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!)