Every story I write goes through a weird transition from being what I think it should be to being what it actually is, and Summer Skin was no exception. For me, early drafts are the equivalent of being locked in a dark room with a creature trying to guess what it is only by touch. Summer Skin felt spiky in places, hard-edged in others, activist in nature . . . so imagine my surprise when my agent remarked casually that I’d written a romance.

I was like, wha . . . ?

Now, my agent is a Boss Goddess who knows her stuff, so I did not question her, dear reader. But I was confused! Because it didn’t feel like a romance. The signs were there: The main characters, Jess and Mitch, definitely had chemistry. Every time they were together I had trouble shutting them up. And if they weren’t fighting, they were flirting.

But I’d set out to write a novel about sex. Not someone’s first time, but the tricky landscape you navigate after that: when you’re trying to work out your terms, what you will and won’t do. The story is set at a college, and Jess finds the culture confronting:

If high school was all about whether or not you’d give it up, college seemed to be about nothing but giving it up. Suddenly, inexplicably, the rules changed, and—bam—you were Adult-with-a-capital-A. There was no means to the end, there was just the end, just sex, and you pretended to keep up.

Sex is suddenly assumed as a given, yet the double standard appears entrenched. To complicate things, Jess might be feeling the flare of her own desire, but the guy in question is a sexist pig. Add to that the influence of porn and social media, and it seemed to me, as far as Jess was concerned, that romance was dead. Jess’s love story, if any, appeared to be more about her and her friends, and her relationship with herself.

Then I had my breakthrough. I realized the scenes that lingered, the ones where I was holding my breath, involved little acts of big risk. Like when Mitch and Jess hold hands for the first time, or when they first kiss. It occurred to me then, that in writing about sex, I was also writing about intimacy. In writing about desire, I was also writing about trust and respect.

And, because of the back-to-front way that Mitch and Jess go about everything, those scenes take place later in the story. So, I had in fact written a romance—just in reverse.

Summer Skin by Kirsty Eagar

Jess Gordon is out for revenge. Last year the jocks from Knights College tried to shame her best friend. This year she and a hand-picked college girl gang are going to get even.

The lesson: Don't mess with Unity College girls.

The target: Blondie, a typical Knights stud, arrogant, cold . . . and smart enough to keep up with Jess.

A neo-riot grrl with a penchant for fanning the flames meets a rugby-playing sexist pig—sworn enemies or two people who happen to find each other when they're at their most vulnerable?

It's all Girl meets Boy, Girl steals from Boy, seduces Boy, ties Boy to a chair, and burns Boy's stuff. Just your typical love story.

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