You seem to be hitting on the right idea to tackle the romance writing for a genre you don't enjoy much: combine it with something you do enjoy! You could be the Mary Stewart of a whole new subgenre!
See, personally, I think your ideas there sound mighty interesting. And hunks come in all shapes and sizes. Just because the mainstream idea doesn't fit your ideal, that doesn't mean it can't work. I'm surely tempted to suggest asking around for romance books with nerdy book keepers are heroes now. They get to be in movies, so surely they get to be in books too...
There's a comment you made somewhere about writers whose work you enjoy breaking the rules, wait, ah here. That one. Not quite what I said but the gist seems to be "Don't do this, do this." Thing is, as long as you know the rules, which it certainly sounds like you do, you can bend them and have success with it. So following that logic, if everything else fits the mold, so to speak, but that one offshoot doesn't, that's not the end of the world and might be the one thing that makes your book stand out (positively) from the others.
'course you could also go the other way and make it an adventure novel with these characters that you really, really want to write and it just so happens that romance is a very large part of how these characters feel about each others. You might want to check out information on 'romantic suspense' or any of the other compound romances to see how it's handled.
(The only ones that come to mind are ones I wouldn't recommend, but... Oh, one I haven't read but which loads of people seem to like: Nalini Singh's Angels' Blood. That might be worth looking into as a hybrid romance novel and how that setting works. I'll go look over what's on my shelves to see if I have any other ideas of what might fit the 'this is how hybrid romance novels might work' category.)
ETA: *too lazy to make a new post* Most of the romance-angled books I have are actually unread and, thus, not much help. I know that The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker is romance meets ghost story with a slant towards romance, but I'm not sure Alexi is the kind of hero you'd be interested in writing/reading about. (It's also a debut, and not as well-balanced as it might have been, but I enjoyed it and it's definitely a hybrid with adventureish elements to it.) After that the only books I have that come close to hybrid-romance are fairytale retellings like Robin McKinley's Rose Daughter, or Nancy Holder's The Rose Bride. Both of which are also YA novels. Sorry I can't be of more help. I hope it'll serve as some kind of jumping board for research anyway, though!
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See, personally, I think your ideas there sound mighty interesting. And hunks come in all shapes and sizes. Just because the mainstream idea doesn't fit your ideal, that doesn't mean it can't work. I'm surely tempted to suggest asking around for romance books with nerdy book keepers are heroes now. They get to be in movies, so surely they get to be in books too...
There's a comment you made somewhere about writers whose work you enjoy breaking the rules, wait, ah here. That one. Not quite what I said but the gist seems to be "Don't do this, do this." Thing is, as long as you know the rules, which it certainly sounds like you do, you can bend them and have success with it. So following that logic, if everything else fits the mold, so to speak, but that one offshoot doesn't, that's not the end of the world and might be the one thing that makes your book stand out (positively) from the others.
'course you could also go the other way and make it an adventure novel with these characters that you really, really want to write and it just so happens that romance is a very large part of how these characters feel about each others. You might want to check out information on 'romantic suspense' or any of the other compound romances to see how it's handled.
(The only ones that come to mind are ones I wouldn't recommend, but... Oh, one I haven't read but which loads of people seem to like: Nalini Singh's Angels' Blood. That might be worth looking into as a hybrid romance novel and how that setting works. I'll go look over what's on my shelves to see if I have any other ideas of what might fit the 'this is how hybrid romance novels might work' category.)
ETA: *too lazy to make a new post* Most of the romance-angled books I have are actually unread and, thus, not much help. I know that The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker is romance meets ghost story with a slant towards romance, but I'm not sure Alexi is the kind of hero you'd be interested in writing/reading about. (It's also a debut, and not as well-balanced as it might have been, but I enjoyed it and it's definitely a hybrid with adventureish elements to it.) After that the only books I have that come close to hybrid-romance are fairytale retellings like Robin McKinley's Rose Daughter, or Nancy Holder's The Rose Bride. Both of which are also YA novels. Sorry I can't be of more help. I hope it'll serve as some kind of jumping board for research anyway, though!