Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Where are the Swedish Billionaires?

I was just looking through the July titles for Harlequin Presents, and I realized something. Where are all the Scandinavians?

Seriously, we have the Italian's Secret Baby, The Sheikh's Blackmailed Mistress, The Sicilian's Ruthless Revenge, The Greek Tycoon's Convenient Wife, Under the Italian's Command, and the Australian Millionaire's Love-Child. Not a Swede, a Dane, a Norwegian, among them. Is Harlequin prejudiced against the Scandinavians? Or do readers just not think men named Thor or Sven are sexy?

Why not have the Swedish Billionaire's Convenient Mistress? After all Sweden is full of good-looking people. I think you have to leave the country, if you are Swedish and you are not good-looking. Sweden has a monarchy (as does Denmark and Norway), they fjords, and lakes and the sun shines until like midnight during the summer.

Why not have a story about a billionaire who owns the meatball franchise at Ikea? Or cornered the market in pickled herring. After all Sweden has given us Absolut, Ikea, ABBA, Ace of Base, Ingmar Bergman and Ingrid Bergman and lots of other stuff.

And there are also known Russians in Harlequin Presents either. Now that communism is dead, and they've all embraced capitalism (and the mafia) why not a book about Boris or Misha, the handsome billionaire who made his money importing frozen orange juice (seriously a guy made millions doing this), he can take the heroine to his dacha or to the ballet, showing off the beauty that is St. Petersberg. Aren't Russians romantic and sexy either? Who remembers Artur Dimitriev, the figure skater, with his shirts open to the waist, or the love story of Sergei and Katya Grinkov?

Why must every book be about Greeks, Italians, Sheiks, South American billionaires or Brits?

Come on, let's give some love to some other nationalities!

No comments: