In mid-November, I gave a talk at a local library titled, “Romance 101: Everything You Didn’t Know You Needed to Know About Romance.”

Why would I say you NEED to know about the romance genre? Because romance offers the escapist fairy tales that we hard-working adults need. In today’s intense and and many times antagonistic world, there’s a lot we can’t control. Sometimes, the best self-care we can give ourselves is to give our brains a break. And I think a well-written romance novel offers that better than any other media.

What’s better than immersing yourself for 350 pages in the sensation of falling in love?

I was thrilled and honored that Erin of the romance blog, The Smut Report, came out to the event and wrote this amazing round-up. The romance fans who showed up at the Aurora Hills Branch of the Arlington Public Library were passionate and engaged and we had such a good time!

I am now hooked on library events and jonesing to do more!

I’ve included an excerpt of Erin’s post below. You can click at the bottom to keep reading.

Romance 101 with Angelina M. Lopez

by Erin, The Smut Report

If there’s a romance-related event close to us and we can go, we also definitely want to go. For this reason, when I saw a tweet from Angelina M. Lopez about an author talk at a library in Arlington, I had to go.

Unfortunately, there were a number of different romance-related events this month, from the Baltimore Book Festival to events at three local independent bookstores (One More Page in Arlington, and Loyalty Bookstore and East City Bookshop in Washington, DC, if you’re curious about tracking where these things happen), and I didn’t manage to get to any of them!

Fortunately, Romance 101 with Angelina M. Lopez was really fun, so if that was my big outing this month, we’re all good. (Click to keep reading…)