“Well, hang on. Before we go all into plot lines and all that, I have some comments.”
“Oh, boy.” I bite my lip.
“First of all, I had no idea romance novels could be so…” He pauses, looking for the word.
“Sexy?” I offer.
“Yeah. Like, my goodness. I wasnotexpecting to read some of the detail that you went into.”
“What did you think it would be like? I mean, it says it right there in the genre. It’sromance.”
“When I think of romance, I think of flowers and candy. Maybe a fancy dinner or, if we’re going really crazy, a Lexus commercial. But what you wrote—”
I cringe, waiting for him to call it porn. “Smut?” I offer instead.
“Not at all. It was just a lot hotter than I expected it to be.”
I exhale, grateful not to have to defend the heat level in my work. “I guess I’m just chock-full of surprises, huh?”
“Are all romance novels like that?” he asks.
“Nope. My agent refers to it as the bedroom door. Some authors keep the door shut tight, so the reader can’t see anything. Others keep the door wide open, so the reader can a hundred percent be a fly on the wall. It’s not black and white. There’s gray there too.”
“Fifty shades of it?” Colin laughs.
I shake my head, smirking. “I forgive you for that awful joke.”
“You left the door wide open for it.”
“Oh my God. Please stop.” I laugh.
He nods, swallows a forkful of neatly coiled angel hair, then dabs at the corner of his grin with his napkin.
“Anyway, I guess I should have warned you. I just thought everyone knew that romance novels involved sex. Not all of them, but a lot of them.”
“Noted,” Colin says. “Like I said, I enjoyed it. I just wasn’t expecting it at quite that level, that’s all.”
I nod.
“So, okay then. My man Connor. He needs a backstory. If he has to be likeable, then the reader needs to understand why he’s okay with the idea of cheating on his wife.”
“Agreed.”
“It’s easy, really,” Colin says. “The wife cheated first.”
“Go on.”
“What do you mean? Isn’t thatenough?”
“Well, I mean, inreallife, sure. But these kinds of stories are high drama. It needs to be unexpected. Like, if Melinda cheated on Connor with Connor’s brother, then maybe that could work.”
“Connor has a brother?”
I laugh. “I don’t know. I’m just saying.”
“What if Melinda cheated with a woman?”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m interested. Elaborate for me, please.”
