If the romance in your relationship has been lacking lately below are a few simple steps to add the spark back into your relationship:

1. Give your mate your undivided attention. Let the phone calls go to voice mail; turn off the TV; pull yourself away from email and the computer.

2. Schedule a date night. Whether it’s once a week or once a month, new and old couples need a night just to themselves. If you have kids, find a reliable babysitter. Do what you have to do so you and your mate can keep the flames burning. Keep in tune to what attracted you to your mate in the first place.

3. Allow your mate some “me time.” Everyone needs to spend time away from their mates—whether it’s to read, a long hot bubble bath, a trip to the spa, hanging out with friends, or just quiet time alone. Believe it or not this can help your relationship.

4. Give a card, send an email/text message or make a phone call “just because.” Don’t wait for special holidays or birthdays to show that you care. Do something every week, if not every day to let your mate know you’re thinking of them. And not out of any obligation, but because of your genuine affection towards them.

5. Share a part of yourself that you don’t share with anyone else. This helps create a special bond and should bring you closer.

6. Make a customized CD with both of your favorite songs. Don’t forget to make duplicates so you both can have a copy in your cars.

These are only a few ways you can add spark back into your relationship. Remember to take the time to REALLY get to know your mate’s likes and dislikes. Don’t be afraid to cater to their needs.

For more suggestions, click on the following links:

• Romantic wine selection
• Great Love Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Music to romance by

Shelia M Goss is the author of six romance novels, including His Invisible Wife, My Invisible Husband and Hollywood Deception. For more information, go to www.sheliagoss.com.

A guide to the most popular and maligned fiction genre, this hilariously sarcastic but always affectionate study of romance novels is perfect for hardcore fans and dabblers alike.

Smart and irreverent, the women who founded the popular blog “Smart Bitches, Trashy Books” both mock and pay homage to this highly successful genre. Sure, the authors visit the wild love scenes where the hero/heroine Must Have Sex NOW, but they also speak with famous romance authors and explore how the billion-dollar genre has influenced gender and sexual roles in our society.

From insider advice on writing romance novels to discovering your inner Viking warrior, Beyond Heaving Bosoms shows that while some romance novels can be silly, maybe even tawdry, they’re also intelligent, savvy, feminist, and fabulous — just like the Smart Bitches.

The roots of English language romance are generally traced to Samuel

Richardson’s 1740 novel, Pamela or Virtue Rewarded and the works of

Jane Austen.

The African-American branches of the romance family tree move from

there to the first known full-length novel written by an African-

American, Clotel or The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave

Life in the United States by William Wells Brown. Published in

England in 1853, the novel is based on rumors about Thomas

Jefferson’s relationships with his slave, Sally Hemings. Speculation

on the exact nature of the Hemings-Jefferson relationship has

continued for nearly two centuries. (In 1979, Barbara Chase-Riboud

released her own controversial version of the story, Sally Hemings,

edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at Viking. The author also

published a sequel, The President’s Daughter.)

Six years after publication of Brown’s book, Our Nig, or Sketches

from the Life of a Free Black in a Two-Story White House, North by

Harriet E. Wilson was released. It is the first novel published in

the United States and predates Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life

of a Slave Girl (1861), and Frances E.W. Harper’s Iola Leroy (1892).

Our Nig was republished in 1983, largely as a result of efforts by

Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University.

The novel, which is believed to be autobiographical, deals with race

and gender issues in the slave system and exposes Northern hypocrisy

on the slave question. Wilson tells the story of Maggie Smith “alone

and inexperienced . . . as she merged into womanhood, unprotected,

uncherished and uncared for . . . ”

During the first half of the twentieth century, two novelists whose

works have greatly influenced the development of the range of African-

American women’s fiction — including romance – are Pauline Hopkins

and Zora Neale Hurston.

READING, `RITING AND REJECTION

Harlequin Romances were born in 1949 in the midst of the post-World

War II era. In the years that followed, the line’s covers and themes

kept pace with the lives and loves of white America. As the romance

genre evolved in this country, African-American women were more like

to be readers than writers of mainstream romances publications.

Aspiring African-American authors were told Blacks “don’t read, can’t

write, don’t buy books.” Furthermore, they were told that their

stories held no appeal for white Americans. In an unguarded moment,

one book editor quipped “Nobody wants to read about grits and greens.”

But Black writers continued churning out stories about male-female

relationships. Their stories were published. The historical romances

of Frank Yerby – while denounced by critics for their style and by

Blacks for their disregard of racial themes – were best sellers.

Three novels had African-American central characters Speak Now: A

Modern Novel (1969), The Dahomean: An Historical Novel (1971), and

its sequel, A Darkness in Ingraham’s Crest, (1979). At the time of

his death in Spain in 1991, Yerby’s 33 novels had sold more than 50

million copies. Foxes of Yarrow and several others were made into

motion pictures. Many of his readers had no idea Yerby was Black.

McFadden/Sterling publications, best known for its True Confessions

magazines, published a line of pulp magazines aimed at Black

consumers. Bronze Thrills, Black Romance and Jive — along with True

Confessions – published early short stories by current romance

novelists Donna Hill, Francis Ray, Louré Bussey and Sinclair LeBeau.

Nathasha Brooks-Harris, True Confessions editor who bought many of

these early stories, will release her first romance, Panache under

the Genesis Press imprint early next year.

“When we started out, we took slings and arrows from not only the

majority, but from the minority,” recalls author Beverly

Jenkins. “Folks on both sides of the aisle questioned our sanity,

our talent and our audacity for wanting to write romances.”

In 1980, journalist Elsie B. Washington, writing under the pseudonym

of Rosalind Welles, published Entwined Destinies. It is believed to

be the first known romance featuring African-American characters

written by an African American author. (There have been earlier

romances featuring white characters penned by African-American

authors, but in order to sell within in the romance genre, the

writers preferred to remain racially anonymous.) Entwined Destinies

was published under the Dell Candlelight imprint under the guidance

of editor Vivian Stephens.

VIVIAN STEPHENS

Vivian Stephens has an interesting history within the genre. One of

only a few African-American editors in the publishing field, Stephens

bought the first works of several romance authors whose names now

regularly appear on The New York Times bestseller’s list. As an

editor with Dell Candlelight, she published Entwined Destinies.

Later, during her tenure with Harlequin, she has been credited with

modernizing and “Americanizing” the romance genre. Stephens put into

place the concepts for the Harlequin American Romance, Harlequin

Intrigue and Harlequin American Premier Editions. With author

Rochelle Alers, she began Women Writers of Color. In 1980, Stephens

founded Romance Writers of America in her native Houston with authors

Rita Clay Estrada, Rita Gallagher, Parris Afton Bonds, Sondra

Stanford and Peggy Cleaves.

ROMANCE IN THE EIGHTIES

In the early 1990s Los Angeles’ Holloway House Group published

Heartline Romances which featured African-American characters. The

line was discontinued when the company’s bottom line indicated there

was “no market” for such romances. Holloway House’s brief entree into

the romance genre is paradoxical. The publisher is best known for its

so-called “ghetto literature” which includes pulp fiction novels by

Donald Goines and Iceberg Slim’s Pimp: The Story of My Life. Holloway

House also publishes a line of adult men’s entertainment magazines

which includes Players, a periodical aimed at Black men. Indeed, most

of the romances were written by many of the same men who wrote for

the company’s periodicals and fiction imprints.

Years later, Maryland writer Leticia Peoples became increasingly

frustrated by her inability to find a publisher for her romances. She

founded Odyssey Books to publish African-American romances. The short-

lived company published works by many African-American romance

novelists currently publishing in the genre, including Rochelle

Alers, Donna Hill, Francis Ray, Mildred Riley and Crystal Wilson-

Harris.

Harlequin, the publisher whose name is synonymous with romance,

released Sandra Kitt’s Adam and Eva in 1985. It was the line’s first

romance by and about African-Americans. Kitt also has the

distinction of being the first author for the Arabesque line. She has

since carved out a niche writing interracial romance for Signet.

However, during her tenure with Harlequin, Kitt’s romances generally

featured white characters.

The works of only a few African-Americans have been published by

Harlequin and its various imprints, and the publisher estimates

that “five or six” of the publisher’s 1,200 authors are Black. They

include Eva Rutland, Maggie Ferguson and Gwen Pemberton. (Pemberton’s

Wooing Wanda, a romance with white characters, won an RWA Golden

Heart award in 1996.)

In August of 1992, Silhouette released Unforgivable, by Chassie West,

writing as Joyce McGill. The romantic suspense novel was the line’s

first romance by an African-American author to feature Black

characters. In her introductory letter in Unforgivable, Leslie

Wainger, Silhouette’s senior editor and editorial consultant wrote:

“…Over the years, one question has been asked of me many times.

Sometimes the letter writer identifies herself as black, sometimes as

a woman of color, sometimes as an African-American. But always the

question is the same: Why aren’t you publishing books about women

like me, black women meeting and falling in love with black men?

Always my correspondent tells me that she enjoys our books anyway – a

compliment I am happy to receive on behalf of all our talented

authors – but that just one book about a black couple would make her

happy, make her feel that she belongs fully to the fellowship of

readers spanning the globe . . . ”

Gwen Osborne aka Word Diva