Full disclosure: I’ve written before.

As a matter of fact, I’ve written multiple books before under a different name (for a multitude of reasons, I’ll keep that name to myself for the time being), and some of which have sold very, very well. I began writing because I loved the feeling, not because I could, or even should, but because there was this story — this one really demanding character — chewing me up to get out of my mind. In short order, writing became like an addiction — like the feeling of running, the pages moving under my fingers the way your feet move over the ground, the distance was thousands of words rather than multiples of miles. The need for the high would wake me up early in the morning, where I’d steal those first moments of the day before I’d shuffle off to work where, undoubtedly, I was distracted and anxious; and it would keep me up late at night, where I’d write some of my best stuff, exhausted, wired, fueled by the feeling that I needed to get it out and on the paper before I lost it all to my impossibly heavy lids.

Those were the sweetest days of my career — the nervousness, the excitement, the this-can-be-anything-you-want-it-to-be rush of not knowing better, or knowing anything at all, and learning as I went by way of mistakes and successes and embarrassments and best sellers. I’ve missed it terribly the further I’ve strayed. I quit my job, I started writing full-time for a living, and what a mind-F that was because then it was business literally by the book. My reader base grew and I bonded with them over things we never knew we had in common but were thrilled to learn, they weren’t my readers but friends I adored dearly for their unequivocal support. I nailed down an agent, I worked the system, I started writing slower but tighter, and now, mostly, when I think about it as a whole, as long arc of lessons, I’ve realized that I missed the feeling of running towards a story.

Stories can leave you breathless. They just can. Even the most elaborate work of fiction can make you sit back on your heels and look at your own life. I’ve loved that about my career, about my stories, and the stories of others.

So I’m going to run again.

This is my attempt to get the sweet back and I’m going to do it the sweetest way I know how: Provocative Romance.

There is something, as a reader, I love about a good love story. I love a well delivered, truly sentimental sentence and how it can make me feel woozy and lovestruck simply by reading it. I love that anything worth having rarely, if ever, comes easy and how an author will freely embrace the truth in that, and I love that it takes work to make it work. That we, as readers, get to witness the unfurling of a love story, the way character meld together to become, not he and she, but us and we. And, speaking only for myself, I know the reason I love them — because it gives me the chance to fall in love over and over again with one book boyfriend at a time.

But there are also things I don’t love: Helpless heroins who seem to lose every shred of commonsense (and article of clothing) they were born with (wearing) the minute sensual dark eyes peel her skin from her bones, metaphorically speaking but of course. The way there is such little accountability for ones actions and endless, endless amounts forgiveness (that’s just crazy talk, girl). I’m not a fan of extremism, or the whole world imploding in the same amount of time it takes it get a package shipped to your door from Amazon, with Prime.

So, if I’m going to do this — and I am going to do this — I’m going to do it my own way. I’m going to borrow some of things that “other girl” knows, I’m going to tell one of my emotionally driven could-be-real stories, and I’m going to heat up the dark with some dangerous boys and wanton girls. I hope you’ll join me in this journey. I’m excited, I hope you are, too and I hope you’ll stay until the last page.