This business of finding a way to get across the philosophy behind my stories is particularly important for writers like myself, where our books don't tidily fit niches. While mine are love stories, romances, generally with sex, they aren't just about that. I think of them as hybrids-- running between romances and novels. They are always about things that interest me from lessons in life, to rural living, to art, adventure, and societal issues. Writing lets me spend time with what I love.
Romance is falling in love. The edge is what stands between the couple and a happily ever after. It is not only fiction that has that edge. It is in life. The most praised literary works are mostly about that edge. Romances like mine have it in them but it's not at the center of their purpose.
Romances with an edge are stories of two people coming together and finding something more than either would find alone. It is the soul mate desire to believe we are more when we are with that special one, the other half of ourselves. It is a romantic dream that some find and others dream of.
Of course, in life as with fiction, as much as a soul mate love matters, it's not the only thing that does. Whether someone has it in their own life, they can taste it and get the energy from it through movies, music and books. You can feel it and enhance the energy of your own life by letting it flow through you.
I believe, and it is my goal that it be so, that I write stories of darkness and light, hardness and softness, light and dark, safety and danger; the rose and the thorn; yin and yang. I aim for these stories to be the wheat without the chaff-- stories where the readers don't skip words because they all matter--
romances with an edge.
2 comments:
I think romances like pulp mysteries have always been regarded as escapist literature and not something of value. This is not true, of course. Everything has meaning and value and touches the lives of others. Comic books (now called something else) have been a key to getting children to read more. And within each genre there are outstanding examples. I was a big fan of Science Fiction most of my life and it was regarded as not important literature. If it touches you and your readers, that is important.
I don't necessarily think all that readers like is good but definitely we have different needs at different times and that goes to the art we appreciate also. I have changed a lot through my lifetime for the books I want to read or the art I want on my wall. I roll with it. The one thing I don't do is let someone else tell me what I 'should' read or value in art. I was in the Portland Art Museum some years back and the art on their special display could only be called garbage art. I made a comment about it to the guard who was protecting the exhibits. He just looked at me with shock. Sorry but some art is the Emperor's New Clothes even if the critics praise it to the sky. This is true of literature too. All that is pushed to be the great literature of its day won't necessarily be thought anything but rubbish to the next. One thing about being an artist or a writer is sticking to what you know is your voice and let the opinion of others fall where it does. We can't control it anyway, just that we stay true to our own voice in our fields... and for many of us, there will be multiple fields as there has been with me from painting and sculpture to writing.
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