Number 15 Makes a ‘Shameless’ Debut : After eight years and 14 romance novels, Suzanne Forster of Newport Beach branches out with a sexy commercial effort.

Romantic Times magazine calls Newport Beach author Suzanne Forster’s new novel, “Shameless,” a “sizzling mainstream debut.”

Her heroine is Jessie Flood, a young woman who scandalized the small California town where she grew up by implicating her friend Luc in a murder. She then married Luc’s wealthy father--a man 30 years her senior--and inherited his vast media empire when he died. Jessie is determined to keep her past buried, but as the novel opens Luc is back--and he is equally determined to dig it up.

After eight years and 14 romance novels, the best-selling Forster has branched out with a sexy commercial women’s novel her publisher is billing as her “breakout” book.

That’s not to say “Shameless” (Berkley; $4.99) doesn’t have many of the elements of a category romance novel.

“If I were to put it into a category I’d probably say it’s romantic-suspense, but with a definite mainstream edge to it,” says Forster, adding that “Shameless” is designed to appeal to both romance fans and a more general readership.

“It’s got plenty of romance, but it also has multiple characters and multiple viewpoints--and the mystery subplot, which is what gives it a wider appeal. It’s a book that’s really about the emotional cost of keeping secrets.”

Ranked as the No. 1 best-selling Bantam Loveswept author, Forster is best-known for being what one reviewer has described as “a stylist who translates sexual tension into sizzle and burn.” In 1992, she received Romantic Times’ Career Achievement Award in Sensuality.

“I like to stress that that award is for my writing, not my personal life,” jokes Forster.

“Shameless,” needless to say, carries on Forster’s signature sensuality: steamy sex scenes, which she admits to enjoy writing.

“I was once quoted as saying the love scenes are exhausting, “ Forster says with a laugh, “and there is some truth to that. It’s really true that when you’re writing them you’re experiencing them to the extent that any writer experiences a scene that they’re writing.”

Forster may be branching out as a novelist, but one things remains constant: She still writes propped up with pillows on her bed, with her computer terminal at her feet.

It’s an old habit, begun when she started writing fiction while recovering from a car accident in 1981.

“I was physically unable to sit up at a desk, so that’s the way I did it,” she recalls. “It seems there are various tricks writers use to get the imagination revved up. I’ve attempted several times to sit at a desk and write, but it never seems to work.”

Forster is currently bedded down working on a new book, “a second big contemporary novel. I’d call this a romantic thriller, but it’s very driven by the suspense plot.”

That, however, doesn’t mean she’s finished writing category romances.

“I really love that form, and I wouldn’t mind at all going back to write more categories, but it’s a question of time,” she says. “I think career-wise it makes more sense to me to devote my time to the bigger books.”