what may or may not be hard reality

Oh. Those all sounds like good reads. I'll keep the links around to peruse some time when I'm not actually at work.

Radclyffe is becoming a favorite of mine as well. I never really got too much into Xena fic, which is where she started I believe, but I have picked up a few of the Honor series by her and enjoyed them very much. (In some ways I am a very typical lesbian romance reader and I have a special fondness for ladies with guns.)

I keep on trying to expand my collection and getting nowhere really fast. Bookstores around here are not necessarily lgbt-friendly and buying online gets to be a hassle sometimes, particularly as I'm the type to find a book and want to read it Right. Now. I'm so impatient when it comes to that.

Some of my favorites of the genre happen to include a lot of the life-threatening danger variety, but perhaps that's only because it's so popular to write. My favorites are less based on the plot line or even style (none of them would ever win Nobel awards, that's for sure) but whether or not I care for the characters. Some great novels have characters that, for one reason or another, I just don't like. Other not-so-great- novels are favorites because even if the plot or style sucked, I totally loved the characters.

As for this genre, probably topping my list of all-time favorites is Passion's Shadow by Nicole Conn. Probably more famous for writing/directing Claire of the Moon (a sentimental favorite since that was the first lesbian romance I read), Nicole definitely stepped up her game, and out the genre rules, with Passion's Shadow. Characters you love, characters you hate, characters you love to hate. Gripping emotional drama but none of the "OMG I'm gonna die, I love you" life-threatening danger. This is the kind of romance I want to write and publish one day. It has its flaws, sure, but it has many more elements of the kind of story I love.