In the end, it came largely from the short stories I read as a judge for Writer's Digest competitions. I noticed that the entries in the genre categories were actually better than the literary/mainstream entries, because "literary" is not really a quality one can bestow upon oneself, and those who do bestow it on themselves are usually not worthy of the title. Also, I have noticed the widening gap between the plotless character studies that parade as "literary stories" and the sharp, clean, dare I say entertaining prose I have always considered to be the American writer's birthright (and my personal goal). As a consequence, many readers see the word "literary" and think, "Oh great, homework."
With that in mind, and since so many of my novels center around romantic relationships, I changed all of my Kindle books to the romance category, and it's up to my new readers to decide how much more intelligent they are compared to the usual dreck that occupies that classification. And the difference has shown itself already: the numbers from my handful of July promotions are double that of previous attempts.
And so, I embrace romance. In the end, the writing inside the books will speak for itself. Now if I can just line up Fabio for a cover shoot...
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