As you may already know, I have finished writing two historical romance novels. I have the cover photography. Either could be coming your way within weeks.
Unfortunately, everything is taking longer than I planned. I usually take a few weeks off in July to spend with family. In August, I had Covid (again)–and it lasted much of the month.
You’d think I could write during an illness. After all I’m just lying there in bed. But No! I just slept and listened to books. No writing.
Finally September for romance, right? Not quite. Our home went under contract at the first of the month. It took all of September to pack, move, and clean.
It’s the nicest home we’ve ever lived in. We know this new family will be so happy here.
Our plan was to downsize. We thought we would build, but somewhere during that time, we found this little gem.
Okay, the gem is a diamond in the rough. It needs a little love. But I believe in love. So, you might be getting some renovation updates from time to time. But, we fell in love with the area. The house sits in the middle of a very large, quiet lot with breathtaking mountain views. We close at the end of October.
So, October for romance. (We are at the cabin, and that is always a good thing for my writing).
Watch here for romance novel updates, samples, and news of publishing!
Someone told me recently that they didn’t like books with any romance. It made me a little sad because everyone needs a little romance.
But it also made me a little philoshophical about stories and relationships.
Some say there are only seven possible types of conflict used in any story.
person vs. person
person vs. him or herself
person vs. nature
person vs. society
person vs. technology
person vs. supernatural world
person vs. destiny
Person vs. person is obviously a story about a relationship, no matter what genre we’re reading. Sometimes it’s about love, but sometimes it’s adversarial or competitive. If so, it may end with someone winning and someone losing, but it is still about people learning about each other and dealing with each other.
A story with person vs. him or herself conflict is about that important relationship with ourselves.
The other 5 kinds of conflict might seem trickier at first. But if our main character is dealing with nature, society, technology, the supernatural world, or destiny, three things can be true of that story.
Either that conflicting thing is anthropomorphized–given human characteristics. In this case, the story becomes, in effect, a person vs. person conflict. (Moby Dick, by Herman Melville).
Although in this very complex novel, we meet more than one type of conflict. Ahab vs. Moby Dick (a malevolent God or destiny), but it is also about Ishmael, Queequeg, and the other sailors, their relationships with each other and with themselves. And it is about Ahab’s relationship with himself, his anger and fear.
Another possibility is that that entity (society or technology, etc.) is embodied or typified by one person. (President Snow in Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins becomes the figurehead for a society).
I wonder if, at heart, all of these faceless conflicts are really about our main character learning about him or herself. The story just happens to be set in a world of technology or supernatural happenings, or the other conflicting entities.
(Think about Louie in Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. The outward conflict with his captors is at the forefront, but what he learns about himself might be what makes the story so enduring).
I’ll add this: If the conflict is person vs destiny (or possibly sometimes vs supernatural), it might be about a relationship with some kind of divine presence–still a relationship.
This is a theory, which means you might prove me wrong. I’d love to hear what you think. Have you ever read or viewed a story that isn’t about relationships?
A phrase I hear more often is: Write to Market. This means try to find what is trending/what is selling and write that kind of story.
But I really prefer the first.
But what exactly does it mean? When I invite you into the world I’ve created, what journey do I want you to embark on ? What experiences will you have with my characters?
And I have to ask about the journey I want to go on as well. Where should writing/creating take me?
Part of the meaning of the phrase, write to mission, has to be building my world (my day to day world, my author world, and my fictional worlds) grounded in my values.
So, here I’ll try to list a few of those values.
I believe that love is the key–to everything good. Love is the answer, not only in a good story, but in life.
It’s easy to recognize love in the sweet, joyful times. Those moments of deep and meaningful connection and sharing are exhilarating and exquisite.
But love is also the answer in the middle of difficulties and disagreements. It requires respect, sacrifice, forgiveness, and compromise, but it’s worth it. Because love solves problems. Or, when a problems can’t be solved (and some challenges are long term), love helps us to understand and bear the load. And share the load. It gives us the strength to go on.
And I’m speaking here about both love for ourselves as well as love for others. Honesty and trust, courage, commitment, loyalty, fidelity, serving, nurturing and caring. All are part of love. I believe in these. I hope for these things.
At home and in the world, love conquers all.
These beliefs are the foundation of my life and writing, and the foundation of my stories.
I think you must share my belief in love and my hope that love will win in the end.
I bet you have stories of what love has done or allowed you to do in your life. I’d love to hear your stories of love, in the good times and the bad.
We fall in love, and everything is wonderful. But let’s be honest, the world intrudes. Sometimes things get hard. But we still have that hope that love can endure?
. . . Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
That’s the dream in real life. Even if we don’t get that dream, or get to keep that dream, that’s the ideal, the wish, the hope. And that’s what we want in our romance books, isn’t it? A love we can believe will endure.
In a chest of tools that might build that kind of lasting love, the ability to laugh has to be included. Humor allows us to live with the little idiosyncrasies in our partner. It allows us to weather those tempests of life. It builds common experiences and a common language.
On top of all that, it is healthy to laugh. I won’t list the research, but we must laugh more.
Believing this, I try to include some humorous situations or dialogue in each of my novels and novellas. While I’m writing those parts, I am chuckling, or smirking, or laughing out loud. But humor is such a subjective thing. Every time I write something I think is funny, I ask myself: But will that reader laugh?
So, I’d love to hear what you think is funny. When was the last time you just guffawed, in real life or in response to a book, movie, or show? What situations in your life make you roll your eyes and chuckle? What ironies make you shake your head with a helpless titter? What did someone say that surprised a laugh out of you?
I’d love you to share. You never know, you may find a similar situation, conversation, or experience in one of my romance novels in the future.
Do you have a song? One particular song that represents the beginning or flowering of your romance. How did it become your song? Do you play it on special occasions? Or do you just remember vividly when you chance to hear it?
What is it about music that speaks to us so powerfully?
I don’t understand it, but that power isn’t new. Archeologists have found flutes made of bones and mammoth ivory that are over 40,000 years old. But instruments and song may be older than that. Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man, suggested that our language abilities may have started with singing–a long and deep foundation for our pleasure in music.
Scientist say that making music aids in the development of reasoning and language, improves coordination and creative thinking among other things. And most of us began learning reading skills by singing the ABCs. We tend to remember what we learn through song.
Who hasn’t experienced that vivid, sensual (in the context of senses) memory brought through music? Do you remember tastes, colors, smells associated with certain music?
A few years ago, my husband and I attended the funeral for the mother of a good friend of his. He had spent a lot of time in their home, and she had made him feel a part of their family. The funeral was a sweet tribute to her and a celebration of her life.
Gideon’s Quilt
I was touched me by the stories that her grandchildren told of letters she sent to them on their birthdays every year. In those once a year birthday letters she would reminisce about what she did and how she felt when she was their age. What a precious gift this woman left to her children and grandchildren.
I would like to say that I started right then to write birthday letters to my grandchildren. I didn’t. First, I’m not sure I could remember enough about my childhood to accurately describe what I did and how I felt. And I felt a little like I was starting too late (which looking back I realize is ridiculous). Regardless, I didn’t do it.
What special, personal, intimate gifts you give to your loved ones-your family, your dear friends? I’d love to hear from you.
Luciana’s Quilt
One thing I have done is make a quilt for each of my grandbabies. I haven’t always been timely with this gift, but before they turn two, they have a quilt from Mimi.
Taze’s Quilt
Juniper’s Quilt
In my family, this has been an exercise in quilt binging because the babies seem to come in batches. So a few years ago and again this last two months, I made five baby quilts.
I hope you enjoy seeing what I do when I’m not writing, researching, or reading.
Recently Fiddler on the Roof came up in a conversation with my granddaughter. The chorus of this song has been running through my mind ever since:
Sunrise, sunset Sunrise, sunset Swiftly flow the days Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers Blossoming even as we gaze
Sunrise, sunset Sunrise, sunset Swiftly fly the years One season following another Laiden with happiness and tears
SUNRISE, SUNSET Composed By Jerry Bock, Lyrics By Sheldon Harnick
As the evening air begins to cool and the trees change colors in the mountains, I’ve been looking back. It’s been a full summer. Many of you have posted your hikes, vacations, family reunions, milestones. Some have shared struggles or illness, sadness or doubts. I’ve had a little of both happiness and tears this summer too.
As the season changes, take a moment with me and measure how far you’ve come. Did you try something new this summer or take a next step on our planned journey? Or have you experienced one of those surprising twists that changed your direction and forced you to make new plans? What have you learned? How have you changed? I’d love to hear about it. Comment below.
And I invite you to write about it. Amazing insights and even more growth happen when I write my thoughts and experiences.
Now look forward with me. More than January, September always feels like the beginning of a new year. What do you want to happen this Fall/Winter? What do you want to learn? What habits to establish? What relationships to build, heal, or improve? What do you want to accomplish spiritually, socially, physically, intellectually/mentally? I’d love to hear about this too.
Swiftly flow the days Swiftly fly the years One season following another Laiden with happiness and tears
SUNRISE, SUNSET By Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick
Maybe–I hope–if we take a few moments to think about, write about, talk about the past season and the one coming, the passage of time won’t seem such a blur. We can make time slow down. We can twist it and turn it, look at it from all sides and from the inside out.
It might only be for a few moments and then time will speed up again and we’ll be right in the middle of the movement and sound and demands of our lives, but maybe it will all look just a little different after our step out of time.
Take a breath. Maybe another.
Okay. Back to life. I look forward to a new season of growth with you.
We also had a family reunion. Health kept my father from attending, but all my siblings were there. Most of their children (and ours) were there. Most of their grandchildren (and ours) were there. We have not been together for–well, I can’t remember the last time. We talked, we reminisced, we played games, we took family pictures in a cow pasture. It was so much fun.
While we were gone, our basement flooded–a lot! Two of our sons pulled back the carpet, vacuumed the water, and started the fans. Then they came down to the reunion.
Then on the way home, another son had car trouble. So, we stopped at the cabin and spent the night. The next day we loaded his car on the trailer and started home together.
The story isn’t finished. On the way home, our pick-up threw a rod. I hate that I know what this is. I hope you never find out. I will tell you this: The pick-up is dead. The only way to fix it is to rebuild the engine or replace it. (And it is an older, high mileage truck. It’s not worth doing).
This meant that another of our sons had to come to the little town about 40 miles from home and hook the trailer up to his vehicle and tow it home.
We got home and the basement had flooded again. And today, with the help of one of our sons, we get to go and pick up the useless pick-up.
And I haven’t even mentioned the cost of this little weekend. Nor the fact that I somehow left my phone at the cabin, nor the complaint of one neighbor that caused the city to send us a notice about parking our trailer, when it’s not at the cabin, by the side of our house.
Two paragraphs about some really great things. Seven about some really awful things. But the good things were amazing, and look at how lucky we are to have four of our five living sons available and so willing to give us a hand. That has to be added to the good things, doesn’t it?
Still, I find myself thinking more about how to work through and recover from all the bad luck, and not nearly enough time remembering the good stuff.
How do you do it? Because, let’s be honest. Somehow this bad stuff will pass. We’ll fix the basement. We’ll live without a pick-up for awhile until we can save some money and find one we can afford. (We gotta have one while we’re renovating the cabin). Life will go on, and mostly our life is pretty wonderful. So how do we remember that? How do we think more on the connections with our family, and our achievements, and the kindness of friends and neighbors (who offer to help and loan us their chains and come-alongs)?
I’m sitting in my very comfortable living room in my really beautiful house, with a computer on my lap, and I’m writing. That needs to go in the good column. I am pretty healthy. In a few minutes I’ll go into the kitchen and eat. There is food in my kitchen–plenty really. We have a car. We have work we enjoy, mostly. We have family and friends. We have a lifetime of rich experiences and joyful memories.
Bad stuff happens, sure. And this isn’t anywhere near the worst we’ve experienced. But we have so much good in our life. I want to remember that, even in the midst of the difficult times. How do you do it?
Always family! But for us, July has become a month of increased family togetherness. This means food and talk and a hundred, okay up to 23, kids running around.
We celebrate our country’s birth with games, fireworks, and more food.
Jordan and Natalie for the Corn; Trevor is the man on the smoker.
Savannah made the rolls
Lexy made the salad;
And for most of the month, I will only write in small pockets of time when things are quiet, or I can sit in a corner (often in the middle of confusion) and ignore the present world and go to Regency England in my mind. The last novel in my Illusions series will inch along through the month of July, but I’ll enjoy my family.
I wish you a happy fourth of July! I hope you’re with people you love, in a comfortable place, with good food to eat.
She is an adventurous one, and a planner. (This makes it sooo easy for me). So the two of us flew to the coast and spent a few days adventuring as she had planned.
We walked through Balboa Park. We ate and shopped in the Gaslamp quarter. We spent a day on Coronado (more about that later). We went to the beach in La Jolla.
But a definite highlight of the trip was the day we sailed out to go whale watching. And please if you go to San Diego, you should definitely go out with these guys: https://nextlevelsailing.com/
They were great. The sailboat was incredibly beautiful. Seeing the whales was amazing. The whole day was indescribably wonderful.
I was fascinated and watched closely as the crew lifted the sails. (Maybe I could write off the cost of the trip as research. After all my main character in The Lies We Tell–which goes live in the next two or three weeks–must sail a boat for a short distance along the Southern English coast). Her sailboat is much smaller of course, but I got a taste of what she would see and hear and feel. I loved the whip and crack of the wind in the sails, the rolling and rocking of the deck as the waves beat against the hull. And the sky and the sea were breathtakingly expansive, in a way I don’t think you could ever get on land.
It did make me wonder, as we watched a rare Sunfish breach and the dolphins race along with us, and of course as the two blue whales crested and fluked, what would my characters see in the English channel. Since coming home I’ve looked into it a little. I’ve included many of the birds and animals along the coast. But in the sea, my heroine might see dolphins and porpoises. A Minke whale sighting is not uncommon in the English channel.
Now, Amelia doesn’t go far from the coast, but Sidonie, the main character in The Masks We Wear (Book three of the Illusions series, coming this fall) will be secretly crossing the channel into Napoleonic France. Maybe in the quiet of her night’s crossing, she should see a whale. After my birthday adventure, I’m inclined to give her that awe-inspiring experience.
I’d love to hear your experiences on the ocean. Or if you experience vicariously, what books have you read that have a good sailing scene in them?
