A Man's Needs is the Way to a Woman's Heart

Romance writing is not about sex. It is about the tease. My romance stories were not published because I spent too much time building a great plot, characters, and relationship, but I forget the tease. Not a sexual tease - an emotional one.

I did this in The Pledge. It is a great story. A Marriage of Convenience where they learn to love and respect each other, but I forgot the tease.

The tease is more than making the characters think about the other person. It is about them wanting something that is fundamental to all women's happiness - the reader's happiness. A woman will notbe swept away by a handsome man. There must be more.

We are swept away by something that happens: A look, a deed, a comment, a need. This is the thing that many romance writers overlook. The hero must need something only the heroine can offer. Isn't that a wonderful part of a romance, being the one thing a strong man needs before he is 'complete?' There is something about that look my husband gives me when we are quiet, that look that I know is for me only. In some ways it is fear, fear of loosing me, in other ways it is 'awe' that I can be so different than him, but he needs me.

I have only added 1/2 the tease into The Pledge. Calum is so terribly alone in the story. He no longer feels human. His first love was slaughtered, and everyone the clan only see their protector and provider. He wants - no, he needs - someone who will love him, ask nothing off him, and fill the 'black hole' that was once his heart.

It will be so easy for me to add this - now that I know he needs it.

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