Greetings from Wisconsin!

Some of you might know me from Harlequin Blaze:

But I also have a trade book out this month, Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough, fromAvon/HarperCollins.

I will always love romance, but when my confidence level (barely) reached the level where I wanted to try a bigger book, I turned to women’s fiction.

I don’t think the reasons for the switch are that mysterious. During my marriage, I escaped into writing romance, giving my couples the happy ending my husband and I were unable to achieve. After my divorce, the stories I wanted to tell involved women taking control of their lives.

On my website this month, I talk about the difference between way I approach writing women’s fiction and way I approach writing romance. The gist is that there is no difference. Writing a book is writing a book is writing a book.

What changed was my comfort level. When writing Breakthrough, I had demons the size of King Kong sitting on my shoulders. Why not for my first romance? Because I knew so little when I started. The more you learn, the scarier each book becomes because the bar is raised. And the more you learn, the more you realize how much you still don’t know. At least that’s true of me. Some authors seem supremely confident, but I think they’re just in denial. :-)

I remember one Olympics during which 30-year-old champion Greg Louganis, appearing in his last Games, was diving for gold against a 14-year-old Chinese boy. Each time Louganis approached the end of the board, he stood still for a long time. You could tell he knew exactly how much pressure he was under and what every ounce of it meant. The 14-year-old kid just got up and dove. Nothing like the confidence that comes from having no clue.

So if you find the more you write, the scarier it is, and the more you’re convinced you’ve lost it, take heart! Chances are you’re evolving, painfully, like the rest of us. This is a good thing. Just a damn shame it doesn’t always feel like it.

Cheers,

Isabel