Men do have the write stuff for romance!

YOU’D be forgiven for thinking women writers had cornered the market in romantic fiction, with men responsible for most action and horror novels.

But men are turning the tables on the likes of Jilly Cooper, with two of them being crowned winners at the Romantic Novel Awards for the first time since they were founded in 1960.

Crime writer Kerry Wilkinson, 37, won the young adult category with Ten Birthdays, the story of a teenage girl dealing with the death of her mother.

Mystery author Marius Gabriel picked up the gong for best historical novel for The Designer, a novel set in Paris in 1944 about a chance meeting between a US journalist and Christian Dior.

The 67-year-old used the pseudonym Madeleine Ker while writing Mills & Boons novels in the Eighties, but now uses his own name.

Nicola Cornick, chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, said: ‘Women wanted to feel they were reading stories by women for women, but these days that’s old-fashioned.’