A Post About Romance Novel Titles in Two Parts

(1) I was chatting with my one female colleague yesterday. She told me she actually looked into the Supermarket Bin of Romancey Goodness, the charity used book bin at our local market chain, featured in this post. This is progress for someone who only reads Holderlin. In German.

But, she added, “some of those titles, they’re so ridiculous!” Before launching into a treatise on Inverse Proportionality of Romance Novel Title Excellence to Romance Novel Content Quality, I asked what any sane romance reader would ask: “Which titles?”

“Well”, she continued, “there’s this one about wind, and it shows this guy’s butt…”

Dear reader, you know what happened next. Yours truly was sifting through that bin — at a supermarket clear on the other side of town — within the hour. And here’s what I found:

I bought it, naturally (only fifty cents!) and in the process of seeking the cover for this post –thank you, RomanceWiki — I found another windy 1980s era Bantam Loveswept:

I wonder how many romance novels today contain the word “wind”, thanks to its close association with flatulence. Here’s one:

I don’t know if it helps or not that the heroine’s hands are on the hero’s butt.

There’s “Ashes in the Wind”, and, of course, “Gone with the Wind”, but, Ms. Green’s title notwithstanding, not many contemporary titles with “wind” in them. I wonder if “wind” has succumbed to its prurient/negative connotation,  i.e. flatulence/hot air, as in A Mighty Wind, Christopher Guest’s 2003 mockumentary about folk singers.

There are plenty of old Harlequin titles with words  or phrases you wouldn’t use today because they’re offensive, like “The Half Breed”, “Half-caste”, or outdated, like “Miss Doctor”, or liable to be taken in the wrong way, like “The Doctor on Elm street” or “The Web” or “Gay Canadian Rogues” (some of these are mystery or thriller, and written by men. Harlequin didn’t specialize in romance its first few years out of the gate.).

One of the Loveswept titles had a hero named “Dick”, again, not something you’d be likely to see today.  Can we read a title like (and the following are all Harlequins, circa 1960) “Nurse Lynnette’s Release” and not think of the big O? “Two for the Doctor?” “The Golden Peaks”? “Stiff Competition”? “Stallion Man”? Could we use these titles non-ironically today?

Another Loveswept title had the word “melancholy” in it. I wonder if the connection to depression — so much better known and understood today — would rule that one out?

How many good words — even something as simple as “come” — have been tainted by the ironic, cynical and sex-saturated mentality of Gen X and Gen Y/the Millenial Generation?

(2) Reusing Titles

In writing the first part of this post I was amazed to see how many romance novel titles have been recycled.

“Mr. Perfect”, “Dream Man, “Sizzle”, “Black Ice, “The Rogue”, “Practice Makes Perfect”, “Indiscreet”, “Slightly Scandalous”, “Into the Storm”, “Wild Rain”, and “Someone to Watch Over Me”, are not just, as I know them, books by Linda Howard (2), the first Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, Celeste Bradley, Julie James, Carolyn Jewel, Mary Balogh, Suzanne Brockmann, Christine Feehan, and Judith McNaught, but also all Bantam Loveswept titles from the 1980s and early 1990s.

I tried to think of song titles and movie titles that are recycled in the same way, and found it much more difficult to do. Although, in music, you’ll have a traditional song which is redone many times, often with different titles (like “Stagger Lee” or “Shady Grove”), and in film, one movie can be remade two or three or four times (“Hound of the Baskervilles”, for example, or “Halloween”, or “Dracula”)

Recently, I saw a new Brenda Joyce paranormal called “Dark Lover”.

Knowing that “Dark Lover”, is the first title in J.R. Ward’s iconic, bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series, which is still going strong, I wonder why some other — any other– title could not have been chosen (by the editors? publisher? author? team of marketing execs?). Ward’s Dark Lover only came out 4 years ago, after all.

What do you make of the title recycling? Why is it routine practice in the romance genre? And does it matter?