Dear friends,

Today is Valentine Day! What better choice to speak about love than Amy Harmon?

Everything she writes IS pure romance. Her books are filled with love. The one transporting you into Heaven and leaving you with a heart filled with joy.

You think I’m exagerating? Well read her books and come tell me if I was wrong.

Amy is in my top 5 “auto buy” authors. I think so far you’ve got nearly all my top 5 with All About Love.

Amy wrote a sincere and amazing post explaining her reasons to write romance. Prepare to being surprised 😀 

Thank you so much Amy!

Life isn’t romantic.  It’s hard and ugly, and people have bad breath and big bellies and thinning hair.  Couples age together, see each other at their worst, annoy each other, hurt each other, and even hate each other sometimes.  That’s why we women love romances with mythical creatures that sparkle, never age, don’t get bad breath or work as mail men, school teachers or plumbers.  We need that escape, that fantasy, because life is so genuinely un-fantastic sometimes.  And that mythical creature can make us swoon, giggle, and pant and never expects us to make dinner, lose a little weight or wear something besides sweatpants.  (I love mythical men!!)

I started writing romance because that’s the kind of book I love to read.  Frankly, whether it’s a blockbuster movie or a best-selling book, if it doesn’t have romance, I’m not very interested.  However, the first time I saw a porno – now I’m blushing – I made the mistake of thinking I was going to get romance.  I didn’t.  And I was not impressed.  Nor was I moved, touched, soothed, or inspired.  That’s when it occurred to me that romance isn’t necessarily about sex.  And I wanted to be a romance writer.  I wanted to write the kind of romance where sex is not the climax.  No pun intended.  To do that, and make it realistic, I have to create scenarios and plot lines where the two main characters can’t have sex because of age or distance or propriety or, in the case of The Bird and the Sword, because one of them is a (spoiler alert) bird half of the time. 

In my bestselling novel, Making Faces, one character is a soldier who comes back from Iraq gravely injured. His injuries and insecurities hold him back in physical situations. In my latest novel, Infinity + One, the two main characters are on the run, and it’s not possible or believable for them to be pulling over and engaging in sexy time. In my new release, The Smallest Part, the characters start out as children, close friends, and sex isn’t even part of the equation. In my novel, A Different Blue, I made the main character a senior in high school and, in order to allow my characters to build a relationship that is NOT based purely on physical attraction, I made the leading man, Wilson, her young teacher. I didn’t do it to be controversial or provocative. I did it because I didn’t want sex to be part of their relationship, not in the beginning.  Instead, these two characters learn from each other, inspire each other, become friends, and eventually (spoiler alert!) fall in love.  Each of these scenarios allow both the reader and the characters to get to know one another without expecting that at any moment there should be sex.

In my books, love always comes first, and sex, well…I’ll let you find out for yourselves.  I want the characters I create to be REAL, just like you and me – or you and your sweetie – and yet come to love each other anyway.  No immortality, sparkles, or granite abs allowed.

For me, and probably most women, a good romance should be emotionally erotic and not just physically erotic. Unlike porn, romance novels are about both.  We women enjoy sex…but not just for sex sake.  We need that emotional connection.  My own love life doesn’t look like a porno flick.  And that’s a good thing!  I wish I had the tight tush and the pert breasts, but I honestly wouldn’t trade my sex life for either the breasts or the tush.  Why? Because my sex life is a love life.  Life isn’t romantic, but love is, and underneath it all, isn’t that what we women are really looking for?  In spite of the bedhead and the stretch marks, love exists in everyday life, everywhere I look.

And that, my friends, is why I read and write romance.

Author’s bio

Amy Harmon is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times Bestselling author. Amy knew at an early age that writing was something she wanted to do, and she divided her time between writing songs and stories as she grew. Having grown up in the middle of wheat fields without a television, with only her books and her siblings to entertain her, she developed a strong sense of what made a good story. Her books are now being published in eighteen different languages, truly a dream come true for a little country girl from Levan, Utah.

Amy Harmon has written thirteen novels – the USA Today Bestsellers The Bird and The Sword, Making Faces and Running Barefoot, as well as the #1 Amazon bestselling historical From Sand and Ash, The Queen and The Cure, The Law of Moses, The Song of David, Infinity + One, Slow Dance in Purgatory, Prom Night in Purgatory, and the New York Times Bestseller, A Different Blue. Her novels The Bird and the Sword and From Sand and Ash were Goodreads Best Books of 2016 and 2017 finalists.

Find Amy online:

Website: www.authoramyharmon.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authoramyharmon

Facebook fan group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/amyharmon

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aharmon_author

Instagram: https://instagram.com/amy.harmon2/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Amy-Harmon/e/B007V3HXUY

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5829056.Amy_Harmon

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/amy-harmon

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/P5AJP

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/authoramyharmon/

Dear reader why do you read romance? And have you ever read Amy’s books?

Thanks for reading!

Sophie