I never got into YA romances, for some reason. My aunt loaned me bags-full of Harlequins and Barbara Cartlands when I was about 12, so that was my "pure and innocent" romance phase.

By the time I had babysitting money to buy my own books, Silhouette was publishing the spicier Desire and Intimate Moments books, followed by Bantam's Loveswepts when I was in high school. Getting into romances at the beginning of the 1980s boom meant that I was reading Sandra Brown's and Nora Roberts from their earliest books, most of which were actually pretty good. My favorite romance authors at that point were actually Elizabeth Lowell and Iris Johansen, who've since moved into mainstream suspense novels. Oh, and Janet Evanovitch (pre-Stephanie Plum) had some excellent Loveswept books back then as well.

I read all those too, David. I would buy Robert E. Howard's Conan books from the hardware store in the next town, where they would sell paperbacks with the covers torn off on a shelf by the door. It was at least ten years later that I learned this meant they were stolen.

I read a lot of crappy fantasy and science fiction as a kid. Also a lot of historical novels and the occasional romance. Basically, I'd read anything that looked vaguely interesting. And sometimes they were.

ooh, I remember those, Susan! There was one about the flood in that city in Pennsylvania...

I never read that one, somehow. My favorites were the Jamestown one, the Civil War one where the Southern girl chooses the Union soldier and they decide to go west at the end, the Titanic one, and the one with the turn-of-the-century New York society girl who wanted to be a nurse.

I went straight from Sunfire to Regencies, since the covers and subject matter were such that I could bring them home without exciting comment from my mother, unlike other historical romances.

Yeah, I sort of eased into the bringing romances home, with the regencies, and then sort of trying to hide the bodice-rippers in with other things, and then eventually just getting anything I darn well pleased (mostly that was after I could drive myself to the library!!).

My mom did ask, when I came out to her, why, then, did I read trashy romances. I didn't tell her I'm more ashamed of the trashy sci-fi I used to read...:)

I don't think my mom realized exactly how explicit some of the romances I was reading were. Then again, I remember once when I was about 17 or so, and my (older) brother was home and bored, so he went out to the video store and rented a porn flick with pretensions of being a comedy in addition to the sex. He was watching it on the only TV in the house in the middle of the afternoon when Mom, my sister and her friend, and I all came home, and we ended up sitting around and MST3K-ing it, including Mom.

Probably one of more surreal family TV viewings I ever had.

My romance gateway drug was the "Sunfire" series of teen historical romances that always featured a 16-year-old at some critical point in American history having to choose between two guys.

I think Kate Bolin has a whole website dedicated to those.

My gateway romance drug was the Harlequin Presents line. OMG, so many thirtysomething sheiks and princes and French counts, so little time to knock up that 18 year old secretary!

About a year later (when I was 14), I switched to Regency romances, where I stayed until around the time I discovered fanfic.

My gateway romance drug was the Harlequin Presents line. OMG, so many thirtysomething sheiks and princes and French counts, so little time to knock up that 18 year old secretary!

Hee! I remember reading almost all of the Janet Dailey American Stories series (fifty books, one for each state). I was really saddened to hear about her plagarizing Nora Roberts a few years back, because she really is a talented writer.

I think Kate Bolin has a whole website dedicated to those.

Found it: [link]

I've still never read a Harlequin Presents, though I picked up one from the "return when finished" paperback rack at my local library because it was by an author from my RWA chapter.

Except for my mother forcing me to read Gone with the Wind when I was 11 or 12, I hadn't ever read a romance novel until I was almost 30. My friend Kij brought over a stack of Heyer romances for me when I had the flu.

I read all those too, David. I would buy Robert E. Howard's Conan books from the hardware store in the next town, where they would sell paperbacks with the covers torn off on a shelf by the door. It was at least ten years later that I learned this meant they were stolen.

Ha! "We're getting low on books, we'd better go dumpster diving behind the B. Dalton tonight."

I found the only used bookstore in South Florida where I could get paperbacks for half the cover price. Which meant if you were lucky enough to find an early sixties edition, meant it only cost you 30 cents for a book. I read Frank Yerby for my porn allotment, until I swiped Xavier Goes Wild from a department store.