My first love was reading and writing.

I’d sneak books under the covers long after lights out. I remember not liking endings to stories I was read at bedtime, so I’d stay up and come up with new ones to tell all my stuffed animals.

I don’t really remember when I wanted to be a writer. Does anyone? I remember my first short story: Strawberry Shortcake and her cat, Custard, fought and won against the evil Jafar (it was 1992, Aladdin had just come out, okay?) leaving everyone in a mix of Agrabah and Strawberryland living their happily ever afters (or HEA’s as you’ll see me call them, I do write romances).

Since then I’ve moved on to writing other things. More short stories (less Strawberry Shortcake and Custard and more angst and brooding, but always the HEA), pilots, a few plays, two screenplays….

My first novel though, well I haven’t finished it. I have about seven novels anywhere between just started and 3/4’s of the way completed, but managed to write myself into corners with most of them. Sometimes it’s like I’m all ideas and no follow through.

What I’m writing now, though. This, has potential. It deals with first loves, the ones that stick with you, the ones all loves from there on out are compared to.

In an ideal world, they’d all be our last loves, but that’s why we have fiction, isn’t it?

Reading about first loves, brings back all the memories, the nostalgia, the feelings that were happening for the first time. It reminds us that you never really get over those feelings, that a part, no matter how small, will always brighten at the sight of your first love (even if the rest of you cringes).

So no, you never really get over first loves. I’ll never be over writing, or striving for the best story to tell.