Although he isn't "out there" anymore due to the fact that he passed away in 2011 from diabetes, I still consider Lain Blair to be one of the all time greats. He wrote under the pen name of Emma Blair for many years and produced some really fine romantic novels. I still remember the shock of finding out that Emma is actually Lain back in 1998 because of his novel, Flower of Scotland. It actually received a nomination for "Romantic Novel of the Year" which prompted him to reveal his true identity.

If you have read romance novels like The Red Shawl, Story Bay, The Restless Spirit, Portrait of Charlotte, The Long Way Home, The Restless Heart, Secrets of the Sea, Reach for Tomorrow, Dangerous Shores, Stay With Me, Secrets of a Whitby Girl and many, many others, then you will know that they were written by Jessica Blair. What you may or may not know is that Jessica Blair was actually William John Duncan Spence, or "Bill" to his friends. Spence didn't just have an impressive resume of historical romances under his belt, but he also wrote war novels and Westerns, all under different pseudonyms. His romances were by far the most successful, though. Not bad for a World War II veteran!

This is quite a broad question really. Do you mean male romance authors who write for a female audience? Male romance authors who write for a male audience? Or male romance authors who write for a gay audience, because there are ones for all of the above. Whether or not they are all good I cannot say because I haven't read all of them, but there are definitely good ones. Probably the most famous one of them all is Nicholas Sparks in my opinion. I don't think that you can call yourself a fan of romance novels if you haven't read his 1996 novel, The Notebook. Sparks also wrote Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Rescue, A Bend in the Road, The Lucky One, Safe Haven, The Best of Me, and See Me. I know that some readers and critics find Sparks to be a little too sappy and sentimental when it comes to romance, but I prefer that over the smut that some authors try to pass off as romance these days. All I know is that Sparks has written more romance novels than Jane Austen and most have been best-sellers. His work has also been very successful when turned into movies, which is more than a lot of other romance authors, male or female, could say.

Men who misrepresent their gender for commercial gain is despicable in my honest opinion. Just like we should not tolerate cultural appropriation, why must we tolerate men who are purposefully misleading their readers who are thinking that they are supporting a woman? It is a very slippery slope and I think a lot of male authors have stepped far over the line of what is right and wrong. I mean, where does it end? If it is acceptable for a man to pretend he is a woman when writing, why not misrepresent his ethnicity or heritage as well to exploit these for commercial gain. Historically, women has had to use pseudonyms just to get their work published or for readers to take them seriously, so I think that the men doing that now is making a mockery of the sacrifices and hard work women had to put in. Support real female authors and not the men trying to appropriate our gender for their own gain.

The only one that I know is Eric Jerome Dickey and I'm not even entirely sure if I would classify his books as romance. They are definitely not very safe for work, but they are very good. Dickey is one of the only male authors that I have ever read who is able to write great female characters. He is also quite adept at writing very steamy sex scenes, so if that is what you are looking for, then Dickey should be at the top of your list. As a side note, Dickey is also the man behind Storm, which is a graphic novel in the X-Men universe featuring Orora and T'Challa, also known as Storm and Black Panther.