#clinch covers

[sweetsavageflame]

[tometraveling]

[maureen-corpse]

why are the clinch stepbacks a million times sexier than the clinch covers. you can put a naked man on the cover and that's fine i get it but then there are stepbacks where the woman like has her entire bare back to the viewer and it's like oh my god i'm intruding on a private moment

[scottguy]

Clinch covers... I had to look that up. We just called them "bodice rippers." Model Fabio posed for many of those back in the day.

Personally, I love the idea that women can want super, almost ridiculously hunky, guys. Why not? We men make few apologies for wanting perfect babes. It's all just fantasy. Women like sex too.

None of this has ANYTHING to do with being objectified or women's rights. It's just fun. Women's are allowed the agency to want to be swept off their feet. If a lot of women didn't want that.. romance wouldn't exist as a genre.

It's fun being a hopeless romantic! Sex is fun too, especially if you're really in love.

So find Mr. Wonderful and let him tear your dress to shreds as he FINALLY gets the opportunity to satiate his long suppressed desire to take you as his own ... in no uncertain terms.

Ever since starting to publish romance novels I’ve been checking out the romance books at the thrift store specifically for the clinch covers, as a reference for what I might want to do with my own books.

As a culture we mocked these to extinction but I think we were just afraid of their power. The modern clinch revival still hasn't reached the heady heights of what they were doing in the 80s! The vintage covers can be really quite explicit. These ones in particular were steamy enough they had to be hidden on an inner flap.

[theaologies]

Next clinch cover read let’s gooooo!!!

[scarlettgauthor]

There's a lot of work left to go but this is the best arm I've ever painted in my life, everyone please clap.

[offorestsongs]

once again thinking about drawing Rook and Lysander in the style of the covers of vintage romance novels

i mean

[measuredandslow]

One of my dragons ended up at a bookstore, so I thought he needed a little stand to be comfy in his new home. But it’s a romance bookstore so it couldn’t be JUST a stand…which means I made a fainting couch for a dragon 😂. And then my husband suggested that I do a clinch cover and I got probably the funniest picture I’ve ever made. Enjoy!

[sarah-maclean-completist]

Hot Stepbacks!

[isurrenderedtoromance]

0ne Fine Duke · 4/4

[sweetsavageflame]

Wyoming Wildfire by Anne Harmkn, Diamond Books, Berkley Publishers, 1993

Cover artist: Melissa Duillo-Galllo

Check out the purple eyeshadow. I still rock that early/mid 1990s aesthetics. But, I am old, so...👵

[mermaidsirennikita]

lol no offense but you really get a sense of how much publishing is trying to obfuscate romance as a genre when you read a summary that never mentions a love interest or interests(s) ever but the publisher has very deliberately slotted it into romance

[triviareads]

sometimes I feel like I develop opinions out of spite and the whole romance novel cover debate is definitely one of them— today, for example, I had someone tell me they prefer newer (cartoon) covers because the old ones "say nothing" about what kind of romance it is. The new ones apparently imply the humour and theme, while the old ones just say "sex".

[lupinedreaming]

I know some people don’t like the illustrated romance cover trend, but I’ll take it over the “Intense man with a six pack staring at me” covers. I’ve always found those dumb lmao

[theaologies]

Relationship ended with fantasy romance I’m only reading bodice ripper historical romance with clinch covers from now on

[fated-mates]

Cover art by Elaine Gignilliat, who decorated her home with her work.

You can find more about her here and here.