Why You Should Consider Writing Romantic Suspense

It is now just a fact of life that more women read books than men. This might be because the women of today are more than likely to be higher educated than men as shown by the ever increasing female population in schools and the dwindling population of men in them.

Higher educated people tend to read more than less educated people. And if the trends continue, women could certainly become the bulk of book reading customers for many authors.

It’s no wonder then that many authors including men are concentrating their book writing efforts towards women. There are even men who use female pen names just to attract women readers.

Can you blame these men? With the advent of self-publishing, the competition for the precious dollars of a book reader have become more and more intense. Authors who depend or are planning to depend on writing as a full-time source of income must adapt or perish.

Being a male author myself, I feel the pressure to heavily consider the female point of view when it comes to writing my stories. The books I read and the movies I watch had made me realize the strong presence of women.

Imagine my surprise or I just might be getting really old, when I realized that the thriller and suspense book genres which were the traditional bastions of male authors, have become dominated by women authors.

Gone are the days when the male protagonists dominated the story with their macho attitude. Now, women protagonists seem to rule. When yesterday, women authors have to use male oriented pen names, today women pen names seems to be the preferred choice even if you’re a male author.

And nothing convinced me more than an online article from The Atlantic, a popular American publication. The article reported that 60 to 80 percent of thriller/suspense readers are women.

The article also pointed out that there are now a lot of male authors who are using female oriented pen names just to be successful or to just compete in this book genre against women. But as we have previously discussed, this is not surprising at all now given the dominance of female readers.

Here is the link to The Atlantic article:

Article: Why Men Pretend to Be Women to Sell Thrillers

And it is also a well known fact that women readers prefer women authors. I can’t blame these women readers. My mother and her female friends for example could talk for hours on just about anything. It is clear to me that when it comes to bonding together, women rule.

Perhaps you are an author especially a male one who thinks that women readers would be repulsed by graphic acts of violence and gore in thriller books. The same The Atlantic article also reported that there plenty of women readers who welcome violence and gore in their books.

As the article reported, there is a running trope that the more violent and gorier a thriller book is, the more old women love them. I don’t know if this is truly true for most women given the popularity of cozy mysteries as well.

But the popularity of very violent and gory thriller books as well as the popularity of cozy mysteries is just proof that there is a good demand for novels with the element of thrill, mystery and suspense in them.

This is not the first article of mine which states the overwhelming popularity of romance over all other book genres. Just to repeat, Romance is the number one book story genre while suspense comes in at second. The rest of the genres follow.

But this simple statement does not tell the complete story. In the billions of dollar book publishing industry, sales of romance books are double the sales of thrillers. This is the undeniable popularity of the romance genre.

And this might be a good time in this article to introduce you to Romantic Suspense. But what is it anyway? The popular book lovers site goodreads have a simple definition to this romance subgenre or should it be suspense romance genre?

Romantic Suspense is defined as any story genre of romance that features a prominent mystery, suspense or thriller plot. You might think that this definition casts a very broad net, but I think that it’s useless to quantify which book is a romantic suspense or not.

Because as many publishing professionals like to point out, the definition of romantic suspense has morphed and has relaxed a lot that a lot of books today which contains romance and mystery can already be called as romantic suspense.

Besides, who’s to tell? With so many combinations of genres happening today in the romance and thriller genres, it’s getting hard to find pure romance or thriller novels alone. We have for example supernatural romance and science fiction romance. It can be very confusing.

Now let’s discuss something very important about romantic suspense: It’s the number one genre in romance. Approximately half of romance readers read it. This information is from the study commissioned by the Romance Writers of America.

If you’re writing romantic suspense, then it follows that you probably have half of the market of all romance readers as your potential customers. And to repeat, the romance book market is worth several billions of dollars.

A distant second are thriller books who roughly have a market of between 700 to 800 million dollars annually. As you can see, if you are an author, especially someone who’s specializing on romance, it pays to have a look at the romantic suspense genre.

Perhaps a thought has been running through your head already: “Romance and Thriller/Suspense are the top two most profitable book genres. Why don’t I combine the two instead of concentrating on only one?“

This must be the thought of many romantic suspense authors when they first started to write their books. And as it turns out, this idea is very sound and a calculated one for many authors who write these kinds of books.

Nothing pumps up the adrenaline of people more than thrill and love. Everyone remembers the crime that almost happened or has happened to them. Everyone remembers the loves of their lives. People can’t get enough of these. That’s why these books are so popular.

We have so far discussed the monetary reasons why you should write romantic suspense. But as a hardboiled romance author who doesn’t add thrillers or suspense in their books, should you do it?


Personally, as a person who would rather write about relationships than crime, I see the reason why there might be people who would balk at the idea of adding suspense, thrill or even crime in their romance books.

I would say to myself that personal relationships and interactions happen more than suspense, thrill or crime in everyday life. Romantic suspense are simply not that realistic to me. Then I remember why I write fictional stories.

I write them to bring my readers to unfamiliar settings and people. Suspense, thrill and crime might not happen to people in everyday life, but this might be precisely the reason why people buy books.

Romantic suspense is just another story genre which lets people get accustomed to the unfamiliar. This explains the growing popularity of supernatural romance and science fiction romance for example.

It is advisable that you try to write at least one romantic suspense book so you can get a feel if writing such books fit you. Janet Evanovich for example used to write strictly romance books before she became successful with her romance mystery books.

I think this pertains more to male authors than women authors. Being a man, I know the difficulties of a male author in putting his writing skills and preferences to write romance in their books.


Society has come a long way. Men and women now do jobs that were meant only for the other gender a decade ago. There are now men who write strict romance and there are now women who write gory thrillers.

The thing that hasn’t changed much is society’s general perception that men are no good at writing romance. That is why if you are a male author and if your pen name says so, your book is expected to be filled with male bravado with hardly any romance.

Strong depictions of sex is also more likely expected from you as well as a male author. You don’t have to look far. James Patterson and Lee Child are just some examples of male oriented thrillers written by men.

But writing thrillers with a very strong romantic plot is not only relatable for the suspense author, but also for the readers. I find that straight thriller stories bore me. I simply can’t believe that there are characters who seem to only exist to solve mysteries and crimes.

I don’t know if you would consider Janet Evanovich as romantic suspense, but I enjoyed her books more than the books of James Patterson or Lee Child. It’s a matter of preference of course, but I found that I relate more to Janet’s books.

As has been said before, it is very difficult and even impossible to tie down the romantic suspense genre to a couple of books and movies. Almost throughout the history of literature and entertainment, there is a near endless supply of books and movies that can fit the bill.

Does the iconic movie Casablanca starring the iconic Humphrey Bogart classify as romantic suspense? It has romance and suspense right? It comes complete with espionage and cops as well.

Romantic suspense has a very strong romantic plot between the main characters. If we for example refer to the Alex Cross novels of James Patterson, we can see that the books mainly center on Alex Cross as a crime solver and not much on his relationships.

As you can see, it is easy to have an understanding of what romantic suspense is. A book may be termed as a Cozy Mystery for example, but if the elements of romance and suspense are there, it could also be more known as a romantic suspense.

There are strong financial considerations why you should consider writing romantic suspense. This genre combines the two most profitable genres in book publishing: Romance and Suspense. It would be foolishness not to even consider writing for this romance subgenre.

Romantic suspense by its definition is very broad. I suggest writing what gets your adrenaline going. What excites you about romance and at the same time suspense, thrill and/or crime? These are very common topics and I’m sure that you have plenty based on what you have read or experienced alone.

Writing Romance Novels