Danger, Sweetheart

 

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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This one's for me, and for you: lovers of romantic tropes everywhere. Whether it's an amnesiac sheriff or an uptight city boy trapped in the country or a feverish hero being tended to by the heroine (three of my faves), this is for readers who not only defined the genre but also demanded more and never tire of it.

 

Author's Note

I love
Shaun of the Dead.
It is, possibly, one of the finest movies in the history of cinema, second only to
Starship Troopers
. It's got everything: a clueless hero, a puffy sidekick who can imitate an orangutan, Bill Nighy (my old-man crush), a supernice mom, a nerdy bespectacled frenemy in love with the hero's ex, Queen on the sound track (Is there a more beautiful sight than a bunch of British twentysomethings whacking a zombie with pool cues while “Don't Stop Me Now” blares in the background?), debunked dog myths (“Dogs can look up!”), and innocents getting hit by darts.

Oh, and zombies. Lots of zombies. I love everything about
Shaun of the Dead,
but I love how they handled zombies the most. Their love for the genre shone through virtually every minute of the film as they poked fun at themselves and the genre, and I never once felt like they were mocking me or the movies I like: we were in it together. It was the first movie I ever thought of as a conscious gift to the audience: here's something we liked; we think you'll like it, too.

So: this book. My editor and I love the romance genre (not atypical for writers and editors who work in the romance genre, and thank goodness). We love historicals and paranormals and contemporaries and Regencies. We love the silly stuff and the BAMF stuff and the sexy stuff. We love kick-ass heroines and damsels who need to be rescued every twenty minutes. We love alpha heroes and beta heroines, and we love it the other way around, too. (We're dirty girls, and so flexible, too!) We love heroes who are SEALs and farmers and sheriffs and doctors. We love heroines who are biochemists and Vikings and captives and wardens. We love third person and first person and audio and electronic and paperbacks and classic hardcovers.

And the romance tropes, oh God, the tropes. We love those most of all; for us, tropes make the romance.

For the uninitiated, Wikipedia defines “tropes” as “the use of figurative language—via word, phrase, or even an image—for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech.” Did that help? Because it didn't help me even a little. I had to keep reading: “The word ‘trope' has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works.” Oh. Okay. That's a little better, Wikipedia. Stop trying to impress me and just define stuff, okay? Maybe with pictures next time? I like pictures.

A “trope” is when you're watching a new show about a cop who's set to retire next week/month/year and you know that cop will never retire. It's when the slutty pretty teenager in a horror movie says, “I'll be right back!” and you know she's toast. It's knowing the hero and heroine who at first loathe each other will fall in love. It's a way for the writer to let the reader/viewer know what to expect without having to, you know, write. (Shut up! We're doing the best we can.)

A trope is the thing that brings you back to the same genre again and again, because the stuff you loved in the first book will pop up in other books and you're always chasing that feeling, the giddy excitement of reading about a hero and heroine, or hero and hero, or heroine and—you get the picture; whoever they are, you know they are destined for love, and you want to watch. (Not in a creepy way.) Even more: you want to fall in love, too.

And while we were listing our fave tropes (and everyone in the office was getting in on it, and when I mentioned it to my book club they couldn't wait to list theirs, too) my editor said, “Wouldn't it be great if there was a book that paid homage to the romance tropes? Not in a mean way, like the
Scary Movie
movies.”

“In a fun way,” I replied, “like
Shaun of the Dead
.” And wouldn't it be great, we thought, if the audience was in on it?

And that's how
Danger, Sweetheart
came about. A romance novel that pays respect to romance novels, where the readers are in on the joke. Unless you skipped this Author's Note, in which case I cannot help you.

For those of you in a hurry, I've listed all the romance tropes used in the writing of this book at the end, so you can peek and see if any of your favorites are there. Dunno about you, but I can never resist a hero with a high fever, all delirious and adorable, being tended to by a (reluctantly) adoring heroine. I also like the fish out of water trope and the first sex is perfect sex trope. I even got to have some fun with tropes I find annoying (I'm looking at you, Hero Keeping a Big Secret).

If you're new to the genre, this is a fun place to start because: tropes! I'm basically throwing you into the deep end, but unlike when I was tossed into the deep end at the helpless age of twenty-seven, I think you'll enjoy it.

Other things you might want to know (or things I want you to know and your feelings on the matter are nothing to me, nothing!): No tropes were harmed in the creative process. Also, I'm not as gross as readers might assume: it really did rain urine in the bathroom at the Plaza Hotel and Casino, courtesy of a leak one floor above. I did not make that up. God, I wish I had made that up. “Urine” and “rain” and “hotel” are three words that never belong in the same sentence.

The T-shirt Natalie wears (“One by one the penguins slowly steal my sanity”) is a thing! You can get it at Amazon. As I did. And the pink-and-black skull leash sported by the White Rose of York also exists in real life.

Finally, as of this writing, you can't hop an Amtrak from Las Vegas to Minot, North Dakota. This is a crime against humanity. Long train rides rock. Minot does, too (my bias: I was born on the Minot Air Force Base).

 

Quotes

Armed with only a cork-topped plastic tray, I encounter the best and worst people on Earth. Every night.

—S
ARAH
V
ENTRE,
“Why Your Cocktail Waitress Hates You”

If we are to feel the positive feelings of love, happiness, trust, and gratitude, we periodically also have to feel anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow.

—J
OHN
G
RAY,
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

The fish are watched working their way up the shallows … when they come to the shelter of a ledge or a rock it is their nature to slide under it and rest. The poacher sees the edge of a fin or the moving tail … instinct, however, tells him a fish ought to be there, so he takes the water very slowly and carefully and stands up near the spot. He then kneels on one knee and passes his hand, turned with fingers up, deftly under the rock until it comes in contact with the fish's tail. Then he begins tickling with his forefinger, gradually running his hand along the fish's belly further and further toward the head until it is under the gills. Then comes a quick grasp, a struggle, and the prize is wrenched out of his natural element, stunned with a blow on the head, and landed in the pocket of the poacher.

—T
HOMAS
M
ARTINDALE,
Sport Indeed

[My daughter] starts walking out toward the ponies, she's like “Can I go?” I'm an idiot … “Go on out there, honey, you're only outnumbered fifty to one. What could possibly happen?” And there's this one beautiful speckled pony … she walks up to the pony … the pony bites her on the fucking leg. And she screams: “Why, Daddy?” She calms down … she wants to look [ponies] up and learn about them. And we go look up ponies. And it turns out they're assholes. They bite all the time.

—L
OUIS
C.K.

Pretendian: A wannabe American Indian. Usually exhibited by white people but blacks do it too. Claims to be ¼ th Native American or a lesser percentage, but usually have no definitive proof of it or of what tribe they're from … if such ancestry exists, they tend to exaggerate the very small amount that they have after generations of their family neglecting this heritage.

The most annoying thing about these people is the smugness that they claim this lost heritage with. Upon being told by some senile relative or actually finding proof, they suddenly claim to know EVERYTHING about Native Americans and press for tribal membership while buying ambiguous, commodified Indian-themed jewelry and merchandise like dream-catchers. It's usually the first thing they put on their MySpace biographies, and they get miffed when people don't refer to them as Native American or take them seriously as such (but say that they don't want people to “judge them for embracing their ancestral roots”). They also spend their time discrediting other white people who display Indian Princess Syndrome or people who actually have accountable Native ancestry.

These people often have no grasp on Native culture and issues, both historical and contemporary. In the end, most people with accountable ancestry don't whore their heritage in order to look “exotic” and interesting.

—
The Urban Dictionary

There's nothing trashy about romance.

—P
ARRY
in
The Fisher King

 

Prologue

“Wow.”

“I know.”

“That was the best awkward sex I've ever had.”

“Yeah, baby, it was good for me, t— What?”

“A new winner.” Shannah Banaan sat up in bed and began rooting around for her clothes. One good thing about a lackluster performance: her stockings were intact. “Pride of place went to the awkward sex in Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, right next to Hugh Hefner and his life partner, Michael Jackson.” At his puzzled stare, she elaborated. “My date and I rearranged some of the couples, mostly because I thought Madonna and Elvis deserved a chance to be together. And I honestly thought I'd go to my death with unsettling wax museum sex in the number-one slot. But you fixed it.”