Let’s Fall In Love

Dear Reader

Dear Reader,

I have loved romance novels since my grandmother used to share hers with me. I love happy endings, first looks, first hugs, and first kisses. But when I started my first novel, The Spy Who Kissed Me, a funny thing happened on the way to the happy ending—and before the first kiss. O.O Shots were fired, a car chase ensued, and the bodies started piling up. Clearly, classic romance novels were not going to be my thing.

So I was rather surprised when, during a particularly stressful family crisis, I was able to spin a few romance short stories inside my head. They helped ease the chill of hospital waiting rooms and distracted me when I needed it. And, because they were short, I could write them down in small snatches of time.

Other of the stories came about because I was asked by my former publisher to contribute to a couple of anthologies. And still others were offered for free in my ezine and later on my website. I took them down when L&L Dreamspell brought them all together in one collection called the Romance Collection. But when their doors closed, I wrote a new story (Let’s Fall in Love)—which had been bouncing around in my head for several years—and released all eight shorts in two digital-only collections (Let’s Fall in Love and Take a Chance on Me).

I decided to bring them back together for this print edition, mostly so I could add them to my physical bookshelf.

While writing the stories I had fun playing with the some of the classic romance tropes. There’s my version of a sheik story (Second Chance for the Sheik), a Romeo and Juliet with a happier ending (Give Love a Chance), and a love-at-first-sight story (Chance Encounter). I came up with the idea for Last Chance for Love watching Dancing with the Stars. Since I have two left feet, I created a character to do the dancing for me.

Falling for her Alien came about because I wanted to write a marriage of convenience story with a twist. Wanting Willa was my attempt at writing the classic billionaire-and-the-cook romance trope. No surprise (I hope) that I played with it a bit. Almost Over You started as a dream, a very vivid dream, that I had to write down to get out of my head.

I very much enjoyed writing all my stories, despite the challenges that swirled around some of the stories. I hope you enjoy my stroll into regular (non-explosive) romance.

Perilously (usually),

Pauline

Let’s Fall in Love

Nic and Lexie fell in love, but can they stay in love with their families pulling them apart?