Bringing Romance Into Everything

I love writing romance fiction because, despite all the supposed rules in place, it can be very freeing. Moving characters around on the chessboard of life to ensure they fall in love (and maybe out of love) is great fun.

And every love story I write teaches me not only how to get better at this craft, but also about the variety of motivations that exist in the arsenal of human emotion.

Unexpected Gifts is a short novella in which the protagonists don’t have a lot of time to fall in love and overcome an assortment of obstacles.

I love the compressed time that a short work of fiction imposes. There’s little time for dallying; my two lovebirds have to get down to business pretty quickly. Of course, I did throw a mystery and a ghost in their way, but it all works out in the end…though the magic and the mystery linger on.

I have three full-length novels coming out in 2021 and 2022. They are not all romances but I weave romance into everything I write, although some of what I aim for is, admittedly, anti-romance or the end of romance.

My fantasy novel, Ell, will be published in June. It’s about a highly unconventional mermaid who does indeed fall in love, but the stakes are complicated because she’s not human (but falls for one) and because it turns out that her love interest does not have the mermaid’s best interests at heart. I love a juicy betrayal.

My other novels, Tent City and The Potrero Complex, feature more from the broken-romance category. Both follow couples who start out strong and ultimately grow apart, for various reasons and with many consequences.

Maybe I’m not an HEA romance writer, but my current work-in-progress, The Nighthawkers, does feature a love story that turns into a betrayal, yet the heroine ends up with the right, uh, spirit in the end. It’s paranormal; not every love match is between humans.