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Most people like a little sex in their novels.

I didn't know anything about romance novels until a friend suggested that I try writing one. After I read a few, I realized that my favorite part of fiction had always been the relationship aspect.

In many joyfully-admired recent novels, love appears as little more than sex-manual instruction.

Romance novels satisfy a very specific fantasy of romantic love that seems to be a powerful part of the female psyche.

Every book should have a romance.

Romance tends to be the whipping boy of genre fiction.

I've had mainstream readers complain that the book is really a romance, and romance readers complain that the book isn't a romance - with the same book! It really depends on the individual reader's expectations going into the story, and that's very hard to predict person to person.

Everyone seems agreed that writing about sex is perilous, partly because it threatens to swamp highly individualised characters in a generic, featureless activity (much like coffee-cup dialogue, during which everyone sounds the same), and partly because it feels... tacky.

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

Romance novels are my favorite books to read. I write young adult romances, and am so happy to be promoting this wonderful genre.