Sylvia Day

It's not uncommon for men to show up at my book signings or to send me emails with their thoughts about my books. I've also heard from a number of female readers who were introduced to my works by men in their lives.

There were points in my career where I thought, 'Maybe I'm done. Maybe I've written everything there is to write.' Now I've learned that it's just working itself out. You have to let it do it.

Readers want a good book; it's a writer's job to give it to them.

I know of a few writers who are husband and wife teams.

One With You' was the hardest book I have ever written. I rewrote it three times.

The '50 Shades' series is a Cinderella story, where the characters seemingly have no flaws. The 'Crossfire' series is very different in that these two characters are almost mirror images of each other.

For the most part, romance is written in third person, and it's written in multiple points of view, so you're in the hero's head, and you're in the heroine's head. I've always said that I'm more of a narrator than a creator.

The damaged wealthy hero is actually a hugely common trope in romance, and alpha heroes are very common in romance.

Obviously, there are those in the industry who don't give romance novels the level of respect the sales would warrant. They'll talk about a book that sells maybe 100,000 copies, that happens to be very literary, whereas something like 'Crossfire' will sell 13 million copies in a single language and hardly get any mentions at all.

Other genres are plot-driven, but the entire focus of a romance novel is on the characters and their arcs.

There are millions of people who think that romance isn't real writing. But the only person who can make you real, make your books real, is you.

My mom handed me my first romance novel.