I have always been drawn to
relationship stories, happily ever after, and romance. I was first sucked into
the Sweet Valley High series in
middle school and always rooted for the good girl to win. A book I still
remember from my early teen years is Dial
L For Love by Marian Woodruff. In this teen romance, the girl began dating
a socially awkward but popular football player who had his best friend call her
pretending to be him, and the girl and the best friend ended up falling for
each other. Decades later, I still remember the heart-wrenching emotion I felt
while reading that story.
My first adult romance books were Johanna Lindsey historicals that I
read late at night when my mother thought I was sleeping. Soon after, I moved
on to contemporary category romances by Nora Roberts, Elizabeth Lowell, and
Sandra Brown. I loved the emotional ride each author delivered in every book,
and I lived vicariously through the heroines, experiencing love and heartbreak
as they did. When I write, I hope to capture even a portion of the pure, raw
emotion those stories inspired in me.
My all-time favorite hero is Kenny
Karmody from Suzanne Brockmann’s Out of
Control. That mix of sweet, vulnerable, tough, fearless, and irreverent
made me fall head-over-heels in love in a way I never have before or since with
any other book character. Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ First Lady is probably my all-time favorite book because every
single character captivated me on every single page. When I finished that book
for the first time, I turned to page one and immediately started reading it
again.
Contemporary romances with memorable
characters and pure, heartfelt emotion are the stories I love. They’ve stuck
with me through the years, influenced the core of my writing, and are now the
types of books I too write in the hopes they will to
uch others in the same way.
I used to read Barbara Cartland novels when I was a teenager. That was even before Princess Diana became famous. She's a relative, or was.
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