What Is It About Weddings?

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

September is our wedding month this year. No, I don’t mean The Husband and I are getting married (we did that almost fifteen wonderful years ago) or that it’s our anniversary, which is in the spring. No, this month is when two of our friends each decided to marry and, as they are dear friends indeed, we are going to the weddings.

Which sounds a lot easier than it actually is. The first is in Boston, which is a looong way from Texas. The second happens on the very next weekend in Alabama, which is also a looong way from Texas. Now you know I love to travel, but I really do like to be able to draw breath between trips! We’ll be home for one day between Boston and Alabama – barely enough time to do laundry and re-pack, as each ceremony will need a different style of wardrobe. We’re flying to Boston and I’m not looking forward to it; flying just isn’t any fun anymore, as I truly dislike being treated like a piece of not-too-intelligent nor valued cargo. We’re driving to Alabama, having rediscovered the pleasures of automobile trips by driving to Denver in June for my appearance at the Historical Novel Society.

But we’re going to both weddings happily, which made me think about what weddings mean. Mainly, I believe, it is because a wedding is a joyous occasion. Two people are promising each other and vowing to God that they will live the rest of their lives together. Yes, I know about the divorce rate and all the uglinesses that can happen, but humans are creatures of hope, therefore weddings are the essence of new starts. The days of the forced marriage are happily over (save in some of our novels, and even those usually work out happily in the end) and to see two people pledge themselves to each other is in its own way a symbol of renewal even in our own lives.

In most romance novels the culminatory wedding – or the promise of the same – is the climax, where the happily-ever-after begins. I have always thought that was a disservice to the idea of romance, symbolizing that the romance ends at the wedding, that magically everything will be sunlight and roses from that moment on. I believe the wedding is where the romance really starts. Falling in love is a magical thing, the blending of two disparate people into a loving couple, but the real magic happens after the wedding, when this couple must live in the world of reality.

I know, reality is what most readers want to escape from when they choose a book, but the best stories are the ones that have some grounding in real-world situations, albeit frosted with the gloss of fantasy. It’s easy to be romantic when everyone is dressed in beautiful clothes and the world is full of rosebuds and sunshine, where the worst that can happen is their lovely picnic is rained out. Now don’t get huffy with me – I know it’s the style in modern romance novels to throw everything at the hero and heroine from spies to pregnancy to abuse to looming apocalypse, but those are just macrocosms of the courtship meme. In real life you get unsympathetic family members, financial problems, differences in background and all other kinds of obstacles. In romance they are replaced with murderers and other figures/problems/obstacles. They’re symbols. At least, I hope so.

After the wedding reality truly does come home – money and pregnancy and jobs and crying children and moves and possible infidelity – all the nasties which flesh is heir to. Keeping romance alive under those situations is difficult, both in fiction and in real life. Is marriage really worth it?

Of course it is. A good marriage is the Holy Grail of relationships, the Valhalla of commitment. It’s why the majority of romance novels lead toward a wedding as the culmination of the story. They just don’t tell you that’s where the real love story begins.

The Big "C" Visited Me

Uninvited.

Undetected.

Unsuspected…there is no family history, you see.

Uterine Cancer is the fourth main cause of death in women so I’m sharing details in hopes that you can protect yourselves. Search for the the symptoms for cancer that were on Yahoo front page last week. But don’t let that be your only guide.  I only had two of those symptoms.

Fatigue…if you’re juggling family, job and writing then you’re bound to be exhausted. No surprise there.

Spotting…there is absolutely “No Bleeding Allowed” after menopause. I picked up a box of books, felt pain and then spotting. A Pap smear taken the same day as my biopsy came back normal. But the biopsy didn’t.

I am lucky. The surgeon found no attachment of the tumor to the uterus lining or any cells. Other than being larger than he would hope I seem to have a bright outlook.

My GP said lifting the box of books had nothing to do with the spotting…I choose to believe differently. You and I know we share a special karma with books and two weeks after surgery I’m itching to crawl back into my story in progress when the fog in my brain clears.

So stay alert about your health. Be your own best health advocate. Know your body and seek medical help if you have any suspicious signs. Stay safe.

And read…

So what are some of the good books you are reading now?

                                                REUNIONS

What is it about school reunions that we find so intriguing? For a romance writer, it’s a great vehicle for a love story. The book practically writes itself.  Our heroine decides, albeit nervously, to go to her high school reunion.  She thinks about that boy she knew in school… Might be that she dumped him and now she’s sorry, maybe he dumped her and she never got over it, or, just as interesting, she and the boy were best friends all through high school but always dated others.  The years pass, she gets on with her life, maybe even marries, but she never quite forgets that boy. Things don’t work out so well for our heroine. The marriage didn’t last or she never married.  Then comes the announcement, her high school reunion.  She thinks of the boy and wonders if he’ll be there.  She wonders what happened to him over the years.  She might Google him and search for a recent photo to see if he looks the same.  IShe is happy to see the years have been kind.  You can guess the rest, including the ending where our heroine and the boy find that, even after all these years, they are each other’s soul mate.

My high school reunion was this summer.  But my scenario is quite different since I went to an all girls’ school. I didn’t think about any one particular individual, but wondered if, besides my two friends who I’d kept in touch with, I’d have anything to say to anyone else.  I wondered too if many people would attend.  As in the case with many single sex schools, because enrollment was down, the school closed about five years ago.  I worried how that would have an impact on who would make the effort.

In fact was there was a huge turnout.  People flew in from all over the country.  Instead of deadly awkward silence during the two meals and reception, my classmates and I bustled around talking to everyone.  The cliques, and it’s a given that there were some, practically disappeared. We were all thrilled to reconnect or, more likely at least in some cases, connect for the first time.

I talked to and sat with people I’d never spoken to during my four years of high school and found in many cases that I’d more in common with people I’d hardly known back then than I had with some of my present day closest friends. We had gone to The Academy and it seemed our shared experience had indelibly shaped us.

As I said, it was an all girls school, it was also a Catholic school, with certain values that were taken as a given.  I’d also thought that I was the product of my parents and the home they raised me. What I learned over that weekend reunion is that this little high school on Long Island also had a big impact on me, on my values, and helped to shape my personality.

One of my wish it had been different was that I didn’t go to the public school in my small town.  I always regretted that I hadn’t been more a part of my community, didn’t walk to and from school with my friends or date boys that were in my class. It’s why I felt so strongly that my children go to the local public school. 

What I discovered at my reunion was the value of what I did experience. There was in that little school an emphasis on how important and powerful women can be in the world.  Considering the time, the mid-60’s, my parents’ decision to send me might have been exactly right and the lessons I learned at The Academy were just what was needed for my future. My story is not a love story, but nonetheless, another chapter in self-development.

Deborah Nolan is the author of SUDDENLY LILY and CONFLICT OF INTEREST both published by Montlake and SECOND ACT FOR CARRIE ARMSTRONG published by Desert Breeze Publishing. 

.

Reading Romance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

The usual saying goes a little differently: “Distance makes the heart grow fonder” or its opposing sentiment, “Familiarity breeds contempt” but writers are always on the lookout for a different way of seeing the everyday.

To make our work fresh and unique, we scour our brains for ways of saying what ultimately is the same truth — the truth that has been told by our predecessors from the first instance that one human spoke to another member of the cave-dwelling group about an experience they would all need to understand to survive.

In tales of romance, the element of survival may not seem quite as drastic as how to wrangle with a saber-tooth tiger or avoid eating those poisonous berries that look so delicious. But the human heart — technically a mere symbol of the miasma of emotions we cope with every day — can cause the most dire of consequences to arise from what some consider trivial events.

Falling in love, for many of us, is one of the moments in our lives that carries with it all the elements of human drama: comedic and tragic. Romantic love is not for the faint of heart nor is it in any way limited by circumstance. Each couple experiencing the wonder of finding the one-in-six-billion person who is their perfect match can testify to the miraculous phenomenon — that overwhelming elation of supreme good fortune. The ultimate “I can’t believe this has happened to me” moment.

Along with that elation comes the doubt — “This can’t be happening to me - I don’t deserve this - This can’t be love” — when you wish you’d never met this person.

Although Romance, as a genre, is often denigrated as “fluff,” “trivial,” “inconsequential,” most of this criticism comes from a misplaced sense of intellectual superiority. When I entered the Creative Writing Program at my university, I did so with the objective of writing “important” novels. I took classes in every aspect of writing the meaningful short story to the construction of the meaningful novel.

Try as I did, I wrote …“and they lived happily ever after.” The optimistic ending is in my nature, probably a result of my childhood spent in reading the classic fairy tales of world literature but more probably related to my “cup half full,” “walking on sunshine” point of view.

“Important” novels are those that drag the reader into a downward spiral of misery and hardship. “Frivolous” books lift readers up, provide “the air beneath their wings.”

I know which I’d rather write and read. Life is hard, why make it harder?  

THE YEAR AS AN EGG

 by Fran McNabb

If you look at a calendar for the year, you realize there’s a nice pattern and a calming sense of familiarity to the names of holidays spread throughout the year: New Year’s Day, Valentines, Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

 The holidays can be expected on or near the same dates each year, and with that regularity, most people find a sense of stability. We know when to pull out our white shorts for the summer, when to start searching for Christmas gifts or school supplies, and when to think about cleaning the fine china for Thanksgiving dinner.

This is the end of August, the closing moments of the summer months and the beginning of school and football season. When I taught school, our lives revolved around the school’s calendar. As soon as it was given to me, I sat down with our family calendar and marked the days when school would be out. My husband would then book his time for vacation according to our days off.

For those of you who work jobs or own businesses, you have no idea what it feels like to be on a set schedule. I was lucky. My husband’s job and my job both marched along pretty regularly.

I am a visual person, someone who learns best and understands the world through visual

images. I saw my school year as the shape of an egg lying on its side. The small end was Christmas and New Years and the wide end was the summer months. Today, as a retired school teacher, I still visualize it that way, but now my life doesn’t revolve around the school calendar. In fact, this year school buses were rolling before I realized schools had opened their doors.

 Life goes on whether you’re involved in it or not. Hubby and I still think about plans for our year, but they’re not set in stone. We’re retired.  For the most part, we can do what we want when we want, but every once in a while, I stop and remember when life wasn’t like that.

I feel so blessed for our good health and energy to still do things we want to do, and my wish to all of you who are still working is that one day you can also enjoy your carefree days of retirement. My egg is still visible to me, but some days I have to remind myself that my life isn’t controlled by a school calendar anymore.

Hmmm, maybe I should try to see the year as a different shape. Nope. My year has been an egg for so long there’s no way that my old brain cells would see it any other way.

No matter – whatever you’re doing at the end of this summer, I hope it leads to a wonderful fall because that leads to winter and that leads spring – get the picture?

 

 

Fran McNabb writes light romances and has just finished the final round of edits for KEEPING HOPE ALIVE, a romantic suspense and her eighth published book. She lives along the Gulf Coast with her husband and spends her retirement years writing, painting, and boating. Visit her at www.FranMcNabb.com or contact her at mcnabbf@bellsouth.net.

 

 

  

Writing around the day job

Like many writers I know, I write around the work I am paid to do—the “day job.” While I don’t mean for the writing to take a back seat, that often seems to be the result. I’ve been in publishing for over 25 years, have 13 titles available (most still in print) and a 14^th in the final stages of production. I maintain a website and have a paid publicist/web designer who sometimes earns more than I do. Nevertheless, criticism about the “dilettantes” and “hobbyists” in the writing world still makes me squirm.

Is it guilt because I know I could probably find a few more hours a week if I was willing to sacrifice sleep or couple time with my honey or the few small efforts I make in the community? Am I squirming because I sometimes hit periods of exhaustion when the words won’t come or occasionally suffer crises of confidence that make me erase everything on the screen? Or am I worried I may really be treating the work as if it were my hobby and not the one thing I’ve aspired all my life to do?

I suspect the answer is D. All of the above. If I were brave enough, perhaps I could break free of the day job and live with the consequences until the royalties began flowing in. Then again, what if they don’t? See? I’m back to that crisis of confidence again.

The stories are many and varied about the writers who’ve lived in their cars or on other people’s couches (J.K. Rowling being the current favorite) because they believed so fully in their own work. Did the world have hostages it held until the royalties came? Because I did: I had a family. And since I still have people in my life, even if they aren’t dependent anymore, I still have hostages—at least to some degree.

For now I’m going to go on writing fiction around the day job and creating fantasies in my head about being brave enough to leap. Maybe those will be the best stories of all.

Susan Aylworth is the author of 13 published novels and has a part in three boxed sets, all 16 titles available now. Mother to seven, she is "gramma" to 24. She lives in northern California with her husband of 45 years and the two spoiled cats they serve. She loves hearing from readers @SusanAylworth, at  www.susanaylworth.com, or susan.aylworth.author@gmail.com. You can also follow her on Pinterest and Instagram.

Teaching an Old Dog

by Gina Ardito

Tomorrow's my birthday. I'll be (gasp!) 53. Spare me the comments about how I don't look my age. I don't mention the day because I'm fishing for compliments. What I really wanted to say is that, even at my (venerable) age, I still have to remain flexible with fate. Because fate seems to love jerking my chain. I'm officially an old dog still learning new tricks.

Life never remains constant. Today is my last day at a job I've had for more than a decade. I've been in this industry for four decades and starting Monday, I'll be trying my wings at something else. No longer will I be able to joke that I work for Satan (health insurance, so yeah, it ain't too far from the truth).

Two days from now, I'll be dropping my youngest child off at college and will come home to a much quieter house (but with more food in it).

I honestly didn't expect 2015 to be the year of so much change (there's more, but it's not my story to tell. Suffice it to say, the last six months have thrown my family topsy-turvy in many ways). But it seems that's just how it happens. You're moving along on your usual path, and suddenly, you hit a detour. You negotiate that turn, and there's another up ahead. And another. Until when you look up again, you realize your path has led you somewhere entirely different than where you thought you'd be.

In "The Princess Bride," Westley, in his Dread Pirate Roberts persona, tells Buttercup, "Life is pain." I beg to differ. Life is change. The days we'll remember when we're looking back are not the days where we got up, went to work, came home, did some chores, watched a little TV and went to bed. We'll recall the milestones: the days that were different, the days that changed us. The birth of children, the death of loved ones, trips and vacations, the end of or respite from the usual grind. 

Go ahead, fate. I'm ready.

As John Lennon sang in Beautiful Boy, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

Enjoy your life, my friends. Live it fully, no matter where it takes you.