My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.   

I was absolutely swept away by this story of star-crossed lovers – until the scene in the tomb. Believing Juliet to be dead, Romeo takes his own life:

O, here

Will I set up my everlasting rest,

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace! And, lips, O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death!

Then, poor Juliet awakes and discovers Romeo dead at her side. Her response? With no thought, to immediately follow suit and take her own life too.

Wonderfully romantic? That wasn’t quite my reaction upon seeing Shakespeare’s play. I remember being perturbed that Juliet had been so consumed by her love that she felt she had no life without Romeo.

In my own writing, I create heroines who want to find love; who are capable of great passion and deep attachment; who will grow from being in a relationship. But love is not everything to these women; they are so much more than a man’s lover. My heroines are strong and independent, and while they’d like to meet a man, they don’t need to do so in order to be happy.

Take Catriona, the heroine of my new novel Concerto. She lives in a beautiful home in Nice, France. She has a successful career as a music therapist with her own practice. She is a single mother and works very hard to raise her son with patience, love and energy.

Is something missing for Catriona? Yes, absolutely. At night, after she checks on her little boy and then goes to her bed, she is alone – and lonely. She remembers what it was to feel attraction for a man, and she wants that again. Her heart has so much capacity for love, and she naturally wishes to love and be loved.

But Catriona does not need a man in order to live – and love – her life. So when she travels to Lake Como to work with blind pianist Umberto, she carries with her a strong sense of identity. Umberto will open a door to her heart and he will challenge her in ways she never imagined, but he will not shake her foundations.

This, I think, is how it should be: that a relationship is a choice, not a necessity. Catriona will not be trapped by her feelings for Umberto; she will be free to choose how she acts on those feelings. Her strength and independence are her liberation. She channels Anaïs Nin’s words:

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

The challenge in Concerto is for Umberto to regain his own strength and independence. Once, he too had a life that made him happy and defined him; he was a composer, and proud of that fact. But since losing his sight he has lost his way. If love is to have any chance of blossoming between Catriona and Umberto, then he will have to be more than his blindness – he will have to be the man he was before; he will have to return to his music.

Two people with their own fulfilling lives making a choice to come together… now that is romance, without the tragedy.