My fellow bloggers here at Classic & Cozy have written about their conversations and
tussles with their characters, especially the heroes. Writers do have the
extraordinary privilege of inexhaustible companionship and playmates but I
think Romance writers have the best of all possible outcomes.
We get to fall in love, over and over, time after time, as
often as our imaginations create the heroes who fulfill all our heroines’
dreams. If we, as creators, don’t fall in love with that guy, how can we expect
our heroine to do so?
I’m doubly fortunate in my romantic fictional writing
(triply if you consider my personal, real-life romance, to be revealed in
February). Not only do I have the opportunity to fall in love with men like David Gitano, Eric
Wasserman, Brad Foster and most recently, the soon to be introduced, Mike Argent, I also, writing as Lily Dewaruile, have had the pleasure of
meeting and forming lasting relationships with Medieval Welsh heroes such as Garmon Dolwyddlan and his
younger friend, Geraint Padarn, who cross my mind and swell my heart from time
to time.
However, they have the misfortune of being in competition with my
first love, Jehan-Emíl
deFreveille, hero and patriarch of my first Medieval romance, set in Wales, Book One of the Pendyffryn series, Invasion. But even Jehan could not stop
me from falling for Christophe Maides, his closest friend, who stole my heart
when I least expected to be susceptible, especially not to desperate men,
adventurers, the worst and the best of their profession—9th Century soldiers
of fortune. And Christophe gave way to his father, Gilles de Maides, in the fifth book, Reconciliation, set in Armenia.
Mike Argent, hero of my forthcoming “Americans in Love”
novel, This Can’t Be Love, will soon
leave me, to take his place among the other heroes I have loved and let go, to
woo someone else. I don’t mind. Mike has been a delightful compagnon du coeur, during the many months we have been together, as
was Bradford Foster of Nights Before
fame. I’m sure others will do their best to make up to me for his loss.
I will soon be head over heels in love again. This time with
Jehan-Emíl’s second son, Marshal who takes the stage in Justice. And once I have ensured that this wild young
man is suitably entrenched in a relationship with the shy and studious apothecary,
Tanglwystll, I will abandon him to his fate for the quiet byways of 1870s rural
Maine where the kind and industrious, Evie, will encounter G. Rupert Smith, in Pavane for Miss Marcher.
No doubt Evie will entice Rupert away from me. This is as it
should be since, as soon as I met her, I knew the sort of man she needed to
combat the bullies in her life.
My fickle love life is never-ending. Falling in love with heroes is as natural as breathing, ask any Romance writer.
