90s books vs tomes of today

I I recently chatted to bestselling author and astrologer Jessica Adams about the books she penned in the 90s versus those of today - for DUO Magazine. Here's what she had to say...

 

"[My debut novel] Single White E-Mail was in the first wave of books about single women in their thirties - mine was set in Sydney, Candace Bushnell set her book, Sex and the City, in New York - and, of course, Helen Fielding set Bridget Jones' Diary in London. In the late 1990s my generation was probably the first to hit the big drop in marriage statistics. We were all in shock as all our fairy stories had led us to believe we would be married by 30 - and so these books (and most importantly, their millions of single readers) were the result.

In the year 2013, the focus has been taken off women's marriage anxiety and anger - and onto adventurous sex instead. That's much healthier. Whatever you might think of the particular kind of sex in Fifty Shades of Grey, it's leading a new wave of female fiction where women are writing and self-publishing their own sexual fantasies. Together with Maggie Alderson, Imogen Edwards-Jones and Kathy Lette, I am now creating a sequel to our erotica anthology, In Bed With, for publication next year - and I can't wait!

Writing is such a different business now. When I wrote my early novels, Single White E-Mail, Tom Dick and Debbie Harry and Cool For Cats, I remember one editor telling me I had to have a happy ending (as in, my heroine married and lived happily ever after). Now, that's less relevant or important.

Writers are free to be more creative than ever, partly because of the massive success of paranormal romance and vampire sex. In fact, with the freedom to also self-publish and promote, there has never been a better time to be a woman, writing about dating, mating and relating. At last, honesty!

In 2013, Single White E-Mail, Tom Dick and Debbie Harry, Cool for Cats and I'm A Believer will be reissued as e-books in Australia through Momentum."  

 

And here's the full article on a '90s Guide to Romance' in DUO...