Welcome to my world.

How did it all begin?  I’d just graduated from college and was working at  a bookstore outside Chicago.  During the previous four years, there’d been no time to read for pleasure (though some of the things I did read were a lot of fun), so working in a bookstore was like letting a kid loose in a candy store.

We had a huge discussion about a book that was coming in.  Shanna, by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss.  There were so many women ready to read this book that we weren’t even going to shelve it, just shlep the cartons up to the registers and sell them right out of the boxes.  The morning the book went on sale, women were lined up outside the bookstore entrance ten deep.  The excitement was palpable.

From my position at the first check stand, I remember thinking, What the hell is going on?  What was in this book?  At eight fifty-five sharp, we cut open the boxes and began stacking the gorgeous trade sized paperbacks on the counter.  At nine, the doors opened and women swept into the store, straight at us, grabbing copies right and left.  I’d never seen anything like it.

The cover was gorgeous, tropical and lush.  Women didn’t even look at the book, just threw it down, whipped out cash or credit cards, raced out of the store.  At this rate, we were going to sell out in a couple of hours, and we’d ordered a LOT.

I remember taking a copy and stashing it beneath the counter.  Something this good was something I wanted to be a part of.  There was no time to ask a single customer, “What’s this story about?”  It was a feeding frenzy, and I had the food!

That afternoon on my lunch break, my hands sore from constant register action, I opened the first page and fell into the most incredible story.  My total love affair with historical romance began.  I really hated going back to the register after lunch.  Once I got home, I made myself the fastest dinner on record and threw myself into a chair.

A dark and rainy night.  A London jail.  A bargain struck.  I couldn’t stop

I kept reading.  Within hours, we were in the Caribbean.  As my mother was born there, this was even better.  I raced through the pages, a hero’s hot pursuit, a heroine’s determination to remain true to herself. I kept reading, and reading and reading . . .

I fell asleep just once, woke up before sunrise, and finished the book before getting ready for my evening shift at the bookstore.

And promptly fell asleep at the register.

My boss didn’t fire me.  She laughed.  She’d been up all night reading Shanna, too.

After we talked the book to death, she said, “Well, you’re an English and Theater major.  That and a dime will get you a cup of coffee.  You should think about writing something like this.”

Hmmm . . .

The idea caught fire.  I went back to the romance section and pulled down every single historical I could find.  I loved getting lost in these worlds.  I loved that the stories centered around women, as opposed to all the old white men I’d read about in college.  I read and read and read and . . . began to write.

Though first books are usually crap, my grandmother had taught me to keep a journal from the time I was nine, so words flowed and I wrote a six hundred page historical.  That English degree came in handy during the editing phase.  A few years later, I published it.

My first writer’s conference was such an exercise in ignorance, I’ll leave it for another blog.  The historical market was dead.  But I’d also read Harlequin Romance novels since I was in Middle School, and one of the editors offered to send me an entire box of Presents along with the tip sheets.  (Those were the days!)

The rest is history.  Dozens of published romance novels later, I still love romance, both reading and writing it.  I hold a special place in my heart for both Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers, whose passion-filled novels, written from the heart, started me on this wonderful journey.  It’s been a blast!

What are some favorite romance novels you remember?  What got you started reading romance?  Writing it?