It’s the time of summing up, so let’s take a look at the top posts from the Romance MFA in 2020. By page views, here they are.
10. Victorian Language of Flowers List
A surprise burst of traffic in December put my Victorian flower language decoder on this year’s list, with almost 2% of my annual traffic.
9. Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: Shades of Jane Eyre
With my thoughts on classic novels which have been accepted into the educational canon, I always wonder what part of the traffic I get is students looking for help with homework. My comparison of Rebecca and Jane Eyre received just over 2% of my total traffic this year.
8. Light and dark: Emotion and Atmosphere in Jane Eyre
Another 2.7% of traffic to my thoughts about Charlotte Bronte’s use of atmospheric description to really hammer home the Gothicness of her tale. Sounds like a great English essay topic.
7. Resources on Romance Novel Plotting
I’ve seen people sharing my collection of romance novel plotting resources on Twitter, and it also pulls in with nearly 3% of my annual traffic.
6. The Princess Bride tells us Life Isn’t Fair
I’m always a little surprised that my review of The Princess Bride (the book, not the movie, although they’re very close) gets so much traffic, but I’ll take it. Another 3% of my hits here, just for thinking about all the ways life isn’t fair.
5. Alpha, Alphaholes and Assholes in Romance
How much of an asshole is too much for a romance reader? It’s an evergreen topic apparently, with 3% of my annual traffic. I wrote a three part series in 2018 exploring the idea: part 1 attempts to define the terms, part 2 looks at why the alpha-hole appeals, part 3 considers changing tolerance for the alphahole in the era of #metoo.
4. 45 Romance Podcasts for Your Listening Pleasure – most recently updated here in June 2020
When I first started making a list of romance podcasts in 2018, it was for my own use. Then I decided to share it and now it is 4% of my site traffic, although most of that goes to the oldest version of the list. If you have a new podcast, or an old one that somehow isn’t included yet, I’ve set up a Google form to submit to the list.
3. Romancelandia Glossary: A Guide to Romance Abbreviations and Terms
Romancelandia has a lot of jargon and abbreviations, and it turns out that there are a lot of people looking for a translation key, as this resource page got 9% of my traffic year.
2. Victorian Erotica: The Convent School, or Early Experiences of A Young Flagellant
What’s at the top of the list for internet traffic? It’s porn. It’s always p0rn. My review of this frankly disturbing example of Victorian spanking erotica accounts for nearly 13% of my website traffic, with plenty of people clicking through to read it for themselves.
1. Finding Romance Stock Photos
Finding romance-appropriate stock photos can be hard to find, especially diverse models. I put together a list of sources for romance stock photos, with notes on pricing and coverage of genre and diverse models and it is nearly a quarter of my website traffic, as well as the lion’s share of outbound links. If you’re a stock photographer, take note! We want to give you our money.
Looking ahead
I’m not foolish enough to make any predictions about how 2021 will go, but I am aiming to get back to monthly updates on this blog. In the meantime, I do send out a weekly email newsletter aimed to indie romance authors on topics of writing and authorpreneurship and you can subscribe here.
