I didn’t get anything crossed off my list yesterday. :( I’m almost finished with my Fighting Fate edits, just a few clothing details to take care of before I send it back to my editor. This is why I prefer my characters naked! I have them in like 8 different outfits in one day!

Anyway, this post was really going to be my new mall. You know, when you move to a new place, one of the first things you have to do is check out the new mall. I’ve got a nice one - it’s less than 10 minutes away. It’s being renovated at the moment, but I think it’ll be pretty nice when it’s finished. It doesn’t have an Old Navy, but it does have all the other “standard” mall stores, including an H&M.

Anyway, we were there the other day and I checked out the bookstore - I think it was a Waldenbooks, but I can’t really be sure now. It could have been anything.

They had a fairly large romance section smack dab in the middle of the store. I liked that - it seems like a lot of bookstores hide their romance section in the back.

But, like most bookstores, it seems, they have a ton of shelf space for mass market paper backs but not all that much room for trade. Strange since it seems the majority of books I want to read these days are coming out in trade size.

Anyway, I did a little browsing, especially of the trade section, and found a few Cerridwen books, a few Samhain and a few NCP. Plus, there were your standard Brava’s, Aphrodesia and Spice books. What I didn’t see were Elloras Cave.

I thought that was odd until I turned around and saw a wall shelf filled with EC books (or so I thought) in the “relationship” section.

It was a little odd to me, but I went with it. Spice and Aphrodesia in romance but EC in Relationships?

Anyway, I went to the “Relationship” section (I think I freaked out the other guy in the section who hurried away when I got there). Not only were there EC books galore (though not the names I expected to see), there were Cerridwen, Samhain, NCP and even Brava’s there.

It made no sense to me, until I realized one thing. The books in the “Relationship” section all had black covers!

Apparently if it had a dark cover and said “erotic romance” on the spine it went in the “Relationship” section. If it had a light colorec cover and said “erotic romance” on the spine it went in the “Romance” section.

Case in point - Alison Kent’s Deep Breath (mostly black spine) was in the “Relationship” section while most other Brava’s were in Romance.

I honestly can’t tell if I think this is completely stupid or brilliant! What do you think? How does your local bookstore shelve romance/erotic romance?