>Catherine Coulter
LOVING THE LOVE STUFF
EVEN BEFORE HER OWN BOOKS STARTED climbing the bestseller lists, Catherine Coulter knew what to do with a novel. "I was reading a book and I thought, 'I can do better than this,' " says Catherine Coulter. "Then I threw it across the room."
In 1978, Coulter made her debut with The Autumn Countess, set in the 19th century. Six more romances followed, and soon she was able to quit her job writing speeches for an insurance executive. "Success," she says, "is when you can quit your day job and feed your cat."
Her cat Gilly never goes hungry now that Coulter's canon numbers 40 books, more than half of them bestsellers. In addition to romances, she specializes in historical sagas—her latest is Rosehaven, a hot-blooded medieval romp—but she also churns out contemporary suspense yarns like The Cove, published last February. Whatever century she's working in, Coulter puts herself into the story. "Particularly in the heroine," she says. "There's always some of you in your main character."
Coulter, who lives with her husband, a physician, in Marin County, Calif., has no plans to stop writing romance novels but insists her themes cut across genre. "Humor, mysteries, really good love stories are all about relationships," says the Texas native, a stickler for happy endings. "I like reaffirming that to love somebody is a good thing." Something else her novels have in common: creative hanky-panky. "I do great love scenes," she laughs. "The trick is that they are not about body parts, because that's silly."
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