Lofty Aspirations

You will never hear me say that I write literature, or Lit-ra-choor as I prefer to phrase it. Seeing that most people don’t read literature unless they are in college and Faulkner is force-fed to them in order to graduate, I don’t feel any burning desire to write dreary tomes contemplating what life is all about.

I don’t claim to write the Great American Novel, Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee already did that. That’s not to say that it can’t be done again as CIDER HOUSE RULES by John Irving is pretty darn close. Seeing that this novel deals with abortion, an orphanage, and societies close-minded ideas regarding sex, that doesn’t intrigue me to write about that either.

I’ll leave the high-brow topics to those better suited than I.

I don’t write books that will change the world, I write books that come from my heart. I write about real people with real problems as they stumble through life and hopefully, find that one love that awaits them. I endeavor to catapult the reader into a world of romance and intrigue that they can relate to but that is completely unlike their day-to-day life.

I write escapism fiction.

I’ve lost count of the times that romance novels have saved my sanity. At some of the worst moments of my life I have picked up a book and allowed myself to be whisked away by the exploits of the hero and heroine. Sometimes, we just need that breathing space and that is what I try to provide.

Recently I received an email from a reader that stated, ‘thank you for saving my Christmas.’ According to this letter, the writer had lost her fiancé at Christmas time several years before and her way of coping was to keep her head down and muscle her way through the holidays. She’d entered a contest and won a copy of LAST KISS, a novella about a vampire hero who looked for his one true love (a mortal) as she’d lived out her various lives. This writer said to me, ‘thank you for making me believe that my fiancé and I will be reunited some day.’

It just doesn’t get any better than that.

I’m grateful every day of my life that I’m a writer - that I have been gifted with the ability to tell an engaging tale and to change the world, one life at a time, starting with my own. To those who would poo-poo romance novels, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Reading anything - romance novels, literature or cereal boxes is one of the best things a person can do to expand their mind and better their life.

Like I said – It just doesn’t get any better….