itsjoysworld.net

A criticism frequently levelled against romance genre fiction is that it is shallow. It’s trash, or fluff. These criticisms have been voiced about my own work. I can see why, on one level. Everybody in The Warrior Queen is handsome or beautiful, stunning or smouldering or intriguing. Or, Lancelot’s case (as my friend texted me to tell me) “a rugged enigma, wrapped in manly quietness”. In part, I wanted to get across this sense of a kind of golden age, a special world, a time of greatness. Anyone who has read any medieval romance will notice that each man is the “byggest” man that ever there was, and every woman is the “faryrest on lyve”. There’s a sense of wonder and magic and specialness about the whole Arthurian world, especially as Thomas Malory tells it, and I wanted to communicate something of that in my own writing.

Another point…