With the MacGregor series Roberts takes a cynical view, inviting her readers to empathise with the old-fashioned family orientations of Daniel Duncan rather than the actual leads. What do young people know of life and love, he asks, in the introductory passage, supposedly lifted from his memoirs, published, one assumes, when he eventually died of an excess of love in his heart. The youth know not what they want, but Daniel is certain that what they want is the same thing he had at their age, and to believe otherwise would surely call into question his entire existence. Often in these Harlequin tales the deliberations and neuroses of the hero and heroine are delaying tactics until the characters accept they want and can have what everyone wants, eternal happiness with their ideal partner, a department store empire and a national security detail. The umming-and-ahhing is a tedious narrative gimmick Secrets Uncovered had the nerve to call Conflict, but thanks to Daniel MacGregor's delusions of God-like perceptibility the story of DC and Layna giving up their youthful dreams of work and real estate for an incestuous marriage of corporate interests and Nora Roberts franchise-building takes on a knowing, wiser veneer.

Furthermore, to the author's credit, her book assumes a semi-relevant tone involving numerous details of Washington D.C., and throwing out hip references to the youth of the late nineties, such as Chopin, Dali and John Fogerty. Her heroine gardens with a manual at her side, fears death by automobile accident and does not like strangers entering her townhouse without an invitation. Equally, DC is humanised with numerous quirks including his enjoyment of bacon, driving recklessly and entering stranger's townhouses without invitation. While this does nothing to suggest he and Layna should be anything other than spiritual enemies the asides do help create a relatable parallel universe where Alan MacGregor was President, department stores remain in business, painting is a career and twenty-somethings enjoy what sixty-year-old retirees enjoy in the real world. Despite these supposed positives Roberts will have to work her vaunted magic on making the eventual ever-lasting kiss believable. So far the reader has little to buy into besides physical lust and the word of a senile old man hellbent on strengthening corporate bonds through his children. There is a clear lack of romance and credibility three chapters in, unless The MacGregor Grooms, and its forebears, were intended to be darkly satirical treatises on the trappings of money, breeding and heritage, which they really are either way.

“What was madness but a delicious form of intense reality?”

Having read Neurosurgeon... and Mum! while simultaneously cutting and pasting from Secrets Uncovered about best friends, falling in love with a handsome billionaire named Google and single-handedly raising this weblog in a cruel and uncaring world, there seemed no more appropriate a time for a follow-up essay, this time on the use of children as secondary characters in romance fiction. In our dalliance with the Cherish imprint and the recent regrettable interlude with Medical™ we have met two supposedly adorable children. In The Dad Next Door the daughter was a shy, vulnerable eight-year-old desperately mourning the death of her twin sister and seeking a replacement mother having not been adorable enough for her real one. In the aforementioned Kate Hardy novel, little Perdy was a shy, vulnerable eight-year-old cautiously mourning the death of her birth mother, and seeking a surrogate in the woman her father just happened to be sleeping with. Therefore, without even having to read the helpful e-book, are all children eight-year-old girls with severe separation anxiety brought about by a family death causing a deep, endearing look of emptiness in their eyes?

For unnecessary additional insight we turn to Harlequin editor Anna Boatman, who opens with a charming, illustrative story. 'After spending a recent train journey listening to the hysterical screams of a vocally powerful and worryingly eloquent toddler, I stumbled off the train with my ear-drums still shuddering, vowing fervently to remain child-free for the rest of my life.' She already sounds like Bewildered Heart's kind of editor, but please, continue. 'Yet only the next day, I came across an adorable child who totally changed my mind. The catch? This one was fictional!' Imaginary kids are vastly superior to crying babies on trains, as the saying goes, but perhaps Anna Boatman will resolve her opening paragraph with a conclusion to avoid the obvious inference that she is the one no one wants to sit next to on a train. 'It got me thinking about the children who populate our books - they can change the whole feeling of a story, for better or worse, and something that can present a challenge to a wannabe writer is dealing with a child in their romance story – as we all know, children don’t always do what they’re told!' Judging by the output of her publishing house this is a problem not merely plaguing aspiring authors, but all novelists powerless to stop the fancies of the characters they have created.

First and foremost, there is the natural issue of why a writer would even bother to involve redundant secondary characters in their romance. After all, they are telling the story of a couple meeting, falling in love and then sabotaging their own happiness through the inability to behave as normal adults. This is the scenario romance fans consistently pay for, despite all rational reason, so a child not only confuses matters, but also requires enough back-story to kill the forward momentum of a narrative. 'Babies are a classic theme to help bring couples together and they are a reader favourite – there’s something about a tall, powerful hero protecting a tiny baby that tends to resonate for almost everyone.' As long as your hero is taller than the baby you cannot fail, and at Bewildered Heart we have witnessed this subject matter previously. The machinations of the thriller aspect in MacKenzie's Promise utilised and then practically forgot a baby, while Hired by the Cowboy pushed a foetus to the forefront of the drama, in order to explore actual themes such as family, home and belonging in a superficial, tedious manner. The desires of romance readership have been scientifically-proven to hold procreation as humanity's ultimate objective, therefore most books end in pregnancy, the final pages closing the curtain on a shared life before it becomes icky and hormonal.

Anna Boatman, writing under the far more believable-sounding name of Elise Windmill, has some tips to guide you towards the goal of an idealised child, rather than a realistic child, because those are not as commercial. 'The romance should still be driving the story, not the children – no matter how demanding they are. Having too much page time spent dealing with babies or children around can distract from the intensity of the relationship.' Boatman goes onto suggest that the welfare of the little ones should not be the only conflict facing your hero and heroine. Say your single father has no time for romance or euphemisms for body parts, he needs to concentrate on his shy, vulnerable daughter, while also managing his pharmaceutical empire and retaining his muscular physique without ever doing any exercise. When he blackmails a small business owner into becoming his part-time mistress to pay for her younger brother's plastic surgery  there must be more stopping this couple's eternal love than the ephemeral needs of cute, little Emily Rodriguez. For example, her brother's injuries could have resulted from using one of Buck's company's products. That is powerful conflict. Now there is nothing to stop that novel from being written, besides some legal fact-checking.

Next, 'Warning: sickly-sweet children may cause nausea… Sadly, outside the world of fantasy, children aren’t perfect – and we love them for it! A child without a spark of naughtiness is, let’s be honest, a dull child. In the same way as heroes and heroines need flaws to feel real, a perfectly good child is too good to be true.' However, having an eight-year-old's hair go frizzy when it is sunny outside will not suffice. An author would be expected to embed the child's neuroses and bad behaviour into the narrative, drawing from a presumably tragic history. Somewhere along the line they lost their mother or father and now have to spend every waking moment with their emotionally-stunted single parent. The suggestion of humanising characters may sound like writing hints for idiots, but this piece of wisdom requires clarification. Anna has already taught us to focus attention on the central romantic concept, so the author is best served bearing that in mind when giving their invented child a well-rounded personality that fails to serve anything other than as proof they were paying attention during writing school.

Before we have learned anything Anna Boatman has moved onto her final point. 'Put your children to work! How can these little secondary characters help to move the romance forward? Shared responsibility for a child can be a great way to bring couples together, while they’re also a way for the reader to see another side to a character.' Exactly, there is no sense in having a child character unless they are the focal point of the drama because the child will always be the focal point of their parent’s life. As evidence we turn to Romantics Anonymous, the Clinton-era tale of denial, middle class solvency and parenting ineptitude. Lauryn Chandler puts the teenage daughter to such compelling dramatic use she skimps entirely on plausibility. Firstly, Beth runs away from home to bring the divorced hero and heroine together and then blackmails them to spend a Christmas as a reconciled family by threatening to indulge in drugs, alcohol and drug and alcohol-fuelled under-age pregnancy. Once Cynthia arrives dishevelled on Lane's doorstep, frantic and fearing kidnap the motions for rekindled love have been oiled and Chandler is able to carefully write Beth from the plot, bringing her back occasionally for maudlin displays of affection. While Romantics Anonymous has glimpses of story-telling competence, the handling of offspring as a secondary character matters less because Beth is older, independent and supposedly well-adjusted. Equally a baby is representative of its causes and the uncertainties of the future. A shy, vulnerable eight-year-old demolished by grief becomes a novel in itself, not a conceit for love and euphemisms for body parts. To even suggest such a thing is perverse and deeply offensive.

“She heard him rip the packet, then the unmistakeable sound of the condom being rolled on”

With the opening three chapters of Neurosurgeon... and Mum! proving an arduous struggle hopes for the remaining eleven were cautiously pessimistic. When an operation on her best friend's husband is a calamitous mistake brain doctor Amy Rivers heads to Norfolk on sabbatical, only to end up sharing her aunt and uncle's house with visiting GP Tom Ashby and his eight year old daughter. Tom lost his wife to death only a year earlier and he has seen Perdy disappear further into a shell made of self-doubt and whimsy. Perhaps, somehow, love can blossom in these difficult times and Amy can find the family she always wanted. Meanwhile, we should expect that she and Tom will practise a little medicine, for this is a Medical™ and the readers demand excitement and descriptions of bladder infections in amongst their usual concoction of tiresome emotional reiteration, euphemistic sex scenes and parades of family togetherness with child and dog followed by a hefty chunk of emotional reiteration.

Tom knows he should not enter into a relationship with Amy, not because she isn't beautiful, on the contrary she is stunning, and not because she is fat, on the contrary if anything she is underweight, but because she is mentally troubled, she will soon return to London and foremost, he must put the needs of Perdy first. Amy knows she should not enter into a relationship with Tom, not because he isn't handsome, on the contrary he is very handsome, and not because he doesn't make a lot of money, on the contrary he does all right, but because he is a mourning widow and father who must put the needs of his daughter first, not to mention that she, Amy, is a complete mess of a woman who will soon be returning to London. Of course, no amount of determination can stop Amy and Tom from being together, because they are soul-colleagues, and sure enough, within a couple of chapters they have kissed in the kitchen and made love in the bathroom area. Wanting neither a short-term fling nor a permanent relationship with genuine commitment, they instead agree to a short-term relationship hidden from locals and Perdy, but involving sex, spiritual connection and a commitment ambiguous enough to placate the needs of a lonely, unemployed woman desperate for a family and a grief-stricken single father desperate for love.

While Perdy has taken to Norfolk as any well-adjusted, healthy person takes to Norfolk her father and surrogate mother sense turmoil and shyness within her. What about school work and school friends? Should this girl really be spending all of her time with Amy and Buster the Dog, rather than kids her own age, doing normal things kids do, such as running around screaming? Why won't she speak about her deceased mother and why does she take such an interest in cooking, cleaning and other womanly things? Isn't all this time she could be playing outside or sleeping outside seriously cutting into the time Amy and Tom could be using for sex? To help, the potential couple take his daughter out on day-trips, to pick strawberries to turn into ice cream, and to see the seals, to possibly bake into a pie. However, every adventure is strewn with complications, as members of the public occasionally appear to ask awkward questions, assuming Amy to be Perdy's mother or Amy to be Tom's wife, and, in an extreme case, one noisy youngster collapses after an allergic reaction to a wasp sting.

Throughout the latter stages of Neurosurgeon... and Mum!, author Kate Hardy takes the opportunity to explore Amy's second career as a neurosurgeon. Sequences such as the wasp incident are followed by numerous other, less action-packed scenes, where Amy shows off her knowledge of the nervous system, and Hardy eats up the word count by copy and pasting from her medical dictionary. First there is poor Mrs. Cooper, who has a great deal of pain in her jaw, possibly from yawning incessantly whilst reading Mills & Boon novels. Doctor Ashby is merely a general practitioner and his comprehensive understanding of health does not stretch to the intricacies of neurology. But hey, says Tom, the woman I'm sleeping with might be able to help and, over a strategic glass of decent wine, he invites Amy to speak perceptively on gamma knives and other mystical instruments, thus calming Mrs. Cooper's worst fears, revitalising Amy's passion for patients and science, and allowing Hardy to bulk out a flagging second act.

Soon Amy is lecturing locals on the wonders of pain and the cutting edge advancements in the fight against ageing appropriately. Her vigour returns, as does her radiate smile and she even eats enough of Perdy's pudding to return to a salubrious weight. Things are going so swimmingly, in fact, that Hardy allows the reader to indulge in a second sex scene. With chapters dwindling, however, there is still the small matter of the plot to sort out. Thankfully, Amy's former best friend calls out of the blue to apologise and admit that Amy's handling of the operation that destroyed her life and career was actually a roaring success. Ben can move his hands and masculine areas, and although he will never walk again he can have a life and Laura can have children the natural way. Amy, did you hear, the concept of the novel was based upon a fallacy and the reasons to doubt and cast yourself into isolation never existed. Laura and Ben are fine, everyone can become friends again, and why, Kate Hardy, why can't Ben ever walk again? This is a book of fiction, and Ben isn't real, but still you take away the feeling in his legs just like you take away any remaining feelings of joy in the reader.

As for Mrs. Cooper, Max Barton and the rest of Tom's patients none see their subplots through to completion, as instead Amy gets her dream job forty minutes down the road, Tom finds a permanent place in Joe's practise, peripheral figures of little importance stop being unreasonable for reasons that are not explained, Perdy betrays her age with a series of statements that belie even her claims at being a realistic human and Tom and Amy are married at the local church, watched on by all, who have returned from wherever they were for a painfully elongated final chapter. What about old Doctor Joe's casebooks that Amy was transcribing for the majority of the story? Well remembered, but that plot-point is entirely abandoned by the author, as her heroine already has everything she ever wanted, except the love of her clearly quite discerning parents. There we leave the small world of Amy Rivers and Tom Ashby, little Perdy and their new puppy, Buster Two, safe in the knowledge their family will be strong, loving and constantly baking. We assume the assortment of secondary characters will sort themselves out and even if they don't they were never significant anyhow.

Neurosurgeon... and Mum! certainly delivers on both love and medicine. First, at its gooey centre, is a Cherish Romance, where a put-upon loner and a single parent find strength through the other's encouragement and warm eyes. There is no sense of conflict between the pair, no obstacle to overcome, only the need for time to heal wounds and allow affection to grow. With two characters unsure of their futures Hardy proved herself unable to conjure the most minor of difficulties, and quickly resolved to watching her couple fall in love, always knowing there were diseases and injuries to distract the reader from noticing the complete lack of narrative twists. Anyone with the merest experience of living will be able to relate to a good Medical™ as it brings together two favourite conversational topics, gossip and health. Naturally, from a technical standpoint the book is unreadable drivel because of its anaemic plotting, weak characterisation, interminable dialogue and a sloppy prose style. Nevertheless, the demands of the subgenre could be found responsible for this. Hardy places emphasis on Amy's rehabilitation where she regains her self-confidence from Tom's support. This works in regards to Mrs. Cooper, who has two thankless scenes of listening to surgical jargon, but Hardy quickly hedges her bets by introducing numerous other ailments and old people. This creates a series of disparate elements, as while Tom treats patients his career has little to do with his emotional growth as a lover and a father. Perdy's development was thoughtlessly arrested to the point where the book would have been better off without her, but this flaw was consistent with all of Neurosurgeon... and Mum! to the point where it did not need to be told.

“It was good he remembered the good times”

For many budding romance writers, naïve to what they are letting themselves in for, the creation of a heroine appears as abundantly effortless as looking in the mirror and then describing yourself using reckless amounts of fallacious narcissism. Without the ability to do this you will never get anywhere in publishing. To concoct a suitable alpha male hero cliches, day-dreaming and photographs of Hugh Jackman should suffice. However, where does this leave you when faced with the further trouble of secondary characters, such as friends, or gasp, a child? What do Mills & Boon authors know about having friends and children? In many cases, the novelist wisely skips over additional characters altogether, but this is a divisive subject among those who like to argue over what makes for a good romance in book-form. Should we bother with a trusted best friend for our heroine, or should we simply assume that her inevitable marriage to the perfect billionaire dreamboat makes her incapable of being liked by anyone female?

Secrets Uncovered has managed to push itself to the forefront of this debate, merely by thinking it up in the first place. 'Not always, but often, a romantic heroine tends to be rather isolated – emotionally, socially, professionally etc. This works because it places the heroine in a space where the hero can truly possess her, and her emotions.' A wise aside, for those mistakenly assuming there was only one kind of her. 'This isolation enhances the sense that the characters need each other, and only each other.' Surely a girlfriend is no match for a sophisticated, wealthy penis, and as a result, authors are inclined to shape their protagonists as outsiders, only to then fail to offer any semblance of an explanation why such lovely, generous, kind people never have anyone to talk to about their feelings.

'In the 21st century, is it really believable that someone would be so alone in the world, and what does it say about them that they are? If you’re asking readers to step into the shoes of a lonely virgin is a best friend hovering in the wings the most useful weapon in your empathy arsenal?!' For Secrets Uncovered and the majority of lonely virgins the answer is, we, or rather they, don't understand the question. How is the assessment framed, by a responsibility to realism or to the wanton ammunition of an empathy arsenal? Is not a novelist's foremost obligation to their novel? Every reader can sympathise with what it must be like to be a solitary waif, innocent of the carnal lessons of passion, but once the writer has given her a close acquaintance won't that rile the jealous bitterness of those who only find companions in the books they read?

Now, say someone was considering adding a confidante to their narrative, what would they hope to achieve from such a character? 'On a positive note, they can offer much needed advice in times of need; they also provide a contrast to the heroine, showcasing why she’s like no other woman and is worth the hero’s attention. Alternatively, sometimes a BFF plays false, forcing the heroine to accept she needs to let go of her past life and throw her lot in with the hero.' Best of all, a contrasting friend offers spin-off value, whereby one novel becomes an entire series, stretching a reader's interest to a sequel long before they have even lost interest in the original. Typically, romance experts advise against using a gal-pal, flatmate or family member as a plot catalyst for obvious reasons. It would be foolish to move the epiphany-having and decision-making away from the heroine, but a sounding-board is preferable to the risible interior monologue most Harlequin exponents continue to insist upon. Furthermore, there are no negative points, so everyone can move down to the next paragraph.

Secrets Uncovered has extrapolated their argument with a handy list of three top tips, useful not only for when inventing an imaginary friend, but also for when someone real comes asking you for insight into their relationship. '1. Make sure the support network is series-appropriate!' Why would your Medical heroine be hanging around a downtown laundrette with a pregnant stripper discussing drag-racing? The very idea is frankly insulting to the reader. Therefore be sure the task of adding a secondary character doesn't make you completely forget who you are and what your book is about.

'2. The reasons behind the friendship need to be believable. Friends with opposite personalities – the quiet heroine and the ballsy BFF – are great as a vehicle to encourage the protagonist to leave her comfort zone, but extra thought needs to go into explaining their connection.' As we have seen in such films as Something Borrowed an unlikely friendship needs a long, tedious sequence for the audience to understand how they became close in the first place in order to comment that history doesn't rationalise why they remain in each other's company in the present. Back-story will not help a reader doubtful of an incredulous partnership. Instead it is more eye-opening to witness the twosome in action, and learn how they compliment and empower the other while doing friendly things such as visiting the gym, shopping for clothing and drinking coffee in brightly-lit locations.

'3. Finally, think about how the dynamic of the friendship will reflect on the heroine.' The use of colleagues and companions for the sake of realism is an unnecessary distraction from the driving force of the plotting, yet it is considered perfectly acceptable to surround the hero with a bevy of mates and business associates to further exemplify his magnificence and sturdy hair-line by comparison. Therefore, the writer must be aware of how the reader will react to the heroine dealing with parents, children and the student serving her coffee, their bleary eyes struggling due to the fantastic light scheme. While an arrogant billionaire can order hot beverages with eye contact and a subtle movement of a coiffured eyebrow, the demure secretary who doesn't know her own beauty must remain polite and respectful to everyone, because the reader reads carefully and seems unreasonably judgmental.

With everything neatly explained, are there any additional secrets we should uncover? 'But if you decide a best friend isn’t for you, that’s ok too!' Sure, but who will you turn to in times of need for things you need, possibly over coffee? Not your fictional heroine, because soon she will be married, pregnant and living in a castle. Who knows whether she will be able to find time to spend with you then, and she can't have coffee, due to the foetus with a low-tolerance for caffeine. Meanwhile, back to the matter at hand, what if you decide to ignore this lesson and not craft a best friend for your protagonist? 'The challenge with writing a more isolated heroine is making that aloneness exceptionally convincing, so that the readers truly get on board with it and can still identify with her. Ask yourself, why would this woman be like this? And think outside the box here – what other ways can your heroine be emotionally vulnerable or isolated that doesn’t preclude having no friends/family?!' Some sort of debilitating allergy?

Once the choice of a credible isolated heroine has been settled upon, this direction should form the entire story. Romance authors often commit an early error with a discordant lack of connection between their characters and their plot, as if one has been dreamed up separately from the other. We see themes hinted at by the heroine's back-story, often involving childhood tragedy bringing about a mistrust of others, then squandered as this woman is thrown powerlessly into a marriage of convenience with a forceful Greek sheikh tycoon. Would a contented, settled childhood have someone react differently to being bought by a Mediterranean businessman who slept with her many years ago only to have recently discovered she birthed his baby and then concealed it from him? As this weblog entry concerns the issue of the secondary character representing emotional support it hardly seems like the place to ask.

“It wouldn't do to be caught crying at the rodeo”

When reading through Secrets Uncovered – Blogs, Hints and the Inside Scoop from Mills & Boon Editors and Authors, the opening chapter, concerning character, offered little we haven't regurgitated here at Bewildered Heart previously. Still, we had no intention of letting an opportunity to fulfill the non-existent requirements of our imaginary post quota slip by, merely out of a fear of redundancy. We discuss Harlequin on the internet, without redundancy we have nothing. Now, do not worry, gentle reader, unlike Mills & Boon and the rest of the print and online publishing media we will attempt to find the areas of Secrets Uncovered not touched upon until now. For example, everybody knows what makes for an empowered, empathetic heroine, but why do romance authors keep writing them as weak-willed and unlikeable, and does this attitude reflect poorly on their persons? Will the editors at Romance HQ offer any insight greater than Bewildered Heart's previous advice to give your smart, young, independent, beautiful woman a failing, such as a lack of sexual experience or being easily seduced by the offer of money?

Once you have looked up the word heroine in a dictionary and found the definition vague, seemingly not geared toward the romance market and full of further words in need of being looked up, you should open the free eBook your agent sent you and ask, what are Mills & Boon heroines? 'All sorts spring to mind – the innocent secretary, Cinderella, the pampered princess (figuratively and literally!), the secretary, the single mum…' Yes, every kind of secretary you can think of, including the secretary who is also a divorced or widowed mother, the secretary enslaved by her deeply unattractive sisters and the royal beauty cut off by her father and forced to take temporary administrative work in an office. 'These archetypes can produce amazing results – from heart-wrenchingly vulnerable to endearingly feisty, you name it, we’ve read it and loved it! However, in the wrong hands, these heroines become the worst kind of cliché – spineless doormats or spoilt brats, and nothing else.' Quite right, no one wants to read about the girl who works on reception unless she has emotional depth behind those vacant eyes and disingenuous smile.

The challenge for any author, and the most important to overcome, is to find a way to imbue their female lead with credibility and dignity, whilst somehow maintaining her position as central to a romance story. Countless times we witness a protagonist become an empty vehicle for plot machinations advanced by the hero, who, like any good man, wants to be finished with a Mills & Boon as quickly as possible. The heroine is compartmentalised awkwardly, her virtues, flaws, objectives, circumstances and lifestyle a hodgepodge of ideas poorly intertwined into a narrative with little use for personal identification. She has no stomach-churning dilemmas, caught between desire and principle, to make her a compelling and empathetic protagonist. Instead of centering the worthwhile aspiration for reader likeability around the heroine's momentous decisions, Harlequin insist upon simply avoiding perfection with a handful of minor traits that have nothing to do with the defining relationship about to unfold. Instead of beginning with the cornerstone of any great novel, a character with a wanted destination blocked by seemingly insurmountable conflicts brought about by their own moral demons, we are asked limited questions with no stepping off point to work from.

'Let’s be honest here – who likes a perfect woman?' A perfect man? The truth is, readers do not wish to follow the adventures of perfect people in book form, they get enough of that from television and occasional get-togethers with former university friends. However, this is less to do with the difficulty had in relating to them, but rather because there is no direction in which to develop the emotional journey of someone with nothing to learn. Still, surely all aspiring novelists create idealised versions of themselves through their amateurish inability to write, so what hints can Secrets Uncovered offer to avoid this inevitability? 'Recognisably human flaws go a long way towards dissolving the sickeningly perfect stereotype, and making your heroine 100% real. So, is she spoilt/stroppy/too forgiving/dangerously generous? If so, why?! Show us the true character hiding behind her external characterisation and you’ll be able to make any heroine empathetic!' There are far too many exclamation marks in that sentence for it to be taken seriously, but it is interesting to note that generosity can reach a dangerous level, and also that Mills & Boon has trouble thinking of negative personality traits.

'These women might be victims of circumstance, but they aren’t victims in any other sense! Whatever their range of life experience, it’s this strength of character that gives them the power to tame their heroes.' Despite their protestations that anything is possible within the pages of their novels, there is naturally a nurturing aspect to any romantic heroine, whether the story pushes it to the forefront immediately, or bombastically draws it out through the narrative. After all, the goal of every romance fiction player is marriage and babies, and therefore the hero is depicted as powerful to the point of uncontrollable masculinity, leaving the heroine to the task of emasculating him into suitable husband material. 'Does she stick up for herself, proud of where she’s come from or what she’s made of herself? Or perhaps she’s more vulnerable and shy, and it’s up to the hero to teach her how to stand up for herself, whilst she teaches him to look below the surface? Perhaps she’s massively spoilt, and has to learn to reveal her vulnerabilities under the hero’s expert teaching!' The choice is yours, writers, but pick carefully, as these three options are all you will receive from us.

Moving onward into what we are calling the Twenty-First Century and suddenly the contemporary woman is faced with a changing world without even Mills & Boon to fall back on for nostalgic fantasy, because even they are accepting the date on their calenders is not only accurate, but meaningful. 'In the 21st century, we know women can have it all: work, love, and a family. So, if she wants to bag a job, a child and a husband, that’s great, but if she wants to be a stay-at-home mum, that’s fab too! Your heroine can make whatever life choices she wants.' As long as that life choice involves children, because she will end the novel pregnant whether she likes it or doesn't realise she likes it yet. These guarantees of freedom are always tempered by the commercial needs of the publisher. It is liberty within reason, as the veneer of reality is sometimes necessary to have that stroppiness and potentially fatal degree of generosity really hit the reader in the head as well as in the heart. Perhaps Secrets Uncovered sees little point in teaching the heroine element any further because you, the author, would not have taken to this money-making scheme without, at the very least, a main character. Nevertheless, the major pitfall of practically every Mills & Boon novel lies within the protagonist, and as a result of this weak starting point, the rest of the book collapses, no matter how much can be gleaned from the remaining lessons found in an eBook.

Those looking to Romance HQ for help are in more trouble than Romance HQ can save them from. Furthermore, those having read any example of trite romantic fiction will have assumed the task is blissfully straight-forward, simply because the publishers consistently line their shelves with books that do not take heed of the information revealed in the guidelines and blog entries posted online. Due to these inconsistencies, brought about by myopic greed and an insatiable public hunger, there are no signs of improvement from Mills & Boon, while their profits rise and their stable of writers grow increasingly irked by outsider criticism. Everyone deserves better from the traditional arrangement where books last one month, authors hurry out three or four titles every year, worried only about hitting their word count, and readers buy blindly, unable to discern quality from a purposely homogenised product. Meanwhile, Bewildered Hearts watch on, optimistic yet eternally bewildered, wondering how a business model can escape a rut when a rut is all it has known. An empowered, empathetic workforce would be a fine start, more time spent crafting character and plot would be appreciated, and a semblance of competence in the art of literature would solve many of these problems, and might perhaps teach people how to love each other and themselves, no longer willing to view frizzy hair and naïve kindness as humanising weaknesses.

“Just stop blaming her for getting that tropical fever and dying”

During the last entry on this very weblog we decided to learn more about the Harlequin Medical™ subgenre, and having found the Mills & Boon website's description predictably unhelpful, we chose as a random example the 2010 effort Neurosurgeon... and Mum!. Throughout her typically prolific career, author Kate Hardy has switched between Medical™ and Modern Heat, allowing herself to indulge in sizzling romances with and without doctors in them. However, the reader can tell no such raunchy antics will take place within the pages of Neurosurgeon.... and Mum! because her hero and heroine are damaged people going through the various stages of grief, there is a child involved and the story takes place in Norfolk, England, where the only sexy things to happen are most likely illegal everywhere else. Sorry, Norfolk.

Amy Rivers has had a tough few years, although the details have yet to be fully revealed because the writer will need something to flesh out those nagging central one hundred pages. Firstly, her distant, academic parents moved to the United States, and secondly she fell in love with a single dad and became surrogate mother to his kid, only for he to reconcile with his ex-wife and take Amy's new family with him. Furthermore, while doing some neurosurgery she made a catalogue of errors on her best friend's husband of a patient, destroying at least two relationships in the process. As a result, and at the behest of her clearly Irish supervisor, Fergus Keating, she has decided to take a sabbatical away from London and go where, only to her beloved Aunt and Uncle's house in Norfolk, where she spent many a happy childhood experience. Naturally for Amy things go awry, as Cassie and Joe are off to Australia to see their real daughter, who is pregnant and therefore more successful than Amy. Despite this minor setback Amy heads north regardless, to stay at the house with a visiting village doctor, who has also taken time away from the big city to deal with tragedy.

For the charming, decent Tom Ashby the last few years have been tough. Now his distant, academic wife has perished from the obvious dangers of being a doctor without any life-saving borders, Tom has taken his infant daughter Perdita (Perdy to her father. Hi, Perdy!) to a small village in Norfolk, for mawkish befuddlement and bonding. While Perdy remains withdrawn and in a constant state of mild terror, Tom enjoys the rural pace of the countryside, and he and Perdy seem to get along with the Rivers' potentially important dog, Buster. While Joe had warned Tom about his new house-guest Doc Tom had not expected to find her so instantly beguiling, even though that is the sort of thing that happens in romance novels. Equally, Amy's attraction is only tempered by the assumption that Perdy is Tom's wife, not his daughter. Once they are introduced, however, she reacts poorly and serves to under-mine the child's already shattered self-confidence. Still, after what happened with her previous relationship she is reluctant to become involved with a single dad, even though this one is at least a widow and therefore without external plot devices.

Neurosurgeon...and Mum! has all the hallmarks of Cherish, the imprint perhaps known better as Tender, Special Moments or Romance. Unlike the straight-forward Modern, or Modern Heat, here Hardy can avoid the foreseeable narrative techniques employed by her colleagues in other subgenres. Tom Ashby is no standard alpha male. He is sensitive, he has a troubled daughter, he wears thick-rimmed glasses, he spends his days tending to the disgusting ailments of the elderly and he may have murdered his previous wife. Meanwhile, Amy Rivers is no catch either. She is under-skilled at her work, has not been eating properly and has a boyish haircut, which only serves to emphasise her fine bone structure. Neither character has any problems marriage could not fix, and their emotional turmoil does not seem to have stemmed from their own failings. It is not Tom's fault his wife died, we can only presume, and Perdy is merely going through a phase all children go through when they are uprooted unexpectedly to Norfolk shortly after their mother passed away. On the other hand, Amy cannot be held accountable for her mistakes during Ben's operation, because neuroscience is complicated and she is only a woman with love to give but no one to give it to. Saying any different would be misogynistic.

While Amy and Tom seem to enjoy brief conversations of vague biographical insights and silent disapproval of leapt-to conclusions their shared, uncomfortable silences and mistreatment of Perdy must come to an end. At first Amy disappears upstairs to busy herself with her great-grandfather's medical casebooks, but eventually she joins Tom and his daughter for a series of dinners and before she can realise she is becoming sentimentally-involved with a temporary surrogate family she has offered to babysit Perdy while Tom conducts his business of being a doctor. After a flippantly undertaken background check father is convinced to allow this apparently psychologically-fragile stranger to take his child to an isolated field to pick strawberries. There the third chapter ends and Hardy has either set her protagonists up for a gratifying romance or a sinister race-against-time thriller, perhaps starring a young Rebecca De Mornay. Canny readers will have already guessed the former, however, based on the novel's title and the fact it has been published by Mills & Boon. Well done to you, canny readers.

For Medical fans surprised at the lack of frenetically-paced action and emotional intensity promised by the Harlequin promotional material, Hardy has at least managed to offer a scene where the kind doctor calmly breaks the news that Max Barton's tiredness, plaster-wearing and ongoing night urination can be explained by type two diabetes, which can be controlled through diet and exercise. Max is relieved that it is nothing more serious and medicine followers will delight in reading a superficial description of the inability to utilise glucose in the modern, middle-aged male. In an earlier chapter Doctor Ashby saw an old lady with an ulcer above her ankle, a sequence to make you cry out for the gripping dilemmas and high-octane excitement of Grey's Anatomy. As a resident of coastal Norfolk, Hardy's choice of East England village may have spoken to her own interests, but so far there is little sign of emergency and a controversial use of a stethoscope. In fact, we have nothing more to look forward to than The Dad Next Door with a series of narratively distracting health scenes.

At this early stage the appeal of Medical™ remains a mystery. When Mills & Boon began this enterprise their stories focused on the entirely out-dated set-up of male doctor and female nurse. Nowadays such a sexist scenario would not be consistently tolerated, even by romance readers, but the chance of a powerful female doctor meeting an enamoured male nurse would seem at odds with the publisher's mantra. Unless Hardy is able to weave in a satisfying medical subplot her novel will be marred by clumsy cutaways of Tom being nice to old people, for the benefit of the reader and the infirm, but not helpful in furthering the central concept concerning Amy, Perdy and a happy ending.

Possibly because of the subgenre's strategic attempt to exist in a politically-correct age both Amy and Tom are doctors, but the heroine's career has stalled to allow a plot to accelerate. As female fantasy goes, Neurosurgeon... and Mom! lacks the fairytale aspect of an arrogant, yet brilliant, doctor hero who is skilled with his hands, but not with his heart. Hardy instead settles for heart-warming simplicity using Tom's profession as a diversion. It is difficult to believe fans merely want their regular romances with some unnecessary pages of technical jargon involving bladder infections. Nevertheless, while Tom worries about his daughter, finds his new house-mate attractive while knowing he cannot enter into a relationship with her and mourns his late wife he still finds the time to fret over Mrs Poole not drinking enough tea. How many billionaire tycoons masquerading as bell-hops at a supposedly haunted Colonial hotel would do that? All of them? Still, this is an entirely different genre from the ones where billionaires masquerade as bell-hops at supposedly haunted Colonial hotels. For those, try The Secret Billionaire's Chambermaid Bride, published under any of the other Harlequin imprints, unless either the billionaire or the chambermaid is also somehow a doctor.