“People often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder.”
— Salma Hayek

Since the audience for most romance novels is mainly women, I often think of our images of ourselves as key to my heroines. I started reading romance novels when I was 13 years old and I know that those books I read and the women in them in part shaped the woman I am today.
I knew that a woman should expect certain things from the man who loved her and she shouldn’t compromise herself to get him. And though in the media it is often said that heroines in romance novels are all beautiful, I think that is misconstrued. Everyone has a glow about them when they are in love and it makes them more beautiful to anyone who sees them.
Finding beauty in us is harder and harder all the time. The media spends a lot of time showing images of “Hollywood” beauty both in image and in size and yet seldom does that reflect the reality of people I see every day.
I strive to make the women in my books real, with issues that make them more human and after reading this quote I realized how much power we have over ourselves. I hope that whenever you go you feel out you realize that you are beautiful.

Happy reading!
Katherine