If Best Couple had first, second, and third places rather than a single winner, I'd have come in third - and my review got me thinking that maybe I should not be marketing my novel as a romance, despite it being a love story (among other things). Many romance readers expect a HEA ending, or at least a HFN, and Ancilla lacks both. The protagonist and her soulmate won't get together permanently until the third book in the trilogy, and necromancy will be involved. Adept is going to start out halfway "normal," at least as normal as I ever get, but it will turn into a ghost romance. A very hot and heavy ghost romance.

Romance readers also seem to want the point of view not just of the main character, but also of the love interest. I see it over and over again. It's been a convention of romance novels ever since Harlequin/Mills & Boon churned out "category romances" for supermarket shelves in the mid-twentieth century.

That's not what I wanted to do with Ancilla. I want to trap people in her perspective. I'm trying to immerse people in her experiences only.

So how should I market this? People who search for erotica don't want literary fiction about sex, these days - they want "smut." (Porn).