We don't do a ton of Guest Posts here at the Bat Cave but when author Jill Sorenson reached out to me recently I couldn't say yes fast enough, especially when I learned her proposed subject matter.
Welcome Jill!
According to dictionary.com, pulp fiction refers to books or magazines “dealing with lurid or sensational subjects, often printed on rough, low-quality paper.” Romance readers don’t use the term “pulp,” but other words like “trashy” and “smut” are common. As mass market paperbacks lose ground to other formats, pulp fiction has become a relic of the past.
Pulp romance perfectly describes what I read as a teenager, however.
The love scenes were so explicit, and bewildering, that I had to take the book to school to show my friends. You can read more about it at My First Smut. Better yet, you can submit your own story!
I don’t remember how I ended up with Bandit’s Embrace. YA titles were scarce when I was young, so I read adult books. I was an independent reader with free rein, allowed to scare myself shitless with Stephen King and Dean Koontz.
As a Gen X kid, I also had free roaming privileges. One summer I discovered pulp romance at my local used bookstore. I liked the public library, but I loved the used bookstore. It was the Wild West for book nerds: dusty, disorganized, disreputable. I browsed through a carousel rack of clinch covers. Silhouette Intimate Moments looked promising. At 20 for $1, I got two bags full.
After I read all of those and came back for more, the owner of the shop gave me a side-eye. She asked if my mom knew what I was reading. I said yes, although my mom had no idea where I was, let alone what I was reading. This was the 80s! I rode my bike barefoot without a helmet and bought cigarettes from a vending machine. Naughty books were the least of my parents’ worries.
Bandit’s Embrace might have been one of the treasures I found in that dusty little shop in Nowhere, Kansas, but my love for pulp romance didn’t begin with Bandit, or even with those steamy Silhouettes. It started earlier, with Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams.
My middle school library had shelves upon shelves of teen romance, and you’d better believe I ate them up. I read P.S. I Love You, which launched the Sweet Dreams series but is ironically not a romance. I burned through all the books in the catalogue. These stories bridged the gap toward Adult Fiction.
Sweet Dreams…a gateway drug.
Bantam, the company that published Sweet Dreams, also had an adult romance imprint called Loveswept. If I hadn’t read P.S. I Love You, would I have picked up Sandra Brown’s category romances, become her biggest fan, and decided to write books like her? Who knows!
I have mad love for pulp romance, from Sweet Dreams and Zebra Hologram to Silhouette and Harlequin. I love the pulp cover style, which is making a cool comeback. I love the tawdry, dog-eared, back-aisle vibe. Most of all, I love the memories of the used bookstore—the crowded shelves, the smell of paperbacks, the thrill of discovery—where I lost and found myself.
Tell me what you think about pulp romance. Do you prefer a different term? What’s your favorite series or title from back in the day?
Jill's latest book, Cowboy's Last Stand, just dropped on September 3 and it's the first in a new series.
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