Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Earworms in Romance

Um… did she say worms?

Well, yeah, I did.

One of my writing buddies shared a new term with me the other day: “earworms”. I’d never heard it before (and had to fight the compulsion to wash my ears out after I did!) but it means a song that gets stuck in your head after you hear it once. Which you all probably already knew.

But it got me thinking of which songs were my earworms (do you really want me to say it? Then it will be stuck in your head all day!) and I decided that there are books, stories, and characters like that too (would they be bookworms?! Ha! Come on, I had to do it). Those stories that get into your mind and don’t leave.

I would say for the most part, it’s the good stories and characters that really stay with you. But I suppose there could be some characters that you end up disliking so much that you can’t forget them (one particular really pathetic, needy heroine comes to mind for me but I’m too much of a lady to mention any names!)

I definitely have some ‘earworms’ myself –as far as books go… (get that q-tip away from me!)
For instance, if you say “hero in a romance novel” there is one that comes to mind first for me: Bobby Tom, from Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Heaven, Texas.
For romance heroine it’s Catherine McPherson, from Susan Andersen’s Baby, I’m Yours.
For a premise in a romance: A Date With the Other Side, Erin McCarthy
Overall Story: Hummingbird, LaVyrle Spencer (probably because it was one of the first romances I ever read! g)
Romance Author: it’s always Julia Quinn. Flat out, hands down, the lady I would buy no matter what the cover looked like, the blurb said or the price tag.

Now, there are so many books, characters, stories and authors I can think about right now that I’ll always remember, I’ll re-read over and over, and that I will always enjoy. But I think it’s probably the highest achievement there is for an author to end up on someone’s ‘earworm list’… to be that author they think of when they think of romantic fiction or for a story or hero or line of dialogue to be something that really sticks with them!

I don’t know if I’ll be anyone’s earworm, but I was first a reader—and will always be a reader—and I know that I cherish those little worms myself g

What are some of yours? The stories, characters or plots that you just can’t forget, that stick with you? Come on! You know you have worms too! g

Erin Nicholas’s first attempt at creating an earworm is No Matter What, a November release from Samhain. http://samhainpublishing.com/romance/no-matter-what