We're delighted to welcome Avon Senior Editor Erika Tsang to our Word Wenches blog!
Erika joined Avon books in 2002 intending to expand their historical romance list, and since then she has also added paranormal, romantic suspense and multicultural romance novels to her impressive list of authors and books. Currently interested in all subgenres of romance, she loves stories with creative concepts, and heroes fashioned after Harrison Ford or Ewan MacGregor....
Now we'll turn the blog over to Erika, who has some intriguing questions for readers....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I thought there’d be more skin.”
“I thought their swords would be bigger.”
-- a conversation overheard at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament in Lyndhurst, NJ.
Okay, I confess. I started the above conversation.
This past weekend, we celebrated a friend’s birthday by taking her to Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament. If you’ve never been, it’s basically a show where men on horseback, dressed in period clothing, joust and have sword fights accompanied by an amazing soundtrack.
As I’m tearing apart the roasted chicken with my bare hands (there was no silverware in Medieval times, you see), I’m watching the swordplay and cheering on my knight, who did not resemble any knights I know. 
“I thought there’d be more skin,” I say to my friend. “The knights on my romance covers show more skin.”
“I know,” my friend smirked. “I thought their swords would be bigger.”
One of the benefits of being a romance editor is that I can forget about the reality of the past. I conveniently forget things like the lack of hygiene, lack of women’s rights, lack of silverware and so forth, because I’m too immersed in the fantasy of romance and pageantry, where knights fight for the honor of their ladies, the good guy always wins, and happily-ever-afters do exist.
So I forget that in reality, knights are covered in armor and are very rarely bare-chested like you see on romance novel covers.
But if you were to see an accurate depiction of a medieval (or Regency, or Georgian) scene, would you be more or less likely to buy that romance? Do you judge a book by its cover?
~Erika