Most of the changes I’ve seen are good. There is definitely more variety out there now. I very quickly “outgrew” the sweet romance and wanted something with more substance, something that wasn’t set on the prairie or in the American West. I’ve loved reading about other countries since I learned to read, so I very quickly jumped over to Gilbert Morris, Michael Phillips and Judith Pella.

The one thing I still want to see more of is historical romance set in NON-American settings. There is so much wonderful history to write about. We don’t need to be restricted to just American history. This is slowly starting to change though, with LIH’s willingness to look at proposals for non-US settings. I think other publishers will begin to follow suit.

I also agree with Patricia’s last paragraph. But I want to see even more freedom to portray less-than-perfect characters, characters with a tragic past, “harder” subject material. (for lack of a better word)

And like G, I pretty much stopped reading CBA fiction for awhile a few years back. It seemed like everything was the same and there was very little romance coming out that grabbed my attention with setting, time period or characters. But that’s all changing now and the quality of writing in CBA fiction has improved so drastically in the last 5 years that I truly think we have some of the BEST writers in the world writing for a Christian audience. It also challenges me to write better. And everybody wins when we play that game!

I think I first read inspirational romance in the mid-1990s. I stumbled upon Lori Wick, Terri Blackstock, and the Heartsong anthologies and couldn’t get enough. Then I found Steeple Hill Love Inspired. The rest was history.

I love that inspirational romance keeps expanding to include new, contemporary voices trying new things. I love that Christians are no longer presented as one inch away from perfect, to the point of even being pretty gritty, and that every story doesn’t have a salvation message. There are stories for believers that strengthen their existing faith.

Then, from about the mid 1980s through the late 1990s, all of the romance novels I read were secular—I believe I’ve mentioned my three favorite authors from that era: Jude Deveraux, Julie Garwood, and Catherine Coulter. In the late 1990s, the Lord convicted me that as a single woman who was, at that time, leading the singles group at my church, I perhaps needed to set that kind of reading material aside and look for something more wholesome. I picked up Stephanie Grace Whitson’s Walk the Fire—and read it in one sitting. After reading everything she had out, I started reading Tracie Peterson’s Ribbons West series. Then I read Danger in the Shadows and the O’Malley series by Dee Henderson. The rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been hooked on inspirational romance ever since.

PS. Did you assign us each a character in the picture box? I keep getting the green alien with the long nose.

I agree with Erica. Variety in genre & quality of writing are the big changes I see. There are so many really good authors now I can’t read them all.

Changes…sheer variety of choice. No matter what your preferred genre, there is an inspirational genre to match it. Also, the quality of the writing has escalated. Christian fiction stacks up well against the best secualr fiction out there.