As winter approaches - bringing cold weather and family drama - we crave page-turners, books made for long nights and tryptophan-induced sloth.
The best partnerships aren't dependent on a mere common goal but on a shared path of equality, desire, and no small amount of passion.
The best romance writers know there's nothing that builds conflict or makes a gentleman of a rogue more quickly than responsibility.
For the most part, my characters don't talk to me. I like to lord over them like some kind of benevolent deity. And, for the most part, my characters go along with it. I write intense character sketches and long, play-like conversations between me and them, but they stay out of the book writing itself.
When it comes to love, the English language bears no shortage of cliches.
As for the zone, I always find the zone immediately after I am sure I will never ever find the zone again because it has left me for some other, better writer.
No matter how troubled a character's history, romance novels tell us, love can be built upon it, and happily-ever-after can result. What's more, the darker the past, the brighter the future - and the better the read.
That first meeting - the one where the hero and heroine start the slow burn that takes the whole story to turn into true love - is the single most important part of the whole book. Nail it, and you've won yourself readers.
I think back on that day when 16-year-old me scribbled on some silly piece of paper for some long-forgotten high school career-day project that my dream job was 'romance novelist.'
If you think back to your time as a teenager, everything was dramatic.
Here's the thing about romance novels: The moment when the hero and heroine discover that they're perfect for each other is often the moment when it's them against the world.
Of all the myriad ways we define love, there is perhaps none more honest and powerful than this: Great love is rooted in great partnership.
In books by women and for women, it should come as no surprise that heroines are the heroes of the action, finding themselves, their power and their future through love.
As a romance novelist, I have a rather skewed view of babies. You see, they don't typically fit into the classic structure of the romance novel - romance is about two people finding each other and falling in love against insurmountable odds. Babies... well... babies are complicated.
I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.
Perhaps summer's ephemeral nature is what inspires us to embrace the beach read. We tell ourselves that these twisted plots and wild characters are literary ice cream sundaes - extravagant treats that aren't as calorie-laden when we're wearing flip flops.
I'm so thrilled to have won the RITA. The award is particularly special because it is given by other romance authors. It's deeply rewarding and not a little humbling to be honored by such a talented tribe of writers.
One of the most common criticisms of romance is that the genre is too prescribed: If every romance novel ends happily ever after, don't the stories lack complexity? Don't the readers get bored?
There is a whole generation of romance readers and writers who suffer from what I like to think of as 'Thorn Birds' Fever.
Alas, summer sun can't last forever. The days will grow cooler and shorter, and our skin will once again pale.
