Romeo and Juliet were but teenagers when they fell in love, so cementing one of the best loved and most famous romances of all time. But can lasting love bloom without experience and knowledge?

In any novel, the protagonist grows. The entire point of the story is to take the character through experiences that are powerful and transformative. The character learns about him-/herself, and by the end of the novel, has a greater sense of self.

In a romance story, the experience that the character goes through is rooted in developing attraction and connection with a love interest. So, in Burning Embers Coral – a naive, inexperienced young lady – goes on a journey of self-discovery driven by her feelings for Rafe. She learns what is true and what is false. She learns that love is not black and white. She learns about forgiveness and acceptance and courage and sexuality.

Experience teaches Coral at the expense of her illusions, and by the end of the book she is a much wiser, more mature woman, no longer a rosebud but now a rose – blossomed and open to love.

As Aldous Huxley said, “Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.” The key to growth is how you deal with an experience.

In Rafe’s case in particular, experiences in love have been painful, leaving him closed and self-blaming. Coral is less experienced and consequently less damaged, but finding her fiancé in a compromising position with another woman has certainly hindered her trust and her faith in true love.

As I write my romance stories, pulling my characters through experience after experience in an effort to get them to learn and change and come together, I have in mind one key point: it is in a relationship that we grow. Though being with another person can be frustrating and hard work, and being alone can feel the less frightening, easier choice, it is through the experiences of being together – of learning to accept another, of being accepted, of being selfless, of being inspired, of being challenged at every turn – that we learn about ourselves. Like yin and yang, the two parts, added together, become cohesive – something powerful and strong and amazing.