Becoming a Romance Heroine

I’m a very casual, love-me-as-I-am kind of person. Most writers I meet are. Maybe it’s the area of the US I live in, but we wouldn’t win beauty contests. I have always been much more interested in the stories in my head than my outward appearance. Not that I’m a slob by any means, but I don’t do things like keep my nails polished or spend an hour on my hair or care about the latest fashion.

I also believe in romance for all, so my characters don’t tend to be the typical alphas that you might run across in a romance novel. In Through the Paintings, the heroine is a baker and barista who wakes up at three in the morning to get her cafe open and has no time for fashion. Her soon to be lover is an artist–a gorgeous one yes, but has too much of a creative drive to be the typical domineering or broody hero.

But the romance book I’m currently reading has what I consider to be the penultimate stereo types of romance characters. The woman is independently wealthy, loves shoes, does things like waxing her body and teaches yoga. The man is a broody ex-movie star who buys her tons of stuff including a room full of roses and rents an entire restaurant just for the two of them one night. I won’t name the book because I don’t much care for it. It has no tension: it’s just a series of dates with sex scenes that are kind of phoning it in. But it is a New York Times best seller, so obviously these are characters that people really enjoy reading about.

I’m curious. What is it like to be a romance heroine? My current lover is much more of an Alpha male than I usually date, and though he has definitely past the “love-me-as-I-am” part, I know he would really enjoy if I dressed up more often. He even recently bought me a new pair of shoes which other women might squeal over. So this summer, I’m going to become a romance heroine. I’ll post each week the things I’ve done to improve my appearance along with how one of my dates went–if I think it was better or not with the new looks.

In fact, I’ve already started with my nails. I’m doing the classic red look this week:

Come back tomorrow to see the shoes 🙂