When writing a romantic tale, the inevitable question comes to mind…Which is more urgent to share, the plot of the story or the romance of the characters? Of course, both should be equally important; however, today’s world — and today’s reader — is impatient for results. We crave immediate gratification; after all, a romance novel shouldn’t feel like skimming through a confounding textbook. I, myself, was no different.  Excluding my own, I haven’t actually read a work of intimate fiction in quite some time, but I do remember the craving…the yearning…the staggering impatience to get to the explosive finale that I was in search of…When, on when, will Dick and Jane finally cry out their desperate feelings to one another?  Forget the coincidences that brought them together, the  adventure that sealed their lives in sync for all time, or the narrow escapes that nearly parted them forever…I wanted to read about the panic button that sent clothes flying in all directions!  

All of these were my eager thoughts as my eyes floated across the page or the screen…that is, until I became the brooding writer behind the page, the novelist typing behind the screen, and took on the personas of the emotional characters trying to leap into the mind of the reader.  Suddenly, it all mattered…the slow build of anticipation, the colorful lines explaining the subtleties of the scene playing out around the would-be lovers, the intricate details of their reluctant first kiss.  But, when does the description become too much?  When do I bite my ‘tongue’?  When do I hold back the imagery swimming in my head. My goal is to have the reader consumed by the bond of the characters, not stuck trying to imagine what everyone at the party is wearing.

In my meticulous mind, every word is exactly how it should be…every sentence, every punctuation mark, every hanging paragraph counts for helping this fictional universe come to vivid life.  I want every page to count for the experience of entering this world I have tried to create, and not to  become just another skipped handful of sentences until Dick and Jane float into each other’s arms one more time.