Romance novels are formulaic, which doesn’t mean they can’t be interesting, charming or insightful. The basic formula is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. A variation might be: boy previously dumped girl, now girl hates boy, boy works to get girl back. The reader knows at the beginning of a romance novel who the boy and girl are and that they’ll get together by the end of the story. It’s just a matter of how they get there.

Within the formula, there are recurring themes. One is the unexpected baby or child. If romance novels were true life, about 10,000 ranchers, and quite a few members of the British peerage, have/had children they didn’t know they conceived. For British or Scottish stories, there’s always the unexpected elevation to the peerage. It’s usually a rake, a soldier, or a guy who was raised in the slums. If it happens to a woman, she was a wallflower, country bumpkin or a girl who was raised in the slums.

Then you have the convenient marriage that turns to love. These unions happen in the English and Scottish stories but also in historical westerns, where you’ll find not just mail-order arrangements but matches based on business or other concerns. My least favorite themes are the ones that involve an old flame returning to town. Yawn! I like fresh blood, not recycled romances.

And within the mail-order bride genre are subsets of themes. There’s the mail-order bride who arrives at her destination to discover her groom is dead or AWOL. And the mail-order bride who’s not who she says she is. Most likely she’s a saloon girl who took the identity of a mail-order bride who died. And the sister/friend/cousin who comes in the mail-order bride’s place because the original intended bride is an awful person who has run off with another man.

So there are only so many stories to tell. Romance novels are indeed formulaic, but how you tell the story is what will make all the difference. Add your own twists and turns in the voice that is uniquely yours.

When personal computers first came out, I jumped on the bandwagon and bought one. I remember my dad watching a news show on TV around that time and asking me what “Windows” was. I had no idea. Back then, if I had any problem with the computer, I knew it was my fault. Now, while I have eight or ten windows open at a time, I know when I have difficulty with my computer, it’s usually the computer’s fault.

Over the years my outlook on my writing has also changed. I once took more stock in what others said about my writing than what I believed about it. Now I have the strength of my convictions. I know what I like and I write what I like. I don’t like everything I read, so I don’t expect everyone to like what I write. But that doesn’t make me like it any less. I have my own unique voice, and if you don’t like it, go read something else.

That doesn’t mean I can’t benefit from observations or advice from an astute editor or reader. I send all my ebooks to my oldest friend Chris, who walked to school with me starting in the first grade. She’s one of the smartest people I know and has always been wise beyond her years. She’s also a voracious reader and fearlessly blunt in her opinions. Call me opinionated myself, but I have much more faith in evaluations by an intelligent, avid reader than by a 25-year-old publishing house assistant editor who scans 20 manuscripts a day.

Years ago, before I really even knew what a romance novel was, I was invited to speak about writing to a northern California chapter of the Romance Writers of America. At the time, my credits included episodic television, several humorous parenting books and children’s poetry that appeared in anthologies with Shel Silverstein and other authors much more prominent than I.

In my mind, I placed romance novels on the same level as “The Love Boat,” of which I had written several episodes. Nobody ever won an Emmy writing for “The Love Boat.” It was pure fluff. Now I wish I’d written a hundred episodes. As it was, the residuals kept coming for decades.

I remember very little about my talk to the group, but I do recall telling the gathering I never had to worry about finding a job, no matter where I lived, as I had three useful skills: I could type, I could change a tire and I could write. It was incredibly freeing to know that, in theory, at least, I would never starve. I also told them of the helpful hint another TV writer had given me: Never stop writing when you don’t know what’s coming next. Always stop in the middle of a scene. That way, the next time you pick up your book, story or script, you’ll be able to continue writing and not stare at a blank page for minutes or hours.

Now here I am reading and writing romance novels and not feeling the least bit ashamed. I honestly don’t think my standards have slipped. I believe my perspective has broadened. In other words, I’m not as stupid and narrow-minded as I used to be. I now understand one of life’s joys (not to mention cheap thrills) is to read an entertaining book with twists and turns, sharp dialogue and a happy ending. I’m proud to be a member of the Romance Writers of America.