I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.

Somebody would say, 'Can you do us an article about big, bodice-ripping, blockbusting romance novels?' And I'd say, 'Yes, of course,' because I was a hungry young journalist.

It's a given that we exist in a world where we have to live in continuity every day; no one is immune to that, in life or romance novels. By the same token, it's not something I find terribly important.

When you're starting off as a young writer, you look at all the stuff that's gone before and the stuff that's influenced you, and you reach the ladle of your imagination into this bubbling stew pot of all of this stuff, and you pour it out. And that's where you start from.

Attraction is not an option.

You’re easy to read, Ivy, but the whole book of you is complicated.