One word I learned after hanging out with the romance community online for awhile is “glom.” Among romance readers, it’s a verb, and etymology.com reveals its origin:
glom
1907, from glahm “grab, snatch, steal,” Amer. Eng. underworld slang, from Scot. glaum (1715), from Gael. glam “to handle awkwardly, grab voraciously, devour.”
It’s the middle Gaelic definition we’re using here: grab voraciously and devour.
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Glomming is when we...OK, I...discover an author I adore and absolutely must hunt down everything she’s published so I can enjoy more of that author’s voice. Just as we seek out series set in places with excellent world building so we can revisit now and again, we also seek writer voices that we enjoy and invariably we want more.
Sometimes it’s humor we’re craving, or a slightly goofy style of narration. Other times, it’s the strength of the characters and the way in which the author can play with tropes and archetypes. It’s a form of literary gluttony, the glom—we want everything that author has ever written so we can enjoy it in a feast for the mind and emotions.
I recently glommed the backlist of Sarah Morgan, whose book, A Night of Scandal, is my book club pick for July. Morgan writes Harlequin Presents, which are contemporary romances set in often luxurious locales with very alpha males and often virginal heroines. They are, in a word, sudsy. But when, in the confines of the Harlequin Presents world, an author plays with readerly expectations in a charming manner, the reading can be awesome. This is what Morgan does, and this is why I went to find all of the books she’d written for Harlequin before I started traveling last week. From Mills & Boon Medical romances, which I hardly ever read, to Presents that were set in England, Brazil, and private islands, I was reading every Morgan novel I could get my hands on—it was glom time.
What I enjoyed most was how Morgan twisted my expectations. In Dr. Zinetti’s Snowkissed Bride, for example, the very alpha male doctor is an overbearing jerkwad in one early scene. He and the heroine are both part of the mountain rescue team in the Lake District of England, and they’ve just rescued a wayward hiker in the midst of a blizzard. (Please note: there are no flurries or outbreaks of halfhearted snow in romance novels. It is always a blizzard) The hero, the Dr. Zinetti of the title (Please note: the authors do not choose these titles) starts coming on to the heroine in the most obnoxious way possible—and she tells him off. Once they’re safe in the parking lot ready to go their separate ways, she realizes that he only acted that way to piss her off and get her adrenaline going so she’d make it down the mountain in the cold. Nefarious alpha males using their alpha powers for the common good? Interesting!
I really enjoyed Dr. Zinetti, though the heroine was exceptionally stubborn. Another title I enjoyed in my Epic Morgan Glom was The Twelve Nights of Christmas, which features a hotel owner and a surprise encounter with one of his employees which leads to a secret pretend relationship for the (wait for it) 12 nights leading up to Christmas. I’m working my way through Morgan’s other books, including Dare She Date the Dreamy Doc? (Please note: see above re: titles).
What books and authors have you glommed recently? Do you find the process of enjoying an author’s backlist as satisfying as I do? What do you recommend for glomming purposes?
Sarah Wendell is the co-creator, editor and mastermind of the popular romance blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
