I started writing after many years of telling myself I couldn't. But a life of rigid perfectionism is no fun. It wasn't good for my health either. So I silenced the internal editor (for a while at any rate) and started to keep a journal. Eventually I branched out to stories and found everything I wrote was very romantic. This surprised me. I don't see myself as a particularly romantic person. But the impulse was there and I went for it. I started reading lots of romances, everything from category romances published by Mills and Boon, to big name single title authors like Jenny Cruise and Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I love them. They make me feel good and take me away from my worries. My internal editor tries to tell me I'm compromising both my intellect and my feminist principles, but I don't believe this.

I went back to some of the writing I did years ago and found it intensely erotic. So I started to fool around with writing erotica. This is the writing I'm now the most comfortable with, although I still want to write a mainstream romance and some crime/mystery. I worked for a long time in the criminal justice area so crime is something I'm familiar with.

Non romantic erotica satisfies a darker part of me where not everything ends happily. It's a good balance with writing romance and I feel very happy with both genres. I have a couple of stories on the Erotic Readers and Writers Association web site and the moment (the link is on the right) and will have another up in September. At the moment I'm working on a romantic suspense novel and some stories for ERWA. Under the links to the right are the blogs of some of my favorite fellow ERWA writers. I'll be adding some more when I work out how to do so.

This weekend I'm off to the Romance Writers of Australia's annual conference in Melbourne. I can hardly wait. It will be great to see all my e list friends, stay in a swank hotel, have spas and massages and go on a chocolate tour of Melbourne. And go to the conference as well. Donald Maas is the key note speaker which should be great.