This week's All About Romance

I thought this week's At the Back Fence column at All About Romance was a thought-provoking read. One of the reasons I'm thinking of switching from historical romance to historical fiction is my frustration with the claustrophobic nature of much of today's romance. I like secondary characters and subplots. I want to feel like a story's protagonists live in a three-dimensional world, surrounded by other people who matter, who have lives of their own, and are heroes of their own stories--not necessarily in the sense that they'll star in a sequel one day, but in the Joss Whedon sense of having their own agendas and self-interest to motivate their actions.