First mate of the S.S. Baby.

I was going to name myself “Jess 1.”  I told myself that I had earned the right to be Number One by being the one who made the blog.  “Jess,” I told myself, “You are the nerd who waited all night for the movie theater to open, just so you could get the tickets.  Go on! Be number one!”

Unfortunately, fair reader, being the nerd who waits all night for tickets does not mean that you are the one with the coolest movie-themed costume.  I’m great at overextending a metaphor, sure, but it would be misleading if I put myself ahead of my fellow Jess.  Instead, after long deliberation, I named myself First Mate Jess.  I imagine the other Jess will manage to come up with something suitably witty to name herself; for now, I will call her Captain Jess.

Captain Jess and I are great fans of romance novels.  We’re both voracious readers, and occasionally we send each other emails to alert the other Jess of a writer who’s really worth reading, or just to screech excitedly about an excellent storyline.  We’ve both said that it would be good to start a romance novel blog.  Well, consider it started.  It’s named “Spoiler: They Make Babies.”  Other spoilers: they end up liking each other, the secondary love interest is either evil or is totally interested in someone else, and they totally get hitched (if they weren’t married at the beginning of the book).  Whoa!  I totally just blew your mind!

As for your first mate, I am a graduate student in English Literature, writing my dissertation on “Being Boring at Cocktail Parties.”  (This is the focus of every graduate student writing their dissertation.)  I read romance novels for the same reasons I watch crime dramas:  I’m familiar with how the plot progresses, I know how it’s going to end, and I feel a sense of completion and satisfaction at the end.  Graduate school is skimpy on all three of these things.

At present, my favorite authors are Mary Balogh, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Jennifer Crusie, Eloisa James, and Elizabeth Hoyt.  If you have recommendations for other romance authors, please let me know!  I’m always looking for new authors; I read very quickly, and when I’ve exhausted one author’s catalog it’s always a frantic search for the next one.