My mother wrote a couple of romances when I was a kid, and I always saw books in our bookshelf with 'Schroeder' on the spine.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I grew up around writers, and there was always a romance to them. They were charming. They would tell their stories of what they were working on, over the table.
When I was little, my grandma used to get romance novels, and she would get hundreds of these, and she'd read a dozen a month.
By the time I was 10 or 12, I had discovered the lure of the romance genre - and the dusty copy of 'The Thorn Birds' on my parents' bookshelf.
I don't know where my romanticism comes from. My mom and dad would read to me a lot. 'Treasure Island,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' tales of chivalry and knights, things like that. Those are the stories I loved growing up.
When I was a teenager I was a total romantic escapist. My world was books.
I love books where you feel you're having a romance with the writer.
I've always looked at independent booksellers in a romantic light.
My mom didn't write, but she loved to read. She liked books 'that made you a little nervous.' Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub were the three wise men of our family bookshelf.
Right away I think of two books - 'Wuthering Heights' and 'Rebecca' - and of just sinking into them as a young reader. I think they must have appealed not just to my romantic adolescent soul, but I suppose there's also an appealing darkness in both of them.
I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of 'The Wind in the Willows,' which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.