Reading my first quarantine romance

At the time that I'm writing this, my entire state has just gone into lockdown. Take a second with that. THE ENTIRE STATE. Covid cases are escalating and today we hit an all time high in the number of recorded positive cases. ALL TIME HIGH. It's scary stuff. I'm hoping that by the time this post goes live (I'm not exactly sure when) things would be better. I am hoping. I know my government is doing the best they can in a difficult situation to get on top of things. Are there disappointments? Yep. Are there areas where they could have done better? Also yep. But covid is a daily changing target with new information emerging all the time, and the delta variant is virulent and scary. I'm not going to judge or criticise those people who are doing their best.

Life in lockdown

I got the idea of writing this post from my local writing group. There was a call out for articles for the next newsletter and since we are all in lockdown (our whole state is in lockdown at the time this is written) the organizer asked if anyone had any articles written about life in lockdown saying that probably a lot of our lives are not that different since we can't go anywhere. I thought it might be fun to talk about what a typical week looks like for us folks in strict lockdown.... well, for me anyway.

I'm not reading quarantine or lockdown romance, here's why

So it's been many months since the whole pandemic thing started, and we started seeing a rush of lockdown and quarantine romances in the early days of lockdown. I wrote an early article about it and wondered if the whole thing was on-trend or tacky. Since then, if you do a search on Amazon for "quarantine romance," you get over a thousand hits, and with "lockdown romance," you get 500+ hits. Have I read any? No.

Will everyday life change future romances?

As we move further into the pandemic, and things start to ease in various countries, I continue to think about how all of this will impact the romance genre. I talked about whether it will impact contemporary romance in another post. But today, I want to explore some of the changes I've seen happening around me and if those changes are here to stay. Consider this a follow up from the previous article.

Will contemporary romance change in the future?

I have been thinking a lot about what this world pandemic will do to the future of romance novel settings, particularly in contemporary romance. I recently saw an author pose the question of whether it will affect how other authors write their romance, and I found the various responses fascinating.

Quarantine and lockdown romance. On-trend or tacky?

I know I talked about reading (or not) a virus pandemic romance where the setting for the romance is during a time of a virus pandemic. It's not something I'm particularly attracted to since it hits a little close to home right now with everything going on. That said, I am starting to notice a number of authors take advantage of what's going on and beginning to release quarantine or lockdown romances. How do I feel about that?

Would you read a virus pandemic romance?

I had a little look at dystopian romance recently and was wondering if there'd be an upsurge in demand for those books given current times. This led me to another thought. Will romance change under the new conditions we have to live under? What are authors going to write next? Romance has always been trendsetting in its content and changing with the times. We certainly saw that with the #metoo movement and how authors adapted their writing with regards to consent. Will this new world we are living in have an impact on how romance will be written?