Raymond Carver

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.

For me, the perfect romantic suspense hero has got to be tough on the outside but tender at his core. A take-charge kind of guy who has his own inner strength and a strong sense of right and wrong - which might not dovetail with the conventional wisdom. I mean, he might bend the law if he thinks the ends justify the means.