No matter how troubled a character's history, romance novels tell us, love can be built upon it, and happily-ever-after can result. What's more, the darker the past, the brighter the future - and the better the read.

I think back on that day when 16-year-old me scribbled on some silly piece of paper for some long-forgotten high school career-day project that my dream job was 'romance novelist.'

The trick to great romance is in overcoming adversity. In realizing that love is worth some uphill climbs.

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

Strange - I'm not much of a film person. I love watching films, but they don't stay with me the way books do. Stranger still, because my husband is a screenwriter!

Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock do romantic comedies. I do dark dramas. I do these movies well.

Love, the quest; marriage, the conquest; divorce, the inquest.

At first, when we got engaged, I asked him if we could just go to Vegas and get married by Elvis, just because I didn't want to deal with planning a wedding.