A funny thing happened to San Francisco computer programmer and occasional essay writer Pam Rosenthal on or about the beginning of the twenty-first century: She became seized by an urge to write sexy period romance novels. She’d already published some erotica, buoyed by a wave of life-changing feminist discussion about what was possible, permissible, or just plain fun to say about female sexual desire. This led her to explore the history of sexual expression – and to think hard about what love has to do with sex and sex with love, and what sex and love have to do with freedom and respect between equals.
Or to put it another way, she’d begun taking on the big subjects at the heart of countless lives and also at the heart of romance fiction – at a historical moment when the romance genre was learning to write about sex in ways that spoke to women’s whole selves as well as their fantasy lives.
Nurtured by this wide-ranging, supportive, energetic community of readers and writers, Pam wrote four romance novels and one novella. It was the experience of a lifetime, culminating in 2009, when The Edge of Impropriety won Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Best Historical Romance.
And then – sadly and surprisingly – she found that she’d said all that she had to say.
But the books remain. And Pam maintains an abiding respect for the writers who prevail over the long haul, a deep affection for those (like her) who have their say and move on, and a fascination with a genre that continues to grow and change, as it teaches itself to serve a wider, more representative community and a richer understanding of love, freedom, and respect for all of us.
Pam’s a grandma now; retired from programming and novel-writing, these days she works alongside Michael, her retired bookseller husband, at their copyediting business, P&M Editorial Services. They love editing romance (check out their website at pmeditorial.com), and recently P&M have begun lovingly reissuing revised and expanded versions of Pam’s romance fiction.
