Dear Reader,

If we haven’t met, I’m the American Kate Moore. Like most romance writers, I meet my share of non-romance-readers who are apt to regard a romance novel as the literary equivalent of a box of Peeps. Nevertheless, I write romance.

I write it because I believe love is the unfinished business of our lives. In my favorite stories, love brings an outsider into the circle of warmth, laughter, and family as it does in Austen’s novels or Dickens’ tale of Scrooge or in The Winter Cat by Howard Knotts. Romance is the genre that allows me to write about family, about marriage, about a woman taking charge of her life, and about the transforming power of love. There is sensuality in my books, and I side with Miss Manners on the subject of sex. As she puts it, she “knows that sex has been with us for some time, because … [she] is actually a direct descendant, on both sides of [her] family, from people who practiced it.”

And I write Romance because I love:

• The sexual tension
• The vocabulary of gesture—raised brows, lowered eyes, and quick glances.
• The names of characters—Tobias Meese, Lady Melforth, Xander Jones.
• The dark moment—reaching for the tissue box when all is lost.
• The heroine’s wit—her quick comebacks, her self-perception, and her generosity with those who deserve her compassion.
• The hero’s competence, honor, and self-sacrifice.
• The alert consciousness of people in love—we experience novels through the characters and in Romance those characters are falling in love, so we, too, fall in love again. It’s a great ride, the kind you stand in line for at the amusement park just to experience once, and then dash to the end of the line to experience it again.
• The blinding moment of discovery that love changes the world.

If you, too, are a fan of those story elements, I hope you’ll join me in a Romance written for your reading pleasure.

As ever, Kate Moore