Born in 1939 in Alexandria, Louisiana, Kathleen Woodiwiss was a young wife and mother when she began writing romantic fiction as a response to her dissatisfaction with the existing "women's fiction" of the time. In 1972, she published her first novel, The Flame and the Flower, set on a Southern plantation in the late 18th century. Its historical setting and theme, florid prose style and steamy sex scenes inspired a legion of imitators, and its smashing commercial success sparked a new boom in romance fiction. Woodiwiss was given credit for inventing the modern romance novel in its current form: thick period melodramas packed with an array of dashing and dangerous men and bosomy women in low-cut dresses. She herself wrote 13 of these so-called "bodice-rippers," including "Shanna" (1977), "A Rose in Winter" (1982), "Come Love a Stranger" (1984) and "The Reluctant Suitor" (2003). In an interview with Publisher's Weekly, Woodiwiss firmly denied the characterization of her books as erotic, maintaining that she wrote only "love storiesĶwith a little spice." By the time of her death in 2006, Woodiwiss's spicy love stories had sold more than 36 million copies in 13 countries.