Karina Bliss: Kids and Romance?

Kids and romance...do they mix?

When I began writing romance I swore I’d never put kids in one of my books. Kids and romance – oil and water.

Two things reinforced this view:

1. Motherhood (but isn’t the baby’s supposed to fit around our lifestyle?)

2. Reading books that shoehorned a kid into the story to show how caring the heroine or hero was without the hero or heroine actually having to do any work.

My son was three months old when I threw a book against the wall because the heroine had twin babies who went down like angels at six p.m. and slept twelve hours. After which she dressed in pre-baby clothes, served her new love – the hero – a three-course dinner by candlelight and engaged in passionate all-night sex. Yeah right!

Then I started writing and a kid sneaked into my first book, forcing my hero to stop being cool and urbane and demonstrate a little ineptness, a little uncertainty. Dragged my hero (and me) out of our comfort zone.

In my next romance, my hero was very good with kids. In fact he had such a special bond with his former girlfriend’s child (wait a minute, what’s a kid doing in this book?) that it really hurt him to do the right thing and encourage the boy’s relationship with his real father. The heroine fell in love with him. So did I.

Determined to stop the tide I pulled back on the kid thing in the third book - after all, it was a very sexy premise - but somehow a smart baby and a sharp-tongued delinquent sneaked in anyway.

This book I stopped fighting my destiny and wrote Second-Chance Family (Superromance November 08) - A guy inherits custody of three kids with his ex wife. Yep, three. You can read an excerpt on my website.

And I made the kids real (in fact I stole some of my son’s, nieces and nephews quirks and best lines). And I made the kids sad and funny and needy in a way that forced my hero and heroine to dig deeper, hurt more, love more and make sacrifices. Be heroic in a very real and powerful way. Pretty much like good parents do all the time. I made these two really earned their happy-ever-after.

So now I’m begrudgingly admitting that sometimes kids can work in a romance.

What’s your view?

Karina Bliss