Love Poems

I wrote a few thousand words in my romance novel. Not nearly as much as I wanted, but more than I had before.

Romance in the office is the topic du jour on Valentine’s Day. This year is no exception as BusinessWeek offers The Ethics of Office Romance. I did enjoy the author’s take:

Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.

Then there is honesty between partners - and while this seems clear cut - "It is good to be honest with your partner" it can get a little less clear cut.

And what about love? No romance has ever matched any other (I gather). Thank goodness! Wouldn’t love be boring if you’d seen it before? If you ever find somebody, please don’t squeeze them into your silly little ideas! I can’t think of a more brutal, heartless method of extinguishing a person. Rather: react, learn and be flexible… if some of your needs aren’t met, find them elsewhere.

i just sent my address to three people i know that are getting married in the next couple of months (so they can send me announcements). it’s lucky i didn’t know that many engaged people when i had no job. one of their relationships started on the internet. don’t worry they dated a relatively long time face-to-face (in comparison to plenty of other people i know). one of the relationships started via some phone calls back and forth between two people who were rekindling a friendship that had never morphed into romance due to an age difference. in the intervening years they had gotten older and that stopped mattering. the other couple were high school sweethearts who had since moved on until they decided to give it another try.

This is where I got to thinking about male romance writers. One of the reasons I love to read and write romance novels is because of the heroes. They are a larger than life female fantasy. Can our male counterparts really understand the level of this fantasy? Or does it make them even a better writer. If the latter is the case, then this bags the question, “Why do males who are like our heroes, not exist?”, if they apparently are fully aware of what makes the perfect man. And if anyone reading this truly knows a man who could be a walking, breathing, living example of a romance hero, please send me a detailed email for research on my next project!

When differences go unresolved and a break-up is final, the love in one’s heart turns against its host and practically chokes one to death with undiluted emotion, but is never kind enough to grant death.

We could start things all over from scratch
and put it all behind us, move it outside and close the blinders
but it doesn’t work that way, you can’t erase an emotion
placing a notion like that might seem hard life facing an ocean
of cold facts, keep tripping over your own tracks
when you feel like a derailed train hit with a poll tax…

From The Wonderful World of Longmire; Re-Written Romance Novel covers. Here is a collection of the ones that made me blow pepsi through my nose.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni spins a complex web of human relationships. Her forte is giving words to human emotions – affection, sorrow, guilt, romance, passion, lust, compassion, jealousy – and making you a part of the character’s life in the process. She draws vibrant images with her sensual words.

Lately, though, Mr. Havens has been contemplating steps that would take him away from Brown and campus ministry. After a chaste romance - "I didn't kiss her until I asked her to marry me," he said - he recently became engaged to a missionary colleague, Liz Chalmers. He has been thinking about how to support the children they hope to have.

I went to baggage claim where Brad and I had agreed to meet, and he was looking for me in the wrong direction so I got to completely sneak up on him, which was fun. While we were hugging, I noticed that he was standing really close to someone else’s luggage, not a suitcase, but some kind of instrument case, which is when I finally saw the man with the trumpet, who proceeded to play a trumpet fanfare in my honor! Brad and I have an old, good joke between us, which is that when he’s working and I come into the room, I’d like a flourish...

Link: Longmire does Romance Novels.

Mark Longmire makes fun of Romance Novels. Mostly, their ridiculous covers. Funny stuff.

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Find the Love of Your Life

(and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

I read Redeeming Love in high school, and it is still one of my favorite romances.

On the surface this is a romance novel about Angel and Michael. Angel's life was horrific, sold into prostitution at a young age, she's rescued by Michael, and forced into marriage with him. Forced because she doesn't want to marry him. She's perfectly happy with her life and any change terrifies her. She'd rather stay with the familiar than step out and try something new.

April 10, 2005 in Christian Fiction, Romance | Permalink

It’s also my take on the romance genre. The death of romance, pah. What’s down? Sales of mass market paperbacks. But what’s up? Sales of trade paperbacks and ebooks! I don’t believe for a minute that romance is in a downward trend. I think people’s buying habits have shifted to different formats, but it’s still romance that’s selling in trade and ebook. Um, and hardcover. Let’s not forget that one.

I hear all these grumbles about how this, that and the other thing is “killing” the genre. Romance doesn’t die easily. It’s about something central to who we are as human beings, the need to love and be loved. And it’s also about faith in the future, the “happily ever after", the idea that life can be good and the future can be good. Not gloom and doom. So all this gloom and doom mumbo jumbo is just, well, anti-romance!

Yes, it’s hard to find a really, really good romance. It’s hard to find excellence in ANY field, which is why it’s sought after by consumers and strived for by the worker. In the case of romance, the worker is the author striving to get it right, to deliver the goods and achieve excellence and the consumer is the reader who wants the promises inherent in a romance to be fulfilled. There are awards and so on to recognize excellence in every field of human endeavor precisely because it isn’t the norm. The norm is “pretty...

Romantic comedies follow a definite formula, and it's a real trip to see a film that not only acknowledges this but works within it to create a truly bizarre send-up of all those cliches. The narrator steps us through the process, from meeting the heroine to the uncovering of the horrible villains and the heroic couple's Happily Ever After ending. Although the characters occasional rebel, the narrator brings them to heel and the result is a hilariously meta romantic comedy.

Tips and Tricks to Writing Romance by Mary Beth Lee is a collection of writing tips for beginning romance writers. Part of the Red River Romance Writers site.

IDEA # 1
If your partner is going away for a few days, tell her that you are worried about her so you have organized a bodyguard to look after her. Then give her a small teddy bear.

IDEA # 2
Buy a packet of glow in the dark stars and stick the stars on the roof above your bed to spell out a message such as "I Love You" When the lights go down, your message will be revealed!

IDEA # 3
On a special occasion, buy your partner eleven real red roses and one artificial red rose. Place the artificial rose in the center of the bouquet. Attach a card that says: "I will love you until the last rose fades."

IDEA # 4
Buy the domain name of your partner's name if it is available for example www.TanyaJohnston.com. Create a web page containing a romantic poem and a picture of a rose. When your partner is surfing the web, casually ask whether she has ever checked to see whether her domain name is taken. Let her type it in to discover her page.

Office romance was a hot topic in the media this month, as editors scrambled to fill pages with articles appropriate to Valentine's Day.

Consensus is that office romance is on the rise due to an increase in the number of single workers (up 18 percent in the past decade, according to CNN) and the number of women -- both married and single -- in the workplace.

Members of my immediate family suffer from this same syndrome.

I am crazy. I know they say that really insane people never think of themselves as nuts, but I'm sure 'they' (whoever they are) can make an exception for me.

You see, after all the agonising and dithering, I am officially off romance books. Or trying to be off.

When I went home early last month, I brought back all those I had stored at home. Then I packed them all - ALL - in two boxes, and last week donated one box to the company's jumble sale. The other box is sitting in my house.

Did you see that? - It's sitting in my house.

For some reason the week after I did all this, I was tremendously busy and didn't even have time to think about romance books, let alone read them. And the week after that was OK too.

But the third week, which just happens to be last week, I lapsed. Instead of just picking the blasted box up, putting it in my car, and driving it to the office, I opened BOTH boxes, went through the books, and chose those I really wouldn't miss if I never saw them again. In the process, I discovered five books I'd rented from a store that has a "no time limit" return policy. And so I took them out of the box to return them and get my deposit back.

And then... yup, you guessed it. I read three of them.