You’re one of very few male romance authors. What moved you to write romance?

Romances are titillating and great fun! The romance genre is not only an exploration of sexual fantasy, it's also a search for the most important things that define us as people. When one of my favorite characters calls for a toast to great sex, it’s a celebration of life and of who we are in our most intimate moments. The newsroom romance series explores the lines we draw, cross, blur, and even abuse in our quest for a soul-deep connection.


How do you get inside the heads of your female characters?

Women are people, too, right? Everyone, man or woman, wants someone to count on, someone who will cherish them, someone who is worth putting first in their life. I’ve also been blessed to have some utterly outstanding beta readers—all women—who’ve shared their experiences and insights to help me craft my characters’ feminine voices. Jane Austen is, according to my long-ago English-major experience, the greatest novelist in the English language, and she keeps teaching me about the deep emotional intelligence of women.


Why did you choose newsrooms and courtrooms for settings?

Those are the places I’ve spent two careers. Both combine professional, headstrong women with driven men, so there’s plenty of material. Terrifying tension is built into covering difficult news on deadline and trying the most important cases of clients' lives. When characters clash over how to handle those situations and their tensions, they have to grow to survive.