Only an idiot would scoff at romance. The women who write romance novels are some of the savviest, most successful authors out there, and they've got the credentials to back it up.
The next time someone looks down at your romance novel, tell them about some of these best-selling authors and their remarkable accomplishments.
Caroline Linden, author of our June Top Pick Love in the Time of Scandal, holds a Harvard math degree and did actuarial coding before getting into romance. She says, "I ran out of books to read, and somewhat idly I started writing a story of my own. It was a big surprise to me how much fun it was, although it took two or three tries to come up with a story I could finish." She's come up with a few stories (12 novels plus a few novellas) since then.
- Best-selling Regency romance author Julia Quinn graduated from Harvard and cut her stint at the Yale School of Medicine short when she decided writing romance novels was more fun than dissecting cadavers. She was also on the game show "The Weakest Link," where she won the $79,000 jackpot.
Eloisa James, best-selling author of Four Nights with the Duke and many others, is a Shakespeare professor at Fordham University. She graduated from Harvard University, got an M.Phil. (an advanced postgraduate research degree) from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. from Yale. Her choice for the most romantic line ever written by Shakespeare? "A half line, spoken by Romeo when he finds Juliet in the tomb: 'O my love, my wife.'" (From our interview.)
- Stephanie Laurens, the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the historical Cynster series, has a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and began writing as an escape from the rigors of her life as a cancer research scientist.
J.R. Ward graduated from Smith College with a double major in History and Art History with a medieval concentration. After college, she served as Chief of Staff at one of the Harvard Medical Schools' teaching sites. Her new contemporary novel, The Bourbon Kings, is our August Romance Top Pick, and she was recently interviewed by Nashville's premier romance expert. (Me. It was me.)
- The daughter of a professor and a poet, Jennifer Bernard, known for her firefighting and baseball-themed romances, graduated from Harvard with a degree in Literature and History.
Sarah MacLean got her Bachelors at Smith College and her Masters in Education at Harvard. (Is there a secret Harvard Historical Romance society? I want in.)
- Jennifer McQuiston has a Masters in Molecular Microbiology, works for the CDC, and is a veterinarian and infectious disease researcher. Specializing in researching diseases that can be transmitted from critters to humans, she has travelled the world studying disease outbreaks. She has published more than 50 scientific papers, along with her five romance novels, which include Diary of an Accidental Wallflower.
At the age of 21, Lisa Kleypas published her first book and was crowned Miss Massachusetts. I've not published anything and I have no crowns. Kleypas graduated from Wellesley College with a political science degree and is now one of the most successful romance authors in the business.
- Historical romance author Sophia Nash was born in Sweden, raised in France and was a television producer for CBS, a congressional speechwriter, press secretary and the executive director of the Washington International Horse Show. You know, just building a nice, well-rounded resume.
So there you have it; romance is a genius genre.
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