Have you seen the recent theatrical trailer for the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them? In the trailer, author J.K. Rowling explains how while writing her Harry Potter series a very minor character (who is only mentioned, not featured) captured her interest. She explains that she knew so much about Newt Scamander and that he became so real to her that eventually he inspired this new film.

J.K. Rowling is touching on an aspect of being a writer that I find fascinating: all the knowledge the writer has about a story world and its inhabitants that is not shared with the reader. There is never scope in a book to include everything – indeed, I usually feel when I write that I am sharing only a small part of a story. What happens next, after the ending?

To date I have published five romance novels: Burning Embers and The Echoes of Love (standalones), and the Andalucían Nights trilogy comprising Indiscretion, Masquerade and Legacy. For the standalone novels, I leave the reader with the expectation that the future for the protagonists will be rosy – but of course I cannot set that in stone. While I write about falling in love, first and foremost, I am also fascinated by how it is to remain in love for the rest of your days; that is the kind of strength of love I write of, and I wish I could explore it more.

I granted that wish for myself in a small way with my Andalucían Nights trilogy. Each focuses on two people falling in love, but because Masquerade and Legacy follow the next generations, there was some scope to revisit the characters of the preceding books. So in Masquerade, once more the reader meets Alexandra and Salvador, the protagonists of Indiscretion, and in Legacy the reader is reunited with Alexandra and Salvador and with Luz and Andres, the romantic leads in Masquerade. I confess I very much enjoyed writing the scenes in which these older characters appeared, most of all because it was so heart-warming to show them still together and as in love as they ever were.

There is a norm in the romance genre that you write of new love, often first love: pure, daunting, overwhelming, exciting, exhilarating. I love to write of the heady sensations and electric connections experienced in this stage of love; I love to be swept away into emotional, epic romance. But sometimes I wonder why there is less emphasis on writing of love that lasts, not simply through delivering a happy-ever-after promise at the end of the book, but by demonstrating that the love has endured.

I think perhaps the reason for the success of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series lies with its focus on a love that endures: the story spans many years and follows the same characters, Jamie and Claire, who are in love. The publisher struggled to categorise the series into a genre, because it spans several, and ultimately did not class it as pure romance. Is romance only that early stage of a relationship, or does romance endure: should, in fact, all romance by about love that lasts – is that the true definition?

Do you enjoy reading stories in which the love lasts? Is this something you look for in a novel? Do you like to revisit characters after the happy-ever-after and check in with them? I would love to hear your thoughts.