My readers have certain expectations of my books, particularly when I’m writing for Harlequin Blaze. The line is super-sexy and focused, oftentimes, on how the sexual attraction between a man and a woman leads to a deeper, more emotional romantic connection.
In my own mind, I’ve equated those reader expectations with writing about heroines who are younger, somewhat unencumbered women on the brink of some new threshold of their lives. In that interest, I realized recently, I’d never written a single mother heroine. Having children around just isn’t that conducive to no-holds-barred, open-minded sexual exploration!Well, that’s not entirely true. The heroine of my very first book, SEDUCING SULLIVAN (published in June of 1998) had a heroine who had custody of her best friend’s daughter, who I believe was eleven. In the unedited version of the book, that kid caused me more problems...every scene she was in, she stole it and destroyed the sexual tension between the hero and heroine, which was pretty powerful stuff otherwise. To fix this problem, I revised the book and sent her to camp. Score! The book sold. She still appears in a single scene in the book—but that was it.
