Between the cat food and the diapers in most North American supermarkets lurks a haven of verdant passion.

It's the aisle for romance novels and its customer in 2007 is nearly always female, but just as likely to be a woman of colour as a Caucasian soccer mom.

Kayla Perrin's Everlasting Love came out on the Arabesque imprint.

Publishing houses across North American are creating new lines of romances aimed at people of Asian and African descent, according to Brian Miller, a Seattle journalist who follows the market for romance novels.

"So much of romance has been English and set in the past, whereas people of colour were the great other across the waves," he told CBC cultural affairs show Q.

But sales of bodice-rippers have been declining and the publishers have seen great opportunity in selling to a whole new group of romance seekers.

"Publishing moves slowly," Miller said, but the addition of new imprints to cater to ethnic readers has burgeoned in the last few years.

Harlequin published its first romance by and about African Americans with Sandra Kitt's Adam and Eva in 1985, and now has imprints such as Kimani devoted to racially diverse characters.

But even in the early 1990s, it was rare to see a black character in romance fiction, said Kayla Perrin, a Toronto-based writer of Caribbean descent who has penned 31 novels.

"When I started writing romances, there was nothing to compare in terms of trying to write a story with black characters. In fact, the first novel I wrote featured white characters because I saw no ethnic characters in any of the romances," she told CBC Radio.

That was before the creation of U.S. publishing houses such as Kensington and Genesis Press that cater to women of colour.

"There's a lot of black readers who stopped reading the Harlequin romances because they never saw themselves projected," Perrin said.

Non-Caucasian readers like the more contemporary stories, but like all romance lovers, they prefer to focus on the love story rather than the ethnic details, she said.

Interracial books longer to take off

While there are now several publishing houses with lines devoted to black readers, interracial relationships have been a while in coming, she said.

"For example, the book I wrote called Getting Even has two black characters and one white character and they were all good friends," Perrin said.

"I took that to an editor in New York who was publishing other books of mine and she asked me, 'Why is there a white girl in this book?' Coming from Toronto, a hugely multicultural diverse city, I was baffled by the comment."

But her editor at Harlequin loved the book.

"He loved the diversity, because it was real life," Perrin said.

Perrin's next novel is Single Mama Drama, the start of a new series for Mira, another Harlequin imprint, featuring Miami single mother Vanessa Cain.