yesterday I had an epiphany about the moment of capitulation – to my mind the hardest part of a romance to write well. It is the moment when the hero/heroine give in to being together, which means it’s also the moment when all those conflicts you’ve worked so hard at to keep them apart for a whole novel are no longer enough to keep them apart.

You can see why is so often feels contrived and unconvincing.

When my hero’s deception becomes clear to my heroine, things fall out between them. Trust is broken. And here’s the difficulty of capitulation – how do you come back from that? In a convincing, this-love-is-forever kind of way?

So here’s the epiphany: That crisis does break something between them. It does make it impossible for them to be as they were. So what it has to do instead is make it possible for them to be together in a new way – the experience of the crisis has to transform them into the people who can love forever.

I know. I should be knighted or something.