I thought penning steamy books about sex-crazed werewolves was the dumbest job ever. With a little subversion and a huge thesaurus, I learned to love it.

I read my first romance novel at age 14 in a sweaty office at my summer internship. I was working at a production company and had been tasked with reading the novel, then doing a quick write-up on its salient features to determine whether or not it was ripe for adaptation. I remember with uncomfortably piercing clarity that it was an e-book based on Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which to the uninitiated, was basically the tattered, dime-store bodice ripper that your grandmother and her friends used to circulate back in their own school days.

The vividly graphic e-book made me blush to the roots of my pubic hair. I hid under my small gray desk and tore through it during lunch. Even as I hurried through the book, clicking to each new page as though it were a race against the clock, I mocked every line. What was this trite, trivial garbage? And more to the point, why was it dampening the back of the poorly patterned T.J.Maxx work dress I’d purchased just for this internship?

In my report on the novel to my boss, I eviscerated it in the way only a judgmental 14-year-old girl can. Each character was mine to mock, every plot turn another opportunity for me to prove my debilitating wit. I submitted that coverage and didn’t think much of it, save for swearing up and down that I would never read another romance novel. I read Shakespeare, Brontë and Austen. I had no time for the poorly written silliness of romance novels.

My Jewish mother says that when you express distaste and scorn, God not only laughs he straps on an apron and gets back in the kitchen, finding ever more creative ways of punishing you for your whining. Sure enough, some eight years later, I’m a several times over best-selling ghostwriter of romance novels. God didn’t just traipse into the kitchen; he did some damn molecular gastronomy.

***

I started writing romance novels because of a man. It was my third year of college, and I’d just broken up with a particularly repellant boyfriend. He’d sent me detailed essays about David Lynch and included at least three Beach Boys songs in every playlist he composed. Unfortunately, David Lynch/Beach Boys Boyfriend worked at the same museum on campus as me.

You only have to learn the error of dating a co-worker once, and apparently, this was my turn. Not long after the breakup, I knew it was time for me to move on from that job. It was clear he wouldn’t leave, so I had to get the hell out of dodge. But what else could I do on campus? The best jobs — working in one of the eight or so cafes — were all scooped up, and I wasn’t qualified for any of the tech gigs (seeing as how I was running on a determined little iPhone 5 with a dirty home screen that just wouldn’t quit).

Besides, I wanted to do something with writing. In my spare time, I was writing plays with the end goal of eventually transitioning to screenwriting. So it only made sense to try to align my part-time job with what I hoped would one day be my full-time job. After some very feeble internet sleuthing, I signed up for a handful of online freelancing sites.

It became almost immediately evident that the biggest demand was for ghostwriters in the romance field, especially for young, female ghostwriters (which is kinda sexist, but OK). Essentially I would be paid for writing romance novels anonymously that would be credited to a best-selling author.

Though I resisted the siren call of easy money for a week or so, I eventually caved and bid on my first romance writing job. I got the gig, and the rest, as they say, is literary history. Except of course it’s not, because romance writing is the most rote, formulaic type of writing out there. After all, there are only so many ways to describe a penis.

A hero’s penis must be veiny, bulging, and little else. In my business there’s no room for a penile digression. Or at least, this was what I thought when I first began.

I was given outlines that were broken down so specifically it was almost as if human sexuality had been reduced to percentage points. At 25 percent of the way through the novel, at least one of the leads needs to have masturbated. The first 50 percent of the book is internal conflict between the two, the second 50 percent is external conflict. At the halfway mark, they fucck. At 90 to 95 percent, there is resolution, and an epilogue. It was a genital numbers game. This was mildly disheartening. I was a young writer with groundbreaking ideas, and I was being put on the tightest of leashes. Until, that is, I realized that I could make the books beasts of my .......

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