I’ve been writing suspense stories for years, and enjoy it very much. Whenever I introduce myself as an author, I always say I write in the suspense genre. But a couple of years ago, I was doing some research on the Internet and read about romance novels and how popular they are. The statistics indicated that more romance books are written than in any other genre. This didn’t surprise me, just go to a local bookstore and peek through the isles.

Then I started wondering; could I write a romance story? I questioned myself further by asking, why would I want to? I mean it’s usually a story about a man and woman that fall in love and then overcome all of the obstacles that get in the way of their love. Where’s the true suspense … or any meaningful conflict that drives the plot? Actually, where in fact is a story at all?

Well, for some reason, the thought kept invading my mind, and one day I decided that I’d give it a try, for no other reason than to see if I could actually get through writing such a story. It took me some time to determine what age my lovers should be. I finally decided they should be relatively young, recalling what it was like to be in the early twenties and experiencing love for the first time. That, however, brought on another issue — young people are usually in school at that time. Not much excitement in describing going to class each day. But then it hit me — the theater. Talk about excitement!

For those of you that don’t know, my first degree in college was in theatre arts. But I thought some more and decided I didn’t want to get into all that goes on with theater students, or actually, what little really does go on. So I thought some more, and finally decided to deal in the music area. For certain, I wanted characters that were artistic, because the emotional levels inside artistic people from my experiences outweigh those of others. Now I realize that I could be way off base with that assumption, but being artistic myself and living in that world for a while, I have a knowledge base in making such a comment.

Anyway, I finally sat down and started writing my romance novel. And let me tell you, I’ve never had so much fun writing any other story in my life. It brought back so many memories of what young people go through trying to understand the feelings they are experiencing for the first time.

I’ll publish the book eventually, but for right now, I’m trenched in the suspense genre. However, if for nothing else, it proves that a suspense novelist can indeed have a soft side.