Romantasy as a social phenomenon, academics get me hot, and more

[ravenna_c_tan]

Welcome to another monthly newsletter post, which I’m mirroring here because not everyone is either signed up to my email newsletter list or my Patreon.

Thinky Thoughts: Academics Turn Me On

I’m such a nerd. I just finished taking a 10-week long college class about Romance and it was great.

It all started when I saw my on social media that Dr. Sam Hirst was offering an online class via University of Liverpool: “Falling in Love with Love: A History of Popular Romance.” She had posted that the class needed some more signups to be a go, and I jumped right in without really thinking about whether I truly had the time for it.

In fact, I somehow messed up up the time zone conversion and so I couldn’t even attend the live portion of the class for the first few weeks! But the online lectures, the reading material, and the films kept me quite busy.

I don’t think every writer needs to be steeped in the history of a genre in order to create that genre. Just like you don’t need a degree in English to speak English. But!

But I always find it stimulating and inspiring to slurp down some scholarship. Yum. For the class, we read Jane Austen and Jane Eyre, Beverly Jenkins and Tasha Suri, as well as Olivia Waite’s recent sapphic historical novella Hen Fever — and learned from the author that there really was an 1850s chicken breeding craze in the UK. I recommend this one highly!

Toward the end of the class I also attended ICFA: an academic conference I go to every year on science fiction and fantasy, where academics and writers/editors all mingle around the pool and nerd out together.

The most eye-opening paper I saw this time was “Bat Boys, BookTok, and Broken Curses: How Romantasy Revives Reading in the Digital Age.”

In it, scholar Madeline Keitel pointed out that the people who lament the “death of reading” and blame the digital generation for having short attention spans have somehow overlooked that this demographic loves to read 600-page long romantasy tomes! Romantasy (as well as romance) is sometimes criticized for reliance on common tropes (like enemies to lovers, fated mates, and “shadow daddies”) but she convincingly argued that the tropes are a load-bearing element of romantasy’s participatory reading culture.

It feels to me like romantasy is as much a sociological phenomenon as a commercial one, driven by a community of readers/writers/commenters. This makes it akin to science fiction/fantasy, which grew into the genre we know today under the steady influence of convention fandom, the subculture which has been hosting WorldCon since 1939.

Author Justine Larbalestier has a 2002 book on this subject entitled The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, where she writes that she thought she was going to study literature, and she ended up studying people—in particular, the symbiotic relationship between the community of sf/f writers/readers and the books produced.

What’s different is that the romantasy community is global and centered online instead of in person.

After hearing Madeline Keitel’s paper I went up to my room and wrote a chapter of what might become a new book. A romantasy book that plays with the fated mates and shadow daddy tropes. It’s too soon to tell you anything more, but I’ll let you know if it blossoms. (And probably post sneak peeks on Patreon…)

WIP Report

I need to finish the SABR Style Guide. Still. I know. It was supposedly due in January. I need to incorporate some feedback from other editors before I can finalize the manuscript, and I need some uninterrupted quiet time of multiple days to do that.

Lately, between travel and other work, there’s been no quiet time at all, much less multiple days of it. Right now my plan is to take a few days on retreat in April before IMsLBB to finish that book, and then get back to fiction. I did write a sample chapter of something while I was in Florida, but the clay is still quite wet and I might still lump it.

I also wrote a short story a few weeks ago that just might combine interstellar colonization with Chinese food… Once I get it out of first draft stage, I’ll send it out, but that might be several weeks given the overloaded state of my to-do list.

Meanwhile, I know some of you are curious, after all the buildup, how did it go with Bound by the Blood coming out in January? Well, we didn’t hit any bestseller lists, not even Amazon’s, but I did sell enough to make back what I spent on the launch, so I’m happy about that.

And I’m very happy with the reviews that have been coming in. Here are some favorites:

Lynne Thomas, a Hugo Award-winning editor and librarian called it an “absolute page turner” and wrote in her blog: “What drives this story is two things: the urge to save the world, and the relationship between Mira and Clive. Both of these are rendered with both urgency and tenderness.”

Lisabet Sarai, whose book The P*rn*grapher’s Apprentice you might remember, posted a review on Amazon, but expanded on it in a blog post: “Sex is magic. I won’t be able to start this way in my Amazon review or I’ll be censored, but on my own blog I can speak the truth, a truth I’ve known personally for as long as I can remember.”

Author T.C. Mill, really got into the femdom aspects in an extensive write-up, that included this: “I found it not just refreshing to read about an unapologetically, fully dominant woman, I found it soothing.”

Another writer who appreciates femdom is I.G. Frederick, who compared the book to a gourmet meal. (I.G. and I have sat down together for several culinary experiences over the years.) “[Tan is] an expert at combining ingredients to create dishes that tantalize all the senses. Writing fiction requires a similar ability to stir together elements that stimulate all a reader’s sensory faculties.”

Intimacy coach, podcaster, and clinical psychologist Lori Beth Bisbey writes, “Cecilia has a way of getting the reader to place themselves in roles they might not usually take so that you find yourself turned on by scenarios that don’t match your usual erotica map.”

There are 26 reviews on Goodreads now, and over a dozen on Amazon.

As I somewhat expected, some reviewers just “could not get into a female dominant” and DNF’d it. That’s fine: they’re being honest about their feelings. But it’s a little like when people leave one-star reviews for my favorite Italian restaurant (Giulia, which just garnered a Michelin recommendation) because they don’t serve pizza or lasagna.

Help Me Do Stuff: Hugo Nominations!
If you attended the Seattle Worldcon or if you registered to attend LACon V this coming August, you are eligible to nominate stories for the Hugo Awards. Nominations close this Saturday, March 28th! So this is your last chance to nominate stories, novels, etc! My story “Large Emotional Models” is eligible (which you can read free at Sunday Morning Transport: https://www.sundaymorningtransport.com/p/large-emotional-models ) and of course I’d be honored if you felt it was worthy of nomination. But honestly go and nominate any sf/f from 2025 you’ve enjoyed!

While we’re talking about awards, have you recommended anything yet for the Otherwise Award? (formerly known as the Tiptree) Works of sf/fantasy that explore or expand our understanding of gender published in *2026* are eligible, including short stories, novels, comics, etc. If you’ve read something that you feel fits that bill, add to the recommendation list for the jury here: https://otherwiseaward.org/award/2026-otherwise-awards/2026-otherwise-awards-recommendations

Tour Dates & Upcoming Appearances

2026:

April 23-26: IMsLBB: Int’l Ms. Leather, Pisc. NJ

April 29 8pm: BDSM for Romance Writers, online workshop presented by Passionate Ink

May 22-25: Balticon, Baltimore, MD – confirmed!

June 2-7: SFWA Nebulas Conference, Chicago IL

June 16: Brooklyn Books & Booze!

July 9-12: Readercon, Burlington, MA

July 29-Aug 2: SABR Convention, Cleveland, OH

August 27-31: Worldcon in Anaheim, CA

Upcoming Classes

I’ll be teaching the latest iteration of my Submissive Self Safety class at International Ms. Leather in New Jersey at the end of April.

And I’ll be teaching an online class on BDSM for Writers for Passionate Ink. PI members get it free, but non-members can take the class for a fee. The idea behind this class is to do a kind of BDSM 101, but instead of emphasizing safety for players, emphasizing relationship dynamics and kinks that work well in fiction. There will be ample time for Q&A as well!

Parting Thoughts

I better get this post up or we’ll all miss the Hugo nomination deadline…! Thanks again for being here and being part of my wacky writing journey.

Until next month!

-ctan

Mirrored from Cecilia Tan.