Okay, I’m frozen. I want to say something that will bring about world peace or end the recession. I want to talk about the great stories that are coming out of category romance, and still hit on multicultural, fantasy, historical, and cool dragon sex. But after a ton of angst, all I’ve come up with is how awesome it is to write romance.

We all know the horrors of the blank page. Even if it was just back in school, we’ve all stared longingly outside and wished whatever tedious writing assignment in front of us was done, burned, or eaten by dragons. Sadly, that feeling doesn’t go away. Every morning I think of doing something else (anything else!) I’d rather do than produce words. And yet, I still do it. Seven days a week, on vacation or off, in daydreams if not actually on paper.

What is my problem? I can’t imagine anything worse than getting up every day to a job I hate. The answer, obviously, is that I must not hate it. Authors–help me out here–am I lying? Don’t you get up every morning and go, yippee, I get to write XX today. But when it actually comes time to write XX, my first thought is to run screaming to the nearest cheesecake. And then, when I do force myself to write XX, it comes out as XOXO or 772 or something even more ridiculous.

In my career, I’ve written contemporary and historical, single title and category, sweet, sexy, and super sexy. And don’t forget the paranormal elements (go dragons!) that I often slip in. Plus, there’s always my fun never-to-be-published concepts like “Unusual Weres” (I was assigned the were-sloth. Authors, feel free to call dibs on other beasts. Were-sea anemone anyone? Care to bud with me?).

Okay, see right there is what I love about writing. I’m not even going to write this idea (unless someone calls and makes an offer) but I’m giggling at the thought. And even if I’m arcing a love story for a woman implanted with a dragon egg (Dragonborn), I still get to live in a world where I know people are going to overcome horrendous struggles, have great sex, and fall happily-ever-after in love. Not a bad place to hang out every day, even if it does include the horrible blank page.

My September Blaze Getting Physical is a really good example of the best and worst of writing. The story is about a woman struggling to get her life back together when the most wonderful and difficult roadblock appears: a sexy, tantric master. Raise you’re hand if you just snorted coffee. The Harlequin Blaze line is filled with this kind of funny, touching, and sexy concepts. The thing is, as much fun as hot sex is, it’s hard to build a life around the myriad ways to do it. Even more difficult for me was to explain the complex religious concepts behind Tantrism. And oh yeah, my heroine Zoe needs to build a career, a life, and a happily-ever-after that isn’t just about sex.

It’s no were-dodo bird, but Getting Physical was an incredibly challenging book to write with real life issues that had to be met and surpassed. After all, our characters have to earn their happily ever after, right? And that made it both incredibly fun to do and a struggle for every word.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 7:00 am and is filed under Jade Lee, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.