I was looking in the mirror the other day and a lock—er, make that a strand, as my hair is stick-straight—was hanging down across my cheek. I thought about how if I were a heroine in a romance novel, the hero would likely tuck that strand neatly (and tenderly) behind my ear, causing either a burning sensation on my cheek or ear (or both), or possibly a maelstrom of feelings of longing in the rest of me. I would very probably become light-headed and/or lose track of our conversation

I realize that romance novels are not real life, but they’re partially based on reality. But for the life of me, I can’t recall a single instance where a man has tenderly tucked a strand of my wayward hair behind my ear. (If you are a man and have done this to me, please remind me. And reveal how many martinis I had consumed at the time. Doesn’t count if you were cutting/coloring/styling my hair.) Since it’s impossible for me to believe that my hair was always exactly where it was supposed to be, I have to wonder about this. Is there something wrong with my hair that my dates shrank from touching it? Were my ears offensive in some way? Did I send out subliminal anti-hair-touching signals? Did I date men with hair phobias? Or is it similar to how my husband views dust—meaning he doesn’t view it, and so doesn’t see any reason to clean. Maybe the men I dated thought I wanted that hank of hair on my face.

From here I pondered what other romance novel norms I’ve missed out on. There are the mostly perfect heroes. Yes they make mistakes, get jealous, make fools of themselves, misinterpret things, or are clueless about the heroine, but their faults just make them more endearing. So I won’t start on the complete absence of morning breath and other less-than-idyllic features of real life that have no place in an escapist romance novel. Although every now and then one crops up in a book I’m reading and I find it refreshing.

I won’t even bother getting into the amazing sex that’s never awkward, even the first time (unless it’s key to the plot that the first time be weird, as in BREATHING ROOM or THIS HEART OF MINE by my idol, Susan Elizabeth Phillips). This goes hand-in-hand with another romance novel norm, the simultaneous arrival at delirious happiness in bed, even though studies show that only 35 percent of woman will achieve delirious happiness while their hero is doing what men do to achieve said delirious happiness.

Oh, and no man has ever carried me up a flight of stairs to take me to bed. Then again, usually these heroes have great bodies, and I’ve dated very few guys with great bodies. And let’s face it, I spent the bulk of my dating years in Manhattan, and few Manhattanites have staircases in their apartments. So maybe this one isn’t a fair comparison.

Which reminds me of something else I lack that romance heroines have: an appreciation for the male form. I cringe as I tell you this, but I’m a sucker for nice eyes and hands. I don’t even notice biceps or butts. In fact, as I realized I’d have to describe the physiques of the superbly attractive men in my stories, I forced myself to notice men at my gym. I would look at a guy and think, “How would I describe him? What does his butt look like? How to write about that guy’s arms?” I felt like a bit of a freak until I learned that some friends share my condition. As I think back on my dating life, there was one guy I went out with a few times—with the unlikely name of Glade—who had a truly outrageous body, but it was completely wasted on the likes of me. Maybe that’s why we didn’t work out, no pun intended.

While I’m on this roll-call of absences, I also must confess that before I started writing THROWN, I had read exactly two romance novels in my life. The first was THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER by Kathleen Woodiwiss, which I now know is a groundbreaking classic, and to quote Susan Elizabeth Phillips, the first of the “rape me ‘til I like it” variety. I read it in high school after finding it in one of the lounges in the dorm. And I read Danielle Steele’s PALOMINO in grad school because, guess what, I thought it would be about horses. When I hear about writers who were avid romance readers and then wrote their own romance novel, I feel like I’m sneaking into the genre through a side door. Right now I’m scrambling to read as much as I can so I’ll know what’s out there.

However, I’ve recently realized that I approach writing as an actor. I act out scenes and speak dialogue aloud, often while walking my dog (small wonder he wanders away from me…). I see my stories in my head as movies, scene-by-scene, possibly because THROWN started life as a screenplay and I wanted to be a screenwriter rather than a novelist. Susan Elizabeth Phillips said at a workshop that she considers herself to be an actress rather than a storyteller. So maybe the fact that I watch romantic comedies kind of excuses me from not having read a million romance novels?

Still and all, even with all these holes in my past dating and reading life, I feel like I’ve found my niche because I’ve never had such a blast writing anything before. I hope that a publisher out there feels the same way.

I will not be writing my novel after 4:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time today. I will not be worrying about the shifting point of view in my novel. I will not be concerned about tweaking the tone in the first scenes to be more lighthearted and—dare I say—funny. I will not be thinking about the most graceful and inconspicuous way to weave in the characters’ backstory so as to make it interesting and not dull dull dull. I will not be contemplating how to add thematic elements to add depth and power to my fluffy little romance. I will not be fretting over whether this scene or that scene is working hard enough to merit staying in the story—does it enhance characterization or move the plot along?—those are the key questions.

I will not be concerned with any of this.

Because the Steelers are in the Super Bowl.

My worries will shift to whether Big Ben can scramble and elude the blitz. Will Ben throw into double coverage and be intercepted? Can the offense outwit, outcatch and outrun the formidable Packer defense? Can the defense stymie the Green Bay offense? Will Polamalu’s ankle hold up as he makes his trademark electrifying plays?

So many questions. So many concerns. And almost as many volatile emotions as my characters feel! Maybe that’s why I have cozied up so completely to writing romance novels—they’re packed with emotion, much as I am when watching any of my teams (Steelers, Penguins, Pirates and Northwestern Wildcats) play in a big game. Sports and romance. Who woulda thunk?

I have been waiting to do something worthy of your attention, or for something to happen to me that would merit a blog. But, I realize, I have to find something to tell you about. I once went to a reading by Pam Houston, an author I have admired since my Worst Boyfriend Ever introduced me to her in the mid-90s when I still lived in Manhattan. She wrote SIGHT HOUND, a wonderful and devastating work that will stay with me for the rest of my days. Anyway, during the reading she spoke of “glimmers,” or moments a writer observes that can lead to a story. A spark. A burst of something that intrigues or conjures a question or suggests a further event. Pam talked about them in terms of fiction, but I have to also think of them in terms of blogging.

Here we go. This past Thursday and Saturday, my horse Brooke colicked. If you know about horses, you know how scary this can be. Most colics are not serious, but they can go bad quickly and your horse can die. Brooke had to have life-saving surgery last December for a bad colic. For those of you who have the good sense to keep a horse out of your life and your bank account, let me explain. Colic, technically, is any sort of pain or discomfort a horse feels in any part of its digestive tract. Horses are horribly designed, with scads of intestine that just kind of hangs out in a vast cavern of equine torso. A lot can happen in there, and none of it good. When your horse colics and you keep it at a boarding facility, it’s like having a baby who can never tell you where it hurts, and the baby lives somewhere else (in my case, 25 minutes from home and more than an hour from work at rush hour). When they call you from the barn to tell you your 1,300-pound baby is ill, it’s a terrible feeling.

I called the vet for the Thursday colic, and, happily, all Brooke needed was a pain killer and she was right as rain. Usually she’ll colic and be done with it, I’m off the hook for at least a month. But no. She has apparently joined a Colic of the Month Club, as she has colicked in November, December and now January. This is a new and delightful aspect of my horse ownership. In this most recent instance, she colicked 48 hours later, on Saturday afternoon.

What the hell? Again, happily, it wasn’t serious, and I didn’t even  call the vet. Still. I was a wreck on Saturday night, keeping my phone attached to me as if it were a new appendage, waiting for it to ring with another colic alert. I had left the barn at 8:00 that night, but still. I thought I would have a relaxing evening after a harrowing day. HA! I couldn’t concentrate. I had to watch something mindless on TV. I had hoped I’d be able to write, since I had spent the entire day at the barn and lost all that precious writing time, but no.

I couldn’t even THINK of writing. As you might deduce, one of the topics of my second novel, facetiously called LOVE IN THE TIME OF COLIC, is colic. I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t write about some poor fictional horse dying of colic and his owner’s subsequent distress when my own horse had been flirting with succumbing herself. It was too close for comfort.

In the days since Saturday I haven’t had much time to write, even though it has been freakishly cold here in Denver, well below zero Monday and yesterday. I still had to go to work, and although I didn’t go to the barn on Monday or Tuesday, I didn’t write. LOVE IN THE TIME OF COLIC poses new challenges. It starts out with the colic surgery, and that’s how our hero and heroine meet. However, I had intended the book to be a romantic comedy, but it starts out about as light-hearted as a lynching. I either have to change the whole tone of the novel or fix the beginning. I think I have to fix the beginning. I ventured out into the Arctic Circle tonight (it was -2 at the barn) and as I walked Brooke for 30 minutes in the indoor arena (she wore her blanket, don’t go reporting me to PETA), I thought about how to make the beginning, um, happier.

How to make a beloved horse’s death happy?

Okay, so it’s not going to make you skip down the lane, swinging a basket of flowers and whistling. But I think I can make the heroine a little more composed and have her use humor to cope with her grief, as many of us do.

This is making me grow as a writer, right? To change the scene I’ve seen in my head a certain way for a little more than a year? I sure hope so, because I think it has to be.

And Brooke, if you’re reading this, please drink a lot of water and DON’T COLIC.

Before writing a romance novel and joining Romance Writers of America, I had only the vaguest of notions about writing contests. I had worked in publishing, so I had heard of the big contests, such as the RITA Awards because if an author won a RITA, it was a good thing to put on the book cover. It makes those in the know salivate.

Then I went to the RWA conference and discovered that the RITAs warrant their own fancy dinner ceremony, which they share with the Golden Heart Awards. The RITAs (named after RWA’s first-ever president) are awarded to published novels, and the Golden Hearts recognize excellence in manuscripts written by as-yet unpublished authors.

Those are the biggies, the Oscars of the romance world. I did not enter the Golden Heart contest. Why not? I wanted to wait to see what an agent says about my manuscript. After she weighs in and I make some improvements, I may think about it. Like chicken soup, it couldn’t hoyt.

In the meantime, just for kicks, I entered two other contests that are sponsored by local chapters of the RWA. Let me tell you, there’s a plethora (love that word) of contests out there, for published authors, unpublished authors, for beginnings, for love scenes, for query letters (the cover letter that accompanies a manuscript), even for cover art. I chose two contests for unpubbed writers, both for beginnings, where you have to submit the first 25 pages or 6,000 words, which comes out to be about the same amount of real estate.

Contest one is sponsored by the Yellow Rose Romance Writers of America, in Texas. It’s the Winter Rose Romance Contest. Contest two is the Cleveland Rocks Romance Contest, thrown by the Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America. Both contests are for unpublished authors, or authors who haven’t had anything pubbed in the last five years.

When I first saw these contests on the RWA website, I thought, “Hey, I think my story has a pretty good opening scene. I’ll enter these.” I figured I’d enter the contests just for giggles, and I’ll get a “score sheet,” or a structured evaluation of my work. What the heck, right?

When I read all the rules for these contests—and there are many rules—I considered hiring an attorney just to prepare my entries. There are rules about methods of paying the entry fee, formatting your partial manuscript, what fonts you can use, and how to format your entry to email it (I learned how to make an rtf file; never even knew there was such a thing). I felt like I was filling out a job application for the CIA.

But I made it through and the contest people have cashed my checks. Now I can sit back, relax, and wait to hear from them. In April. (Yes, April.)

What do you win if you win, you ask? In the one contest, an agent will read your manuscript. In the other, you can use the contest winner logo on your website. Good thing I didn’t plan a career around winning romance writing contests.

As always, I’ll let you know what happens. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. And I’ll press my thumbs, which is what they do in the Czech Republic for good luck.

Thank you for your support!

Below is a New York Times article about how romance ebooks are all the rage, which, I hope, means nothing but good things for the likes of me.

I’ll admit I’ve been worried about the advent of ebooks and have cursed the writing gods for inspiring me to write a book when traditional publishing is in such trouble. Why, I ask those gods, didn’t I have the urge to write “Thrown” in 2000, or even 2008? Why now, when ebooks are seemingly taking over the world, Kindles are hotter than Indonesian volcanoes and new authors are being paid less than ever for their stories, especially those that are only published electronically?

But you know what? I hope against hope that someone will pay me for writing “Thrown,” and even if Amanda, Grady and their cohorts face the world from a screen and never  on a printed page, it still means someone thought my story was good enough to pay money for. And that’s something to shake a stick at. If nobody pays me for my book, did I waste my time? No. There’s still a chance I could self-publish, although my ten years at Warner Books make me want to go through traditional publishing channels, narrow and dark though they may appear. The other challenge to self-publishing, as far as I can tell, is you have to do more self-promotion because you’re all you’ve got. Not that a publishing house is going to spend a lot to promote a brand new, unproven author. But still, you have a publisher giving your talent some credence. And if neither of those avenues work, if “Thrown” stays put on my MacBook forever, the fact is I have a completed manuscript to my credit and it was an out-and-out blast to write. That alone makes it worthwhile.

(Writing update: Tom finished proofing the latest version of “Thrown” yesterday, and I’m thrilled to report that he cried at one of the new parts (!!!). SO happy about that. Still on track to send my manuscript to Gail-the-agent on Wednesday. The celebratory bubbly will flow that evening.)

Without further ado, here’s the article, with input from the woman who has the delightfully titled blog, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books at http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php.

Lusty Tales and Hot Sales: Romance E-Books Thrive

By JULIE BOSMAN

Sarah Wendell, blogger and co-author of “Beyond Heaving Bosoms,” is passionate about romance novels.

Except for the covers, with their images of sinewy limbs, flowing, Fabio-esque locks or, as she put it, “the mullets and the man chests.”

“They are not always something that you are comfortable holding in your hand in public,” Ms. Wendell said.

So she began reading e-books, escaping the glances and the imagined snickers from strangers on the subway, and joining the many readers who have traded the racy covers of romance novels for the discretion of digital books.

If the e-reader is the digital equivalent of the brown-paper wrapper, the romance reader is a little like the Asian carp: insatiable and unstoppable. Together, it turns out, they are a perfect couple. Romance is now the fastest-growing segment of the e-reading market, ahead of general fiction, mystery and science fiction, according to data from Bowker, a research organization for the publishing industry.

Publishers and retailers, spying an opportunity, have begun pursuing in earnest those enthusiastic romance readers who have abandoned print for digital.

“Romance,” said Matthew Shear, the executive vice president and publisher of St. Martin’s Press, which releases 40 to 50 romance novels each year, is “becoming as popular in e-books as it is in the print editions.”

When “Maybe This Time,” a lighthearted ghost romance by the best-selling author Jennifer Crusie, went on sale in August, it sold as many e-books as hardcover books in its first week, Mr. Shear said, a phenomenon that he began noticing this summer with other romance titles.

At All Romance, an online retailer that sells only e-books, sales have more than doubled this year, and the most sought-after titles are usually the raciest.

“It’s easier to check out some naughty little title online than in a brick-and-mortar store where your pastor could step up in line behind you,” said Barb Perfetti, the chief financial officer of All Romance. “We’ve had lots of customers write to us and say, ‘Now I don’t always have to show my husband what I’m reading.’ ”

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, is courting romance readers more aggressively than ever. William Lynch, the chief executive, said in an interview that until recently Barnes & Noble was a nonplayer in the huge romance category, but that it now has captured more than 25 percent of the market in romance e-books. Sometime next year, he said, he expects the company’s e-book sales in romance to surpass its print sales.

“This is a new business for us,” Mr. Lynch said. “Romance buyers are buying, on average, three books a month. That buyer is really, really valuable.”

Dominique Raccah, the publisher and chief executive of Sourcebooks, an independent publisher in Naperville, Ill., said her romance e-book sales had grown exponentially this year, outpacing any other category. In the first quarter 8 percent of total romance sales at Sourcebooks were from e-book sales. By the third quarter that number had gone up to 27 percent. (Major trade publishers say e-books now make up about 9 to 10 percent of overall sales.) “You’re seeing the real development of a market,” Ms. Raccah said.

Romance is a natural leader here. The genre took off in the 1980s, when it expanded from the typical dreamy or bodice-ripping historical novels to include contemporary, plot-driven stories with characters drawn from real life. (Happy endings, though, are still required.) In 2009, when more than 9,000 titles were published, romance fiction generated $1.36 billion in sales, giving it the largest share of the overall trade-book market, according to the Romance Writers of America, which compiles statistics on romance books.

Nearly 75 million people read at least one romance novel in 2008, the group said. (Ms. Wendell and her co-author, Candy Tan, wrote in “Beyond Heaving Bosoms” that romance novels are “easily the most-hidden literary habit in America.”)

Romance readers tend to be women ages 31 to 49 who are — contrary to the popular image of Miss Lonelyhearts living vicariously through fictional tales of seduction — in a romantic relationship, according to the writers group. They frequently fly through a book or more a week, and from the beginning they have jumped at the chance to store hundreds of titles on a single device — where the next happy ending is a download away.

Print sales of romance novels are still strong at retailers like Wal-Mart and Target. But Mr. Lynch of Barnes & Noble predicted that chain drugstores like CVS and Duane Reade would eventually decrease the shelf space devoted to print books.

It is difficult to predict what expanding e-book sales will do to print sales in the long term. Kelly Gallagher, the vice president for publishing services for Bowker, said that e-book sales were “definitely cannibalizing print,” a prospect that worries publishers. But some, like Random House, are rushing to convert their backlist books into digital form to the delight of romance readers, who tend to be fiercely loyal to authors. Harlequin Enterprises has digitized nearly 10,000 titles, dating back to 2002.

“Once a romance reader acquires an author they love, they will often go in and buy all the backlist,” said Allison Kelley, executive director of the Romance Writers of America. “When books were out of stock or out of print, they were hard to find. But e-books have changed all that.”

Kathryn Popoff, vice president for trade book merchandising for Borders, said backlist titles were especially popular with romance readers because the print books had such a short shelf life in stores — usually only a month.

“If you missed it, you have an opportunity to go back to the Borders site and download that book,” she said.

To pursue these readers Barnes & Noble has started a “romance store” for its Nook Color, a new dedicated e-reader that the company is marketing heavily to women. Some publishers have tried to hook readers by selling the first book in a series for as little as $2.99 — a discount from the more typical $5 or $8 for the most popular romance e-books on BN.com, for example. (The price for a mass-market paperback is often about the same as its digital version.)

Small-press publishers that specialize in romance e-books have popped up in recent years, along with Web sites that exclusively sell digital books, like All Romance. Last summer Harlequin created Carina Press, an imprint that specializes in digital romance books.

“We want to make it super convenient for readers to access that material however they choose to do it,” said Donna Hayes, the chief executive of Harlequin.

Even if, lately, many of the e-book versions of romances arrive without a cover. Jane Litte, the pseudonym of an Iowa lawyer who writes the popular romance blog Dear Author (dearauthor.com), said she had noticed that about half of the romance novels she downloaded had their covers missing.

“It’s an irritant,” she said, blaming publishers for not securing the digital rights for cover art. “I don’t love the covers, but I’d rather have them than not have them.”