Jill Shalvis remembers growing up a “very natural L.A. girl.” She never left the valley in her youth, spending her time on the beach—and in the fiction section of the library. Today, she writes category and single-title romance novels, including the Lucky Harbor books. How did she get from beach girl to bestselling author?
When have you had the most time to write? Or read? Do you like to devour books all in one go or pace yourself? Read More
Kristan Higgins told Laurie Kahn, executive producer of the Popular Romance Project, that when she writes, she’s never satisfied with the easy process. If she doesn’t laugh or cry at the scenes she’s writing, she goes back and rewrites and rewrites again. Only by pushing each of her drafts to make them “bigger, better, [and] stronger” can she reach the point where she’s ready to wrap up her writing process and hand a new book in.
Do you tell yourself stories in your head? What experiences of your own do you weave into your stories? Read More
In first grade, a teacher praised her reading and set Debbie Kaufman on the road to becoming a lifelong reader. Reading let Kaufman experience a “number of different lives,” beginning with the magical lives of fairy tale heroines. Later, becoming a writer as well as a reader opened the door for Kaufman to use her own many “different lives”—from airport manager to journalist to parent—to inform her stories.
Do you tell yourself stories in your head? What experiences of your own do you weave into your stories? Read More
Recently, Nalini Singh traveled to India, where her ancestors lived several generations ago, to experience the country as the setting for a novel. Travel and chances to live abroad have been defining experiences for Singh’s work as she is aware that one part of the world’s romance may not be another’s. Acceptable actions of love vary from place to place with ideas of what should be private and what should be shared with the larger world.
Kristan Higgins told Laurie Kahn, executive producer of the Popular Romance Project, about her first attempt at writing romance: “[It] was a very hilariously bad outline of an Irish romance. A handsome, wealthy Protestant duke falling for a peasant Catholic girl, and it was set during the Potato Famine. So I didn’t know what I was thinking.” Realizing she needed to switch tactics, Higgins tried her hand at romantic comedy, and successfully sold her first completed manuscript. Now she’s a best-selling, multi-RITA®-award-winning author known for small town romances. Why small towns?
Kensington launched its Encanto line of Latina romances in 1999. Caridad Piñeiro, whose family fled Cuba when she was a young girl, was among the line’s flagship authors with her first novel, Now and Always or Para siempre. Encanto initially published bilingual novels, with the story in both English and Spanish within the same paperback, but eventually switched to separate English and Spanish versions. Today, Piñeiro is a best-selling author who has written for numerous publishers including Kensington’s Encanto line, Harlequin, and St. Martin’s Press.
Are there novels you think would have been more successful if they had been branded differently? How so? Read More
According to Sherry Thomas, all genre fiction offers a promise of justice and fairness that may not be visible in readers’ daily lives. She says, “[. . . ] when I write a romance I want to explore basically certain themes of trust and reconciliation [. . . ],” and one way to combine fairness with stories that push and define trust is to include the happily ever after.
If you’ve read popular love stories from other countries (regardless of where you’re from), what differences or similarities do you notice in the way endings are written?
Does the “happily ever after” have less to do with geographical location and more to do with gender? Vice versa? Are they hand in hand? Something else? Read More
Nalini Singh has lived many places—Fiji, New Zealand, and Japan, where she moved to teach English in the JET program while focusing on her writing. As a result, she is very aware of differences in perspective.
Singh feels that a character’s potential for romance is relative. One protagonist’s romantic partner may even be a nemesis to another character. Despite this flexibility, there are still narrative lines that can’t be crossed without making a pair romantically unredeemable.
What do you look for in heroes and heroines? What types of flaws can be seen as benefits and vice versa? What actions or characteristics ruin your belief in an eventual HEA? Read More
Debbie Kaufman didn’t set out to write inspirational romance (or even romance at all), starting with suspense. But between joining the Romance Writers of America and her son-in-law lending her a copy of Before We Cook and Eat You, an account of missionary life in Liberia in the 1920s and 1930s, she couldn’t help but think, “I wonder if I could set a romance there.” Today, she writes historical inspirational romances, and she feels strongly that inspirationals should be, first and foremost, a good love story.
Why does romance require a “happily ever after”? Has it always? What is the relationship between the romantic and the romance? William Gleason, professor of English at Princeton University, shares his thoughts:
What, for you, makes an ending a happy ending—is the couple’s togetherness enough? Can the couple be separated geographically, yet emotionally together? Can you think of endings meant to read as “happy ever after” that somehow did not work for you? Read More
