Part #2 of our chat with @BernadetteMarieAuthor LUV: What is the best thing about being a romance writer? What is the most challenging thing about being a romance writer? Bernadette: The best thing about being a romance writer is falling in love for the first time (or second) over and over and over. There is something so magical about getting to know someone deep down and falling in love. I get to relive that first look, that meet cute, and first kiss all the time. It’s magical to describe how tender it is to hold someone’s hand, and just having them in a room brings peace to your soul. Of course romances don’t go from start to finish without some drama, and to feel that uncertainty and heartbreak mend, or having someone there to console you through a loss or hard time, again, it’s magical. The most challenging thing about writing romance has been the negative buildup surrounding romance. Romance is the biggest sales genre out there, but it’s been fighting a reputation of only being gratuitous sex for decades, if not more than a century. Those who read romance understand its healing power—its power of connection between people. Having people shun me for what I wrote was the hardest part of writing romance. Feeling as if the world was against me—specifically the literary world. Today, it’s a little different. There is no shame in romance reading. Social media has turned this around. There is pride in being a reader of romance, and therefore my super power of writing it, only makes my need to do so stronger. No longer do I need to retort with my snarky comments of, “Well, romance books paid off my mortgage. What do you do?”

Posted by LUV Team at 2023-08-01 19:01:00 UTC