I don't divide my reading into demographic categories, any more than I'd divide my friends into groups along ethnic or sexual lines. The thing I look for most is a sense of literary rawness - bareback fiction, if you will.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think people underestimate the romance audience. It's everything from career women to high school girls to elderly women. I have male readers, too, especially for the Civil War books.
I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.
I've come to accept who my readers turn out to be, rather than having some sort of demographic target.
I'd always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s as substitutes for experience.
I'm a voracious reader, and I like to explore all sorts of writing without prejudice and without paying any attention to labels, conventions or silly critical fads.
Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.
I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.
Each of my books is different from the last, each with its own characters, its own setting, its own themes. As a writer, I need the variety. I sense my readers do, too.
I don't know if foreigners will take to my novels or not. It may be that my books appeal only to a particular gender or age group rather than convey a more universal appeal.
The distinctions of what makes a book one genre or another can sometimes be a bit muddy, but generally it's a matter of projecting who the audience will be, which is a judgment that's based on the subject matter. 'Mainstream' is the cleanest label for a book that draws readers of both sexes and from a wide age-range.