Because I need it. Because I need to know that there’s hope. So I put all the pieces of me I don’t like into some characters, and then write a whole novel to prove to myself they’re still loveable.

I write my scars onto someone else’s skin, I write my insecurities into someone else’s mind. I write my history into someone else’s life and send them on a journey to discover that it doesn’t define them, and that they are free to change the course of their life whenever they want at the cost of only a little courage.

I write romance because it can take me anywhere I want to go, because love is everywhere. Love is in the darkest places and the brightest, it’s in kitchens and boardrooms and warzones, it won’t be contained and it won’t be told it doesn’t belong. Love is an unstoppable force that knows no borders, no boundaries, no legislation.

Writing romance has opened my world. Building stories takes interviews and research and international flights. It takes people watching and odd questions and asking my sister can she please sit next to me on this narrow flight of stairs to see if we both fit, and it makes for a really weird search history. It teaches me something every day, even if it is just how to spell “bureaucracy” (which is a frankly ridiculous word thank you very much France).

Even when the genre is not romance I find myself writing love stories. And I feel absolutely sure that dedicating my life to honouring love, in all its forms and disguises, in its darkness and its light, will be a life well-lived.