In through the out door: which came first for you?

[Suki]

Nuts! Goodreads lost my (long) comment. Well, let me see what I can remember ...

Like Dawn, I started out reading both scifi/fantasy and romance at the same time - by the time I was 4 I had moved on to the adult section at the library and was old enough to start borrowing my grandmother's romance novels. I was also heavily into westerns (Louis L'Amour FTW!) so the idea of space westerns has been part of my fantasy world for decades. Couple that with giant robots and I was writing (very bad) fan fiction at an early age. I no longer write, but the fanfic in my head is pretty cool!

I credit Laurell K Hamilton for my real introduction to paranormal romance; there had been hints before but nothing quite so overt - that I had read, anyway.

Sarge, I'll have to give Jeffery Farnol a try - I'm a sucker for well-written Regency romance in the older style.

[Mariana]

For me it was fantasy first, as I am part of the Harry Potter generation :)
Even today, I'm actually not much into romance, but I love a pinch of it in my fantasy or sci-fi books (my two fave genres)!

[Kimberly]

I've been into scifi and fantasy for as long as I can remember, but kind of get frustrated when there's a love scene about to happen and then it cuts to the next chapter. I want at least a hint of the "good stuff", although I demand that it be well-written. That's harder to find.

Before my daughter was old enough to read, I used to have a sign up by my computer that said, "Remember: no throbbing shafts of red-hot manflesh" after seeing that actual phrase in a story once. I made my husband read the passage and it was so awful, we almost both turned into nuns on the spot. Sheesh. So he told me to put that up on the wall as a reminder to never write that kind of schlock.

I'm reading the Richard Sharpe books right now and really wish the love scenes weren't just cut off, but then again, I'd fear terrible metaphors about his sword and rifle and whatnot...