I've been a voracious reader ever since pre-school. By voracious I mean I'd read everything I could get my hands on. I was also precocious; I read both Clan of The Cave Bear and The Colour Purple in Grade 5. However, neither of those classic novels were my first reading introduction to sex or romance. That honour belongs to a Mills&Boon romance book whose title I have long forgotten.

I remember seeing Carmela sitting on the sun-warmed asphalt, with her back half obscuring one of the set of cricket stumps painted on the red brick wall. Finding myself a little chilled that Spring lunch time, as well as all the benches scattered around the playground full of other groups of kids, I chose to sit down next to her. With our bodies soaking up the heat from both the man made materials we sat against and the sun shining overhead, we finished our books in companionable silence.

Well, being a much faster reader than her, I finished, but she did show me the title of her book, plus let me read the blurb. I went to the library during afternoon recess, and found a whole section of Mills&Boon books. I was off and running. Then I learned the social stigma attached with reading romances, and they became my guilty pleasure.

My cousin's girlfriend lent me the whole(to date) Sweet Valley High series when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I didn't want my Mum to know, so I hid them under my bed, and only read them when I was out of her sight. But she found out eventually. So, I became a brazen hussy with my romance reading. Out and proud in front of everyone. I loved SVH, but I also found that they weren't really meaty enough for my tastes. Despite putting a good dent in the pile, I didn't make it through the 100+ books. Of course there were no fantastic elements like Dragons or Magic which was (and still is) my first and foremost love, so that was another mark against them.

Discovering the Intrigue line of Mills&Boon was what kept me reading Romances. What stopped me in my early twenties was my realisation that I was depressed that my own life didn't magically sort itself out in the same amount of time as the books. I'm as guilty of obnoxious behaviour as any reformed person: I loudly pooh-poohed the thing I formally loved to anyone who would listen, and often to those who wished they'd never even momentarily entered the same room as me.

Funny thing is, I kept all of my old romance books. I even schlepped them all the way over to America with me. After they sat in the same box for two years, I donated them all to Goodwill. Let some other Poor Desperate Housewife get some enjoyment out of them, was my thought process at the time. Pretty hypocritical since not only was I a Poor Desperate Housewife myself, I'd graduated to paranormal romance books. But, I rationalised this by reading them for the kickarse chicks and the plot, rather than the romance.

Then I discovered the Silhouette Bombshell books written by one online friend, and a Red Dress ink series by another. And you know what? I liked the changes that had occurred in the decade since I'd last read something that I couldn't pretend was anything other than a Romance book. It hit me that it wasn't Romance that I didn't like or was embarrassed by being spotted reading, it was the types of heroines and their story lines I disliked. In my ignorant innocence I'd based my Romance reading on other people's preferences, and then blamed the genre for being misogynistic and vapid when I found it lacking in enjoyable material.

Lemme tell you, if a library card had limits on it like credit cards do? I'd have spent the next two years way beyond maxed. Noting like falling off the wagon to encouraging whole hearted wallowing. {grin} I've discovered heroines and authors I adore and even graduated to buying romance books again. Lots of them. I'm a romantic at heart, which is why every thing I read, even the sci-fi, has to be character driven.

Wanna know my new guilty secret? I'm not only writing sci-fi or fantasy stories that have romantic character driven plots, I've started writing an honest-to-goodness paranormal romance of my own.

Romance reader and writer? Guilty as charged, Yer Honour!