This one tiny word encompasses all from which romance novels are made. It doesn’t matter what genre, category or heat level. It all comes down to those four little letters. Now, the word itself may be small, but the concept is huge. The tiny flicker eventually turning into an all-consuming flame–now that is love…or at the very least, lust. As a romance writer, I have to admit that this fire is what sucked me into writing the genre. I love…love. The sex is great, but it is so much more than hopping in the sack. The thrill of the chase, the spark of the first kiss, the flame of the passion, and the sigh of the happily-ever-after ending make it the only category for me to read and write. There are many people who say romance is nothing but predictable, just because they end the same. I have one word for them: Duh! Mysteries end with a resolution to the mystery and horror stories are going to have gruesome scenes, yet for some reason, they generally aren’t lumped into one bunch and pooh-poohed as a whole. Writing a book is all about the presentation and figuring out how to flow…

It’s Valentine’s Day so of course the subject of the day is Romance. What is romance? Is it the perfect gift? The bouquet of flowers? The huge heart shaped box of candy? Or is it the little blue velvet (or whatever) color jewelry box from your favorite store? Seriously sappy cards? Or humorous fun ones? Before I answer or at least give my opinion, I admit to loving all of these things. I’ve been married almost 19 years and my heart still does a little leap when the florist comes. Honestly, my husband isn’t a “true romantic” and that’s okay. As long as there’s a way he remembers important dates, I’m happy.I think too much emphasis is placed on Valentine’s Day and even birthdays etc. A lot of men just aren’t wired to be romantic. Even if you’ve tried to retrain them, they just don’t think that way. Although how they can miss the T.V. commercials and radio ads is beyond me. Still, if they value you and have their own way of showing it, that should be enough. For me, I don’t need the big fancy gift or the flowers (although it’s nice when I get them.) We’re usually…

I’ll admit it. I’ve always hated Valentine’s Day. The pressure began back in first grade, when I stayed awake all night, worrying that I’d be the only kid who didn’t receive a card at the class party. The entire holiday could, in my opinion, be renamed “Unimaginative Consumer-oriented, Entirely Arbitrary and Manipulative, Shallow Interpretation of Romance Created by the Greeting Card, Florist, and Candy Industries to make you feel miserable Day.”Now, I believe in romance. I couldn’t have sustained a career for twenty-five years writing romance novels if I wasn’t a sucker for happily-ever-afters. But there’s so much pressure to have the most romantic night of the year that it’s almost always bound to fail. True romance, in my opinion, comes from those little unplanned gestures that remind you why you fell in love with the guy in the first place. But I do have one evening that will forever shimmer in my mind as a perfect Technicolor romantic experience. Back in 2001, nine days after 9/11, my sweetie and I traveled to Italy for a long-planned vacation. Really, really long-planned. When he’d proposed to me, he promised that some day he’d take me to Rome. Which he knew was…

I write in a room lined with beloved books – it’s like being with old friends. I know chunks of some of these keepers by heart. For some reason it’s usually dialogue I remember, some favorite exchange between the characters. I love the banter that takes place between a hero and heroine, particularly where they’re talking about one thing, but there’s a delicious sexual undercurrent underlying the whole conversation. I’m not talking about suggestiveness, but banter as a sexy duel, a form of courtship, a dance, a game that neither can lose. Good banter always makes me smile.Some books, some heroes, lend themselves to it more than others. For me, it’s usually the hero who starts it. For instance, here’s an example from my current book, THE STOLEN PRINCESS, where the Regency hero gets the heroine all hot and bothered with just a few teasing words. She gave him a severe look. “I told you, I have no desire to put myself under the thumb of any man, ever again.” “But it wasn’t my thumb I was thinking of.” He said it with such a— such a wicked, laughing look she was hard put to know what to say. So…

Nemo came into our lives the way the best ideas for novels often do. One morning my husband and I had no dog. We had memories of two who had aged and died, dogs we had loved for years and mourned with a startling intensity. We also had vows that we would not get another pet while our lives were so busy. Then we got the phone call.“Mom,” our oldest son, the lawyer and country gentleman began, “we found a puppy dying in the grass off our road. Jim–” their neighbor, “nearly ran him over with a bush hog. If I hadn’t stopped to talk to him, and he hadn’t turned off the tractor. . .” We didn’t need a dog. “What kind of puppy?” I asked, because like any mom I wanted to keep the conversation going. “Who knows. Spotted, starving and sick. I’m not sure he’ll make it.” He did make it, of course–or why would I tell this story? My son and daughter-in-law carefully nursed the foundling back to health. Then puppy came to visit one afternoon and simply never left. I couldn’t bring myself to name him for days, not until my husband returned home from…

Authors are constantly asked where they get their ideas from. It’s probably the most commonly asked question. And here in the UK and Ireland Mills & Boon (Harlequin’s UK division) is celebrating it’s Centenary, so we’re seeing a lot more press coverage – hence I’ve been asked this question about a half dozen times in the last week alone. One of the next things they asked was ‘Do you get your ideas from real life?’ to which I consistently answered with a burst of laughter and ‘I WISH!’ But that’s probably not the real answer. Because the initial spark of inspiration *does* come from real life and the things we see and hear around us every day; a song, a movie we hated the end of, the sight of two people talking in a street café, a photograph that captures a moment we want to know more about. And then a chain reaction begins. The who, what, when, where and why starts to find answers inside our heads – the part of our brain in charge of creativity rubbing its hands with glee and setting to work with gusto! (We hope…) For many it’s the best part of the job…

When I first started writing, I hardly dared to dream. I banged away on a semi-decrepit laptop in my attic apartment in New Haven, Connecticut (yes, really, an attic…servants’ quarters, actually; I kept looking with no success for the butler…), working on my debut novel, And Only to Deceive, with only the briefest someday-maybe-if-I’m-good-and-lucky-this-will-get-published thoughts. I’d chosen the location for the novel carefully—wanted to use settings familiar to me. Places I’d actually been. I studied abroad in college, living in London, and that seemed an easy starting point. Two trips to Paris had cemented the city in my soul, and a recent visit to Greece had wholly seduced me. I was confident I could capture the essentials of each location. But what next? I’d joked for a long time that my writing career was a thinly veiled attempt to justify my travel plans, but I’d never really let myself believe that someday, just maybe, I could be an author and jet about the world on research trips. I kept those thoughts far from my brain, focusing instead on writing. It’s the best thing an aspiring author can do—nothing is more important than crafting the best books possible—while all the while…

They say you should be wary of working with children and animals, but what about friends? This was a question I probably should have addressed when the Desire senior editor suggested a down-under continuity series back in 2006. I had worked on three continuity series before then, but each was an editor-led series. The overview of the series, the characters, the broad storylines were developed by the editors who invited the authors to participate. This series, however, was to be author-led. In other words, the development of the series from initial concept to completion would be in the hands of the six authors. The idea of collaborating on a project like this excited me. So much so, I jumped right aboard that train while yelling encouragement to the others to join me. “Come on,” I cajoled to those dragging their feet. “It’ll be fun! We’ll brainstorm and bounce off each others’ energy and we won’t have to work in isolation as we usually do. Plus developing a whole series arc will be brilliant!” Six strong-minded women who are used to operating in creative independence working together as a team… How would that work? Would we still remain friends after all…

Years and years ago, when I still played with Barbies, Saturday nights were a magical time. They were all about steak dinners with the family around the candlelit table and my dad smoking his cigar in the backyard afterward. Saturday nights were also when IN SEARCH OF… aired on TV, and I remember watching it, enthralled, and oftentimes, scared to death when Leonard Nimoy told us about things like The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. Of course, I was young, and I freaked out at everything. So when a certain episode about vampires aired, it left an indelible impression that’s stayed with me until this day. Long claws, sharp teeth, a woman in bed with a gnarly shadow creeping over her…. I was hooked, and it’s no surprise that I’m writing about vampires now for Ace Books. In keeping with what scared me when I was younger, my own vampires usually have a mean streak and will do anything to survive. In fact, my first vamp book THE HUNTRESS (for the defunct Bombshell line from Silhouette) featured a tribe of female bloodsuckers, feral and hard to slay. I loved those gals, but the real villain in that story was vampirism…

I’ve heard that a lot since the debut of my of the Finley Anderson Tanner series. I can’t attest to how much she and I are alike. Yes, Finley and I share the same sense of humor and I suppose her moral code mirrors my own. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. Well, excluding the fact that she’s blonde and short. That’s a function of practicality. Being blonde and short myself, I know how to dress Finley (fairly high heels are important) and the physicality of the character’s actions reflect the fact that unless she started dating Michael J. Fox, she’d never know what it felt like to dance with her head resting on a guy’s shoulder. In all other aspects, Finley and I couldn’t be less alike. She’s a shopper, something I personally loathe. I’d rather remove a kidney than go to a mall. The whole idea of window-shopping makes me want to stick pencils in my eyes. Finley’s also heavily in debt, another personal taboo of mine. But the biggest difference is that she’s an underachiever by choice. I’m so much of an overachiever that I probably could benefit from lengthy therapy. Crafting a character is never…