The funny thing is, that actually reminded me--one of my ideas for how I could become a professional writer? Was actually to enter into that exact genre. Shortly after reading the Twilight Saga and hearing all of the negative feedback about the books' myriad of flaws (I happen to think the main problem is simply that the stories were overhyped; both sides exaggerated, because the story is quite nice in some ways yet the criticisms quite accurate in others), and that got me thinking.
"If she could do it, surely I could?"
And yes. I actually did get an idea together on how to do so. Writing romance has never been my strong-suit. Almost all my stories (in fact I think literally every single one of them?) has a love interest involved. Like, I basically go out of my way to write love interests for the protagonist, so there's romance in theory--it's just something which always largely got skipped. Except for a few rare awkward occasions which were ridiculously forced and broke the narrative.
...But, while I've never written a story that was romance-centered...I always thought I was up for the challenge. In fact, I actually figured out a really really really REALLY neat story idea (maybe not the most original as I later learned but my implication of it might be), and was able to more or less mentally map out how the romance story would go.
And then I decided I would make a trilogy, each focusing on the same basic concept but different characters.
Then I decided I'd write an extra book about the first two characters.
Then I realized the final book in the trilogy was left open-ended so I could write as many sequels there as I wanted.
To some extent, there was a genre shift. The first book was basically all romance. The second book was romance with mystery mixed in. The third book was romance with some mystery and also a lot of action/adventure, closer to my normal genre, and something I could continue to write further adventures in.
...But still at the heart of the series is the trashy romance novel idea. I still find the idea fascinating. I legitimately think I could write them and have them do okay. Maybe they wouldn't be big-name books like the Twilight Saga. But they'd get my name out there to publishers.
I never wrote a word for them (except for an Arc Word transcending the trilogy as the main moniker of the entire series), but I got them close enough to figured out where I could probably write them start to finish just by giving the characters names (which I didn't), a more detailed fleshed-out setting/plot, and basically just...actually kept writing them, something I tend not to do.
I think the main reason I didn't is because I was already committed to writing something else at the time and figured it wasn't necessary (because it honestly isn't), butstill, I think the idea is neat and it does intrigue me. So yes. Some day, I might in fact join the ranks of the many published authors who have written trashy romance novel books.