The author of Sunset Beach (2009) and Beach Dreams (2008), Trish Perry lives in Northern Virginia with her hilarious teenaged son. She discovered her love of writing while earning a degree in Psychology. She switched career paths in 1997 and never looked back. Her debut novel, The Guy I’m Not Dating, placed second in the 2007 FHL Inspirational Readers’ Choice Contest, and her second novel, Too Good to Be True, finaled in the 2008 FHL IRCC, the GRW Maggie Awards, and LCRW’s Barclay Gold Awards.

If you write—or hope to write—Christian romance, you should be aware of its pitfalls. I don’t mean the pitfalls of writing romance. I mean the pitfalls of romance itself.

No, this is neither a racy column nor a public service announcement. But if we’re going to have our heroes and heroines smooching, we need to understand the dangers.

For example, we don’t want our dear heroines to suffer as did a twenty-something sweetheart in the Guangdong province of southern China recently. Apparently her boyfriend wasn’t the most suave fellow in the province. He managed to kiss her strongly enough to render her deaf. And, no, he wasn’t kissing her ear. This was a lip-to-lip injury.

Imagine that lovely scene in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, when the star-crossed lovers first meet at the Capulet shindig. Romeo boldly takes Juliet’s hand. Juliet sweetly chastises him for being so forward. Romeo—no dummy, he—offers to make it all better by kissing her hand. Juliet argues that hands are for praying. Romeo counters that lips are for praying, too, and he leans in for the kill. Juliet throws out something about the saints being the ones who pray, and they don’t move while they do it, neither, bubb.

JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.

ROMEO: Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

[And right here is where he plants one on her.]

JULIET: Then have my lips the sin that they have took?

[Crafty boy Romeo uses this as an opportunity for kiss number two.]

ROMEO: Sin from thy lips? O, trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.

[Kiss number two ensues.]

JULIET: Ow! Doggone it, boy, I think you’ve gone and broken my eardrum! Fie, thou bootless reeling-ripe whey-face!

I’m no expert on the proper atmospheric pressure of a kiss, but I would say there’s something a little off about a liplock so well sealed it ruptures one’s eardrum. The poor girl in the Guangdong province thought she was out for a romantic evening with her boyfriend but found herself deaf and hospital bound by night’s end.

Dr. Li of the Zhuhai Second People’s Hospital, who treated her, described the kiss thus: “The inner ear is connected to the mouth through a tube, whose chief function is to equalize the pressure between the two. The kiss reduced pressure in the mouth, pulled the eardrum out, and caused the breakdown of the ear.”

Why, doctor, how you do turn a girl’s head. I believe I’m gettin’ a case of the vapors!

The China Daily newspaper ran the story, adding, “While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution.”

So you’ve been warned, people. And you’d best warn your romantic characters as well. Tell your heroine, in the heart of her next romantic scene, to croon to her true love, “Yes, kiss me now, darling! Proceed with caution!”

I hope she’ll listen up—while she still can.