All right, let’s talk first loves. No, I don’t mean that sexy bad boy from school. I’m talking about the paper kind. Those first, unforgettable books that were your introduction–your gateway drug, if you will–into the wonderful world of Romance. Was it that illicit stash of Harlequins you discovered at your grandma’s house? The dog-eared bodice-ripper you reluctantly started because it was the only book in the vacation rental that wasn’t by Stephen King? Whatever it was, it changed your life for the better. I was, I admit, a latecomer to romance. I’d studied ‘Serious, Proper Literature’ at University–which generally meant books written by men. I’d read everything from Chaucer to James Joyce, Shakespeare to Kafka. And I’d noticed how few of the women in those ‘classics’ ever achieved success or received any pleasure. If they did, they were usually punished, or ended up dead. I clung, ever hopeful, to the sparsest of romantic threads, but ended up shouting at my paperbacks instead; “Forget the train station, Anna Karenina! Run off with Vronsky and bloody well live happily ever after.” “Step away from the poison, Madame Bovary, he’s not worth it!” Don’t even get me started on Tess of the…