Does Size Matter - Who wants a millionaire?

Before Christmas I started a four part series called "Does Size Matter?" three of the posts went live - The size of the story,  the hero and lastly the heroine. Today I discovered the last post scheduled for late December didn't post for some reason, so I'm going to share it with you now.

© Liz Van Steenburgh
Dreamstime Stock Photos

The last topic in my series "Does Size Matter?" might seem a bit odd, but it's something I've been thinking about as I write and read the books I love. 

Today I'm discussing the bank account. Do we like our heroes and heroines to be financially independent? Are wealthy heroes more appealing and is a character that never has to worry about where the money is coming from what we want to read? Certainly most of the books I've read over the years have indicated a big yes to those questions. Very few characters struggle to make ends meet. The money is always there via a well paying job, an inheritance or some other windfall. I'm guilty of the same thing to a certain extent, although I have had the heroines in both Finding Angel and Playing Jax have moments of low cash flow, wondering how they will make ends meet. It doesn't last long though because in both instances permanent employment plus an inheritance has always ended up providing for them.  

So why do I and so many other authors write financial security into our books? I'm not sure of the answer. Perhaps it's custom, romance has always been written that way. Maybe tradition explains it, wealthy heroes are a reflection of old held norms that the male is the provider in the family, so the alpha males in our books need to be able to provide and do it lavishly. Lastly it may simply be that, as readers, the last thing we want to read about is financial stress. 

The economy hasn't been great for a while now, lots of people are struggling to make ends meet and books are our escape from reality, so we want that world to reflect an easy financial environment. I guess a lot of us must want the love story with nothing to impede it, not the mortgage repayment hassles, the fights and worry over money that so many of us experience. I mean if we didn't, then we would seek out books that reflected that - wouldn't we?  

So now it's time for your opinion. Would you rather read about a hero who buys the love of his life a diamond necklace or show his love, or a box of chocolates because it's all he can afford? I mean isn't it the thought that counts and not the bank account?

Does Size Matter - Romance Heroines

So far in the Does Size Matter series we've looked at the size of the story, the men who appear in them and today I want to discuss the women we read about in romances. Yes, I'm an equal opportunity blog :)

Last week it became clear to me that readers definitely want men that are larger than life, the ultimate rarely attainable man, bigger and better than what we have in our own real lives. This week I'm wondering why it appears to be the opposite scenario for the women we read about. It appears to me, from talking to friends and readers that what we want from our heroines in the books we love is a bit of reality. We don't seem to want to our romance women represented the way a lot of media portrays the feminine form - stick thin insect like creatures. We want curvy, voluptuous, Rubenesque. We want real women and according to Google (yes the authority on everything...lol) the average (real) size for women in the US is a size 12-16. It's much the same here in Australia as well.

So why do we want ourselves in romance novels but not our other halves? Real life women are familiar to us, I don't have any cover model gorgeous friends, but I do have sexy, attractive friends that don't fit the image of what's portrayed in the media as such. I think part of it is being able to relate to the heroine. I know I want to read about someone who may not fit the mold of 'beautiful' but is still seen as being gorgeous in the eyes of the man who loves her. Especially if he's a hunky sex god. But I don't just want my heroine to be curvy or larger bodied, I want her realistic in more ways than that. I want sassy, a woman who can stand up for herself and isn't the typical damsel in distress that need a man to save her. I want a woman who would like a man but knows she'll be okay if she doesn't end up with Mr. Sexy by her side. 

Having said all that, as an author, I firmly believe that when it comes to our heroines size doesn't really matter. It's the attitude that counts. Yes, a lot of my heroines have been curvy and voluptuous but I've also written heroines that are thin. Realistic women is what it's about, how the character sees themselves is how I write them. In Healing a Cougar's Heart my heroine, Isabelle, was stick thin. This is how she described herself; 

She looked in the mirror. Red hair, long and a bit frizzy when it wasn't wet, framed her face. She was thin, not very buxom at all. She’d always consoled herself that no man needed more than a mouthful when it came to a woman’s breasts. Her legs were her best asset; at least they were long. Not that they went anywhere. She had narrow hips and only the slightest curve to her butt. She looked like a human greyhound, lean and sinewy, built for moving fast.  

Healing a Cougar's Heart, Jan Graham, 2012.

Having a stick thin heroine didn't hurt reviews in anyway, RT Book Reviews rated it 4 out of 5 when they reviewed it in October this year and the book sold as well as all the others in the Sydney Cougar series. Does that prove size doesn't matter when it comes to our heroines, I'm not sure. 

Most of the romances I read tend to describe the heroine in one on two categories, curvy or thin. So how curvy is too curvy? Would we accept a heroine described as obese, or fat. Instead of curves are rolls acceptable on our heroines body? I haven't written any women described in such a manner but I have read books where women have been overweight or obese. It didn't bother me, they were still great characters, well written, interesting women. And their weight certainly didn't bother the hero of the story. Real women come in all shapes and sizes, I think that's reflected well by most authors when they construct a romance. Unlike our heroes physical type, our heroines vary greatly and I think that's a good thing because women vary greatly in real life and that means your bound to find yourself reflected in a romance book somewhere.

So as readers and authors, what do you think? Does size matter when it comes to the females we read and write about? Is a real woman, attitude and personality wise, more important than how she looks or does every physical type of female need to see herself reflected in the books she reads?

Does Size Matter? - Romance Heroes

I thought I'd get this out of the way so you can all stop wondering about it. It's time to let your naughty imaginations run wild, sit down in the gutter and think about dicks. Yes, today we look at the male endowment of our romance heroes. Get the tape measure out, drop your favorite mans pants and lets talk about the size of our romance heroes dongers. For those sitting reading this and thinking WTF? A donger is Aussie slang for a man's penis. For those who aren't Australian and want to know how to incorporate this amazing word into a sentence in a real life setting it would go something like this... 

     "Oh. My. God, you have the biggest donger I've ever seen." 

or in relation to a discussion about romance novel heroes the statement could read...

    "Why do romance heroes always seem to have enormous dongers?"

 Personally I love a large penis, as long as it' nice looking, but that's probably a whole separate topic of conversation. When I write my heroes I make them big, in nearly every sense. Tall, wide shoulders, muscular legs and torso's but not muscle bound hulks. To me, if a man is going to be on the tall muscly side he needs to be large between the legs, not enormous, but ample enough to touch, slide against and stimulate every nerve ending inside the heroines pussy and have her screaming in delight. Is it realistic? No, of course not. Even tall strapping men can have micro dicks and weedy little nerds can have huge dongers. 

According to one Men's Health website I found the average penis when erect is 6.3 inches *clunk* 

(sorry, I accidentally typed 63 inches and fainted, lucky I found that typo) *fans self and regains her composure.* The site also states that 90% of all men measure between 5.6 and 7 inches when erect. Nine out of ten men are average, that only leaves ten percent of men in either the huge donger or micro penis categories. If we go 50/50 on the remaining 10% then romance men make up a mere 5% of the population, not great odds for those of us looking to find one in real life, but then romance heroes aren't real, are they? 

So why do I and a large percentage of romance authors design men that barely exist? Is it just an extension of the fantasy world we create? Perhaps. I often hear people say, I read romance to escape from reality. I know that's often true for me when I read. Is it then a necessity that our heroes are also unreal as well? A tall handsome, sexy man with cock to spare who can satisfy their woman in every way. A man who knows what the heroine wants before she does and who is happy to give it to her, both sexually and emotionally. So, is that what we want, or do we want a bit more reality in our heroes? 

Most of my friends and I have had the romance heroes always have big dicks discussion, it comes up on a regular basis (no pun intended) and it appears to be the accepted and encouraged norm. So as well as wanting a fictional (barely real) hero, does the size of his penis add to the titillation when reading about him? If 90% of men (our husbands/boyfriends/lovers) are average, then does the thought of having something big turn us on, firing our imagination as we read and making the story more pleasurable. Would the reading experience be the same if the hero fell into the normal category? Would Mr Average Appendage hero be a disappointment? I think he might, well at least for me. I want a hero that's larger than life in every sense. One who is so different from what I know or my experience, that I fall in love with him and stay in love even after the book is closed. 

I shouldn't say so but my favorite hero that I've written to date is Steve Jax. I fell in love with him as a minor character in Finding Angel and continue to love him even after I finished writing his story, Playing Jax. Of course he shares my heart with a few other heroes. Wrath, the blind king from the Black Dagger Brotherhood Series as well as Vishous from the same series, Gregori and Dominic from the Carpathian books, and my list could go on. I'm sure you all have your own favorites. 

In every day life there are two main catch cries from a lot of men and women in regard to male endowment. the first size doesn't matter, the second, it's what a man does with it that counts. So, why don't we read that sort of sentiment in our romances?    

What do you think? Would you still love a hero if he didn't have a huge donger? 

Does Size Matter? - The Books We Read

Over the next fours weeks I'm going to be doing a few posts that fall into a little series I'm going to call Does Size Matter? You can probably guess some of the topics I'll be covering, especially those of you with dirty minds who are now siting reading this thinking about large penises. I know who you are and you're all very naughty :)

Today though I'm thinking about the size of books we read. Not as in physical size, but word count. What is considered the ideal length for a book. Personally I like reading large novels. The larger the book the better (as long as the story grips me of course). I find that if a novel is larger I get more information about the characters, the story is often more in-depth and has a few twists and turns along the way. I like to know the ins and outs of the characters I read about, seeing how they fit into the society that surrounds them, watching their interplay with the other characters, even minor ones. That's what I find enjoyable, I find it a complete experience rather than a shorter book that leaves me with unanswered questions. Of course the questions may not be pertinent to the story, it's probably just something I've wondered about as I've read. 

When I wrote Finding Angel it turned out to be 160,000 words long. I had friends say it wouldn't get published because it was too long and  some publishers I couldn't submit to as the novel was over their recommended word length. I re-looked at it, discussed with my two beta readers what I could possible remove. Their opinion matched mine. Nothing.  Finding Angel is the first in my Wylde Shore Series, it introduces the characters,  the setting where they live, the social dynamic in the BDSM community in which the characters participate and the suspense elements that flow through each of the subsequent works. Luckily I found a publisher willing to take the chance and publish Finding Angel, which, despite people telling me  was too long, received positive reviews and mostly four to five star ratings from both readers and review sites.

Subsequent books in the series are smaller, but not by much. Playing Jax was 120,000 words and Switching Mercedes, the current WIP from that series is set to come in at between 120 -140,000 words. They are novels and I love writing them even though they take me a longer period of time to create.  I also have a novella series, most of the books in that are under 20,000 words (but only just). The Sydney Cougar Series has also received great reviews from both readers and professional review sites, but they don't sell in the same numbers that Finding Angel and Playing Jax have. I'm not sure if that's because of the size or other differentials within the story and genre they fall into. It's a bit of a mystery to me at present and one of the reasons to include book length in the Does Size Matter set of blogs.

Most publishers have a guideline for book size that goes something along these lines. Short stories are under 15,999 words, novellas fall into the 16,000 to 45,000 word length and a novel is over 45,000 and up to 120,000 words. With a large number of publishers only novel length manuscripts go to print, unless the publisher prints an anthology of the novella or short story length books. I' not sure if the sizing is effective or accurate, there is a huge word difference between 45 and 120 thousand and in fact most of the print books I buy and read by popular authors are often in excess of 120,000 words. 

JR Ward, whose books I love, are huge. They're detailed but enthralling and I'd probably be disappointed if I didn't end up with a house brick weight size book to read when I purchase one of her novels. I feel a similar way about Christine Feehan's Dark Series, Nalini Singh novels and Lora Leigh's books. So does popularity dictate the acceptable size of a novel, does the publisher, does the reader or should it be left up to the creator of the story - the author? 

For me, I write a story until the characters don't have anything else to say, until their story is told. If that means it's a heavyweight like Finding Angel or a 16,500 word novella like my last completed work, All You Can Eat, then so be it. I hope my readers enjoy my books no matter what length they are, but it doesn't stop me from wondering if the size of the book really does make a difference to sales, to reader likability  to review ratings, and to people coming back and purchasing other titles in my list of works. 

So what do you all think? Does Size Matter when it comes to the length of a book?