Bruises fade. Death is permanent.

Any guy afraid to die was a guy who was afraid to live.

I've always read suspense, so raising the stakes to life and death situations in my romance plots seemed natural.

One of the reasons writers are never satisfied with their work is because they're always striving to do better.

Never get in the middle of someone else's quicksand.

While the romance genre has expanded so much over the years, in an odd way it's also narrowed, with too many people trying to stick stories into tight, well-defined marketing niches. It can, admittedly, be a tricky balancing act, but I believe the key is to be able to step back and take a long hard look at what you do well, what makes your work different from other writers, what feels the most natural to you when you're writing.

I've always found ideas everywhere, but my favorite place is Nordstrom, because of their liberal return policies for those ideas that don't work out.