What would happen if the world ran out of water? Would our societies survive? Would our technology? The more I thought about this, the more complex the situation became. Without water, humans and animals would get sick, cities crumble, and the way of life we know would disappear. At first I set the book in the real world. I started doing research about how people would survive in a dystopian land, which technologies would last, and which would not, but I soon got bogged down in the details. What I needed was an alternative world and a history which is based on ours, but is nevertheless a fiction. This was my starting point, but the book took off when I found my main character. As is usual for me, she came in one vivid image -- a girl standing on a rock looking down on a line of wagons carrying water to a distant town. So precious is their cargo that the wagons are guarded day and night. Mouse wants to be a guard. She wants to leave the narrow confines of The Town and go out in...

When I was asked to provide a male perspective on sex in literature, I had to pause and think.  I’ve never written a sex or love scene. It’s not because I don’t want to or because I don’t write about sex, it’s just that the opportunity has never come up. In my mind, men and women think of sex in different ways. From real world dating, lingerie, and pornography, sex is different between the sexes. I have always thought that from a woman’s view, sex is romance and feeling, while sex for men is almost purely visual. When we describe it, it is always about what the woman looked like, what she had on, how big/small her features are, what she did… it is almost exclusively physical, with no emotions, and that’s what I have found when reading men’s points of view of sex. As a writer, I think sex should be used intelligently. What I mean by that is this: when there is a sex scene, there should be a purpose for it, as if it is the logical next step in the story. For example, if there ...

The earlier posts this month focusing on romance have been quite interesting, and one thing that I have been getting from them, and the comments, is that there is room for any kind of romance novel you want to write, or read, from sweet to sexy. Many moons ago when I had a top NY agent, Denise Marcil, I had just completed my first mystery, Doubletake, which I wrote with a coauthor, Margaret Sutton. Denise worked hard to market the book, but this was the late 70s when romance was trumping all other genres and mysteries were a hard sell. So Denise suggested I try my hand at writing a romance. She suggested some titles to read in a new contemporary line that Harlequin was launching that featured modern women who were strong and spunky and had interesting jobs. The editors were also looking for smart, sassy dialogue and lots of humor. I could do that. What I couldn't do was meet the guidelines that called for intimacy by a certain page and a requisite number of sex scenes. No...

With BRP’s focus on romance (and all that ties into that) and writing this month, I thought it would be a great idea to talk with one of my favorite romance authors, Samara King. I don’t call Samara a favorite because she’s my best friend. No, I call her that because her stories have wonderful blends of intriguing characters, humor, fierce attraction between heroine and hero, great sex, great stories (so that the sex isn’t just a prop), and a fast pace that makes you want to race to the end of the story. I wanted to get her take on how she as an author comes to the page to write her sexy love scenes, how she considers the story she works on when developing sex scenes, and what advice she would offer to writers looking to develop sizzling sex scenes. Let’s see what she had to say! Samara King is the author of eighteen multi-genre works within romance fiction in novel and novella lengths as well as poetry. Writing romance has been a part of Samara’s world since her days of sneaking...