Friday, October 14, 2005

**why do I write romance?**

I write romance for the same reason I’ve read romance for years: I love the genre. I love losing myself in the challenges and trials of two characters who are destined to be together.
I guess I want to believe that there’s somebody for everyone, and that under just the right circumstances and with a bit of that magic we call romance, happily-ever-afters are within our reach.
Before you scoff and call me a Pollyanna, I assure you I’m enough in tune with reality to lock my doors and warn my children of strangers. I watch the news and I see the state of our world. But what do we have if we don’t have hope?
Romance is all about hope.
After my fourth book, Saint or Sinner, was released, I received the most memorable letter I’ve ever received from a reader. She told me how much she’d enjoyed my book, how she identified with the characters and how she’d cried for the heroine. Like the character in my story, she’d been stalked and beaten by someone who should have loved her. Unlike my character however, the reader has permanent nerve damage to her arm. Her story touched me so deeply that it brought tears to my eyes and gave me pause to think over what I was doing.
I sat at my desk thinking how shallow my work is. I make all this stuff up! I order peoples’ lives about and manipulate them to suit my plots, but it’s all fiction.
While I sit in my lovely office, sipping cup after cup of coffee and munching M&Ms, and blissfully typing away, out there in the world people are experiencing devastating hurts and losses and traumas.
That thinking lasted about ten minutes. And then I realized why this young woman had been touched so profoundly by my story. She said she hoped that some day she would meet a man like Joshua, a man who would love her. She had hope.
Romance is about hope.
We invest our time in the characters in these stories because we know that no matter what dilemmas befall them, no matter what obstacles they face or which conflicts arise, in the end, love will conquer all; good will win over evil; and a happily-ever-after will prevail.
Each of us hopes there is that special someone out there, the man or woman who will love us and fill that place created in our heart just for them. Romance brings that hope to life, and through the stories of love and commitment, we experience the fulfillment of the human dream.

8 comments:

  1. Just to say that I realy enjoyed Saint or Sinner when it came out. It was a very hopeful book.

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  2. Thank you, Michelle. Joshua is one of my all-time favorite heroes.

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  3. Hi Cheryl. Thanks for writing about love and romance. I don't know what I'd do without my books in this genre. Whenever life is beating me up I can open a romance and it cheers me up. I also wanted to thank you very much for writing an interracial romance. Love is not about race or color and I'm so glad that more writers are reflecting that in their stories. Thanks for taking a chance and doing it also. And I love those virgin heroes! Keep them coming.

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  4. Danielle, your message blessed me, thank you. Reading is my escape from life, too. Thanks for mentioning CHILD OF HER HEART. I've receieved a lot of positive mail about that story.

    I'm holding a contest until the end of the month -- an entry for each comment here. Please send me your email address so I can enter you.

    Thanks! SaintJohn@aol.com

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  5. That's certainly true. Without Romance, romance books and authors whose imagination brings forth these wonderful stories, the world would collapse!

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  6. Many of what you said about romance is what I feel too. I love happy endings and how they offer hope. When you said, "I guess I want to believe that there’s somebody for everyone, and that under just the right circumstances and with a bit of that magic we call romance, happily-ever-afters are within our reach" it was as if you were describing my feelings. Of course I would not have be so eloquent when I expressed myself. I just wanted to say thanks for writing and for offering us readers "hope."
    Thanks, jennylynn1216@yahoo.com

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  7. Hi Cheryl,
    I enjoyed reading your Blogspot it was very interesting and a touching story about Saint or Sinner. I don't have The Truth about Toby I think it is the only one that I don't have. I will have to rectify that pretty quick.
    Thanks for all the great books that you have written I have enjoyed them very much.
    Wendy H
    kw24@persona.ca

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  8. Saint or Sinner was one of my faves, too. I have to agree that it's all about HOPE.

    Without hope, what have we got? Basically, we've got nothing.

    Please keep the books coming so we can continue to have hope for the future.

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