Harlequin Launching Inspirational Line

Harlequin is launching a new line of inspirational fiction aimed at the religion market. The new line will be published by Harlequin's Christian Steeple Hill imprint. But in developing the line, Steeple Hill is borrowing from Harlequin's Red Dress Ink imprint's expertise in the chick lit market. Steeple Hill senior editor Joan Marlow Golan helped establish Red Dress, and Red Dress associate editor Farrin Jacobs is part of the five-person team launching the new line.

"I bring the background of having worked at RDI for almost two years, seeing the changes it's gone through and paying attention to the chick lit market—what people are reading, what publishers are buying, what's getting a positive response, what's been done a million times," said Jacobs, who coined a tagline for the inspirational program: "Life, Faith and Getting It Right."

While certain chick lit mainstays—premarital sex, four-letter words—will be off limits in the Christian line, the underlying sensibility of the genre will cross over well, said Golan. "When you try to define what chick lit is, it's really a voice," she said. "They use wit and irony. They have a certain edge and they deal with reality."

The line will debut in October 2004 with The Whitney Chronicles by Judy Baer. In 2005, it will release books at a rate of one every other month. In addition to the titles on the dating travails of single women, the line will include books about married women struggling with family life in a related genre Golan called "mom lit."

Steeple Hill editor Krista Stoever, who has been talking with writers and agents, said an underlying theme of the books is how young, single women stay true to their Christian beliefs in the modern world. For example, a protagonist might struggle with avoiding sex while dating. Said Stoever, "It's a different set of troubles for a heroine."