Jennifer Apodaca Icon

Hey all! I’m so thrilled to be a part of the Brava Website! What a collection of diverse and talented authors!

I first sold in mystery, writing The Samantha Shaw Mystery Series. That series was so much fun to write and even better, my fabulous editors, first Amy Garvey then Kate Duffy let me break the rules.

I had sex in the mysteries.

Wow, did that shock some people. A lot of fans loved it, and some fans asked for more. But I really needed to be careful to make sure the mystery outweighed the romance and sex because the books were first and foremost a mystery. I enjoyed writing mystery, but I also thought…What if I could write a romantic mystery and put as much romance in there as I wanted to?

Then I got the opportunity to write romantic mysteries in Brava, thanks to the awesome Kate Duffy. I’m having a great time. I really enjoy the challenge of building a romance with a strong mystery plot. It’s a heck of a lot of work to weave the mystery and romance tightly enough that one can’t exist without the other. I get to write hot sex, and hopefully use those scenes to move the plot forward and draw the readers farther into the story.

Brava is such an innovative line that allows authors to take the characters wherever they need to go to tell the story.

In a broader sense, I think this is something that the romance genre has been yearning for, and now we’re seeing more and more powerful stories that take us to unexpected places. Hot sex is a hot topic these days, but it seems like some of the rhetoric is missing the point. Sex is just a component of the growth of romance. Romances are now weaving in military thrillers, high stakes suspense, paranormal and fantasy, puzzling mysteries…the genre has broadened significantly. The characters who fall in love are more deeply involved in the world around them.
And that makes me fall in love with them all the more!

What about you? Do you find the romance genre today fresh and exciting?