Once, a couple of years ago, my friends and I were standing in the courtyard of our college, getting lung cancer from second hand smoke, and talking about breaking into the publishing world and how difficult it is these days. We were all writers, hence the conversation and the smoke. And then Brian, who is probably the most talented person I have ever been privileged to attend a workshop with, said, "I’ve thought of writing a romance novel."

There was a moment of silence as we all tried to get our heads around the idea of Brian, composer of the most lyrically disturbing prose about death and betrayal, writing a fluffy little novel about some girl too cute to say "Boo!" to a goose and the Prince Charming who bravely manages to make it scram and thus wins her heart. And then the sheer genius of it struck us.

There we were, paying through our noses to formally understand what came most instinctively to us and playing around with structure and language - we couldn’t just write 200 pages of a love story, we were overqualified for it. And God knew, the romance market might see swings just like any other in the publishing industry but it’s one of the most stable markets that exists. Women make up the majority market in most cases anyway but add a little romance and you have yourself a success story.

Brian got the idea from working at a bookstore - he’d see the women march past with a stack of paperbacks, all of them with dark eyed Italian men who sweep English roses off their feet or American cowboys dishing out some down home lovin’ to the prissy city girl in her shiny new Macy’s boots. I was in a position to reinforce his observation - my brother and I had been wiggling our eyebrows at each other in the library for years as we watched one auntie after college girl stagger out of the Mills and Boon aisle with ten or twenty slim books. I could well remember the day when my own aunt had decided that it was time I began to read some grown up literature - and bought me a copy of my very own Barbara Cartland, which nearly robbed me of my parents as they tried hard not to die laughing.

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