I started writing when I was six years old and my first-grade teacher stuck a fat pencil into my equally fat fist and said, “Write me a story.” I’ve written ever since.
As a lifelong reader of romances, starting at 12, it was natural my writing would lean towards stories of love.
“What if they don’t?” instead of “what if?”
The standard romance tropes don’t tend to work for me. Such as boy cheats, begs girlfriend for forgiveness, she gives it with more or less effort on his part, and they live happily ever after. My question is, what if she didn’t? What if no matter what he said, their friends said, or anybody said, she stuck to her guns and didn’t forgive him? Or, a husband gets a girlfriend, tells his wife he’s leaving her and the kids, he leaves, she struggles and finds a newfound strength and perhaps a new love, and she lives happily ever after. My question is what if she left first? Left him with the kids and his girlfriend? What happens then?
My couples do get there, but they may have to go around the mulberry bush before that happens.