Labels

Labels. They have a wonderful purpose. They help us to classify things, to understand them. They make it easy to find what we’re looking for. I’m a big fan of labels in many things–on the clothes on the rack in a store, on my spice jars, on food. And many more places too, of course.

Labels help us to know what we’re getting. And that matters. But I can admit it–I chafe against labels, when they’re applied in other ways. I don’t generally like it when they’re applied to me. And I also don’t like it when they’re applied to my stories.

This is something I struggled with a lot as a new writer. I remember way back in 2005, when I was pregnant with my daughter, I attended an RWA (Romance Writers of America) meeting as a guest. Naturally, “romance” as a genre came up in conversation, and I said something (very uninformed) about how most stories have some romance in them. At the time, I had just put out the very first version of A Stray Drop of Blood, and in my mind, it was a romance.

Y’all, it is not a romance. Some very patient woman with way more experience than I had explained very quickly and offhandedly that in order to meet the definition of a romance, a book had to meet certain expectations and follow some rules. All of which my book did not do. What this woman was telling me was that “romance” is a label that carries a very specific meaning with it. And what’s more, that when people pick up a book with that label, they expect it to hit certain notes.

A Stray Drop of Blood is a love story. But it is not a romance. It’s best classified simply as “historical fiction” or the sub-genre of historical, “biblical fiction.” This was a realization I had to wrestle into place.

And it’s a lesson I carried forward in my writing. I will be honest. I don’t always like genre labels still. But I know their purpose. And so, I’ve embraced them. Because I want my readers to trust me. I want them to know that when they pick up a book of mine labeled “historical romance,” they can be 100% sure they’re going to get a Happily Ever After (HEA, as we call it in in the biz), and that the romance is a key part of the story.

At the same time, there’s still a bit of rebel in me, LOL. When people say “Oh, I don’t like romance,” some part of me really wants to say, “And yet plenty of people who ‘don’t like romance’ read and love my books and tell me they’re not ‘JUST romance.’ So maybe what you mean is that you don’t like certain types of romance.” Same goes for other labels like “Christian fiction.” I absolutely, 100% write Christian fiction. Faith is always a central theme in my stories. But if I’m talking to someone who doesn’t share my faith (or if I’m not sure if they do) and they ask my what I write, I usually drop that label and just say “historical fiction” (if it’s a guy) or “historical romance” (if it’s a girl). I give them the label that is TRUE but which I think they’ll most be drawn to. Just playing Paul a bit. 😉 Not to try to deceive, but to try to get to what lies beneath the label.

Because while labels help us find what we want…they also lead us to dismiss things, even when we shouldn’t. They give us an excuse not to try something. To fall into prejudice.

Most recently, I’ve been thinking about labels because of what, in the book world, has come to be called “spice.” “Spicy” books have open-door sex scenes. So those books that don’t have that have come to be called “no-spice” or even “no spice romances.” Other variations were “closed-door” or “clean” or “wholesome.”

All of these labels come with problems, and some people I highly respect have talked about it with more eloquence than I could. Sometimes the problem is that the term is unclear: “closed door” could mean that the characters don’t have sex outside of marriage, but it can also mean that they do, but the author “closes the door” and doesn’t show it on-page. But it could also mean that characters are married, so of course they’re doing married-people-things, but it’s not described. (I do have some books where characters get married and, by the end of the book, have consummated said marriage–so technically, those books would be “closed door.” Because we know what’s going on, but we don’t need to see it.)

Sometimes the problem is that the term carries a blanket moral judgment, as with “clean.” 

Lately, I’ve had books featured by readers and reviewers who build their platform on “no spice” and also no bad language, no explicit violence, and so on. I’ve joined multi-author cross-promotions that rely on this label too. Because my books fit the label. That’s cool.

And yet…I’ve been chafing at said label, and it’s taken some self-examination to figure out why. And I think it comes down to another review I’ve gotten recently.

See, Guideposts put my Island Shop books in an Instagram tour this summer through a group called BookSparks. They hosted a summer reading challenge called “The Book Odyssey,” and I’ve had fun seeing my books pop up in the travels of readers and reviewers well outside my normal circle. I soon realized that this group was not strictly a Christian-book group. Which can be terrifying for someone who writes obviously-Christian fiction, given the horror stories we’ve all heard about 1-star reviews simply for being Christian.

But instead, I found that these new-to-me-readers were enjoying the stories for what they were. The whole point of the challenge was to explore new books as travelers would explore new cities or countries, and that’s what they did. I was continually delighted to be tagged in these posts from strangers and to find that they appreciated both The Island Bookshop and The Island Bakeshop because of their beach settings, their relationships, their banter, their sweet romances. 

One reader, however, said something like, “I’m surprised at how much I liked these. I usually want at least some spice in my books, and these are no-spice. But I still really enjoyed them.”

And that’s when the label started to chafe. Because yes, it serves a very real and very necessary purpose–to let people who don’t want that in their books know that they won’t find it here. Awesome. I approve. 😉 But as with all labels, it does the opposite too–it tells people to steer clear. This can also be a good thing–it helps eliminate those low reviews, if people don’t know what they’re getting and don’t like what they get.

But I love when readers throw labels to the wind and just read. When they pick something up and give it a chance anyway and find that they love something, even if it’s not they’re norm.

So I guess maybe it’s not the labels themselves that I chafe at. I think maybe it’s the fact that we, as people, fall back on them so much. I don’t mind labeling my books…but I need to be careful not to let labels alone guide me.

And people? This is where it gets really important, which is something I talked about a lot in 2025 around the release of The Collector of Burned Books. Because it isn’t just clothes or food or books that we apply labels to, right? It’s people. And even when we give ourselves those labels–Christian, Catholic, Protestant, wife, mother, friend, American, Canadian, Australian, Conservative, Liberal–we need to remember that that’s not all we are.

And so, it’s not all anyone else is either. Just like my books–they are romance, yes. But they’re not ONLY romance. They are no-spice, yes. But the spice level is not what the book is about. They are Christian, yes. But it’s not a slapped-on, preachy kind of Christianity.

We all have labels. They help define certain aspects–of us, of our beliefs, of our stances, of our nationality, of our ethnicity. But we are MORE than our labels. And so are they.

Labels can help us in so many ways…as long as we never forget that they’re just one little sticker trying to help you understand something really complicated. When we apply them, we need to do it wisely. And we must never, ever forget that Jesus sought out those with labels that usually meant they were dismissed, and He gave them a new one. The only one we really need:

Redeemed.