It’s over.

Nip/Tuck is over. FOREVERRRRRRR! *weeps*

Ok, so they summed it all up in the way I wanted — sure, we *think* they’re all sort of on the right path, even though we know what they’ll all continue to mess up their lives because not a one of them is mentally healthy, but at least there’s the APPEARANCE of them making it all work. And the last scene? Brazilliant!

Moving on…

I was thinking about what I write. I get emails from people pretty frequently about “Is X a [certain kind of book]” and…you know what? If you think so, then it is. Are my books romances? Some of them are. I could point you to some that definitely are — No Greater Pleasure is a romance. Tempted? Absolutely not. What about Dirty? Hmmm. I used to say no, it’s romantic, but not a romance, but really…maybe it is.

But here’s the thing: I don’t write “romances.” I don’t write “erotica.” Well, lemme back up. I DO sometimes write romances, and I DO sometimes write erotica, but most often I write a sorta kinda mishmash of whatever it is that I’m doing or feeling about the story, and sometimes that means the books come out more romantic and sometimes they’re more erotic and sometimes they’re sexy and sometimes they’re sensual, but here is the thang…

THEY ARE ALL ABOUT AN ENTIRE STORY.

Of course they are, what does that mean?

Well, it means that there’s more going on, most of the time, than the relationship between the hero/heroine. There just IS. That’s the way I write, that’s the way I like it, and I understand, I really, really do, if that’s boring to some folks, or that it takes away from the sexy times, or if hey, you just don’t CARE about the heroine’s life outside of what she feels about the hero. I totally get that. And if you like to read books that focus solely on the one man/one woman thing, then perhaps my books are going to leave you with a little something missing (or maybe too full, like there’s too much going on that you don’t care about.)

There’s nothing wrong with loving books that are only about people falling in love and getting it on. If that’s what you love, then go on witcha bad self and read them! The world is full of things to love and when you find it, please, please, PLEASE! consume it! Read it, watch it, listen to it! And if you don’t love it…don’t waste your time or money on reading, listening to or watching it. Life is too short for that!

But I don’t write books that are only about one thing. My books for Spice tend to be heroine-centric. They’re her story. Not “their” story. And my heroines have lives aside from their relationship with the hero. They have parents, they have siblings, co-workers, they have issues that having nothing to do with the man or men in their lives.

I find this totally realistic, because *I* have more in my life than the man I married. I had more in my life than just him when I met him. I had a past, I had friends, I had stuff going on that had nothing to do with him. Meeting him, falling in love with him and marrying him did not complete me. I was already a whole person when we met. Falling in love with him was an exciting chapter of my life — but it’s not the whole thing. We’ll have been married for 15 years this summer, and I wouldn’t trade those years or what’s happened during them for anything, but falling in love with him was not the beginning or the end of my story. Because it’s LIFE.

A book is different. A book needs a beginning, a middle and an end. The characters are not REAL, but I try to make them realistic. They had stuff going on before that first sentence, and if I write them well enough, you’ll believe they have stuff going on after the final period on that last page. Whatever happens on the pages in between is the BOOK, and it’s their story, but it shouldn’t be the only important thing about those people. I don’t really want to write about that, characters that have only one story to tell. I might only tell one of them, but I like to think they all have many.

So, if you’ve stumbled across one of my books and you’re thinking, WTF, I wanted a romance, this wackadoo has these people actually talking to their parents and stuff instead of spending the whole time knocking boots with their true love…there’s an explanation.

I can’t tell you if Book X is a [certain kind of story.] I might think so, and you don’t, or the other way around. I can’t tell you that I write romance, or that I don’t because again, you might feel differently. I write what I write. I hope people who like it, read a lot of my books. I hope people who don’t like it, don’t read it.

M