ESCAPE INTO ROMANCE AND DANGER

Did you ever have one of those days? Or a lot of those days? Days when you thought your head would explode at the monotony of your life? You rise at the same time each day, go through the same morning ritual, then it’s onto your job. Maybe you’re a corporate drone and cubicle dweller as I was. Mind-numbing. Boring.

Many a morning as I drove to work, I’d fantasize about something extraordinary happening to relieve the boredom. I don’t mean any earth-shattering event, or anyone’s getting hurt. Just something different. Like I’d come upon a bank robbery in progress and be taken hostage by one of the robbers. Oh, wait, I could get hurt. I didn’t want to escape my cubicle-dwelling world that badly. Maybe the robber is really a sexy undercover FBI agent. That led to other kinds of fantasies I won’t go into. But you get my drift.

Escape, romance, danger. Don’t we all need a little of that in our lives? My life isn’t altogether boring, and of course, I’ll take mundane over dangerous. But isn’t it fun to escape once in a while?

That’s where reading comes in. It gives me the escape I crave. As a child, I devoured everything I could find to read – cereal boxes, billboards, clothes tags. It didn’t matter. If it had words on it, I was hooked. Reading opened a whole new world to me and allowed my imagination to soar.

Within the pages of a book, we can be the FBI heroine fighting a deep secret from her past while trying to bring the bad guys to justice. Or we can be the ordinary woman thrust into extraordinary circumstances, caught up in international intrigue and murder. Or we can go back in history and be a young, unmarried daughter of a duke who wants freedom from the constraints of the rigid mores of her class.

And then there are time travels. I love them. Don’t you? I love fantasizing about going back to a time before all our modern conveniences and learning to deal with a more primitive way of living. I’d probably fall apart if I time-traveled, but the heroes and heroines in the time-travel romances I read always cope with their new environment. And they find love along the way. Pure escapism.

Paranormal books and movies are scorching hot now. There are the Twilight movies and books and Harry Potter and the vampire shows on TV. Some popular culture experts say the uncertainty in the modern world makes people gravitate toward the supernatural. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe the paranormal taps into that dark part of us that civilization can’t completely suppress. I enjoy reading paranormal romances. I love witch stories and shifter stories and fallen angel stories. Vampire stories - not so much. I’m afraid of vamps and believe they exist.

Regardless of what sub-genre I read, a good love story is central. I crave happy endings as much as I crave escapism. If, in addition to the romance, the book also has twists and turns, a mystery, maybe a murder or two, and a ghost, werewolf, or witch, that’s even better.

Do you sigh when reading a hot romance and imagine yourself in the arms of that handsome rake of a duke, that sexy tortured werewolf, that pirate who wants to plunder your charms? Then you know what I mean.

Do you ever fantasize about escaping your routine world? And when you do, do you pick up a book and allow it to fly you to exotic places? I hope you do.

I feel like going to Regency England today so I’ll read that book about the duke’s restless daughter. Tomorrow I might want to meet a sexy werewolf. And after that, I may just meet that hunky FBI agent who’s working undercover and takes me hostage.

What about you? What are you reading?

A WRITER’S LIFE: GLAMOROUS PARTIES, EXOTIC TRAVEL, JEWELS, COUTURE CLOTHES--NOT!

As I write this, I’m sitting on the terrace of my mansion on the island of Mustique. The blue-green waters of the Caribbean swirl below and lap at the pink-tinted sand. Hunky native boys wearing loincloths dive from the cliffs facing my sprawling house.

My gorgeous houseboy brings lunch on a silver tray. Lobster bisque and fresh sea scallops, delicately grilled, on a bed of jasmine rice. Yum! A bottle of Italian pinot grigio complements the meal. And for dessert, lemon cheesecake. My cook has outdone herself again.

My two beautiful daughters are in Paris attending the couture shows. They dropped out of college, but who cares? They don’t need an education or jobs. My writing income will keep them in couture for the rest of their lives. Every major fashion magazine loves to publish pictures of them partying their way
around the world.

My agent just called with the news that my publisher has offered another multi-million dollar contract for my latest romance novel.

Ah, the life of a romance novelist.

Not!

I shake my head and wake up from my fantasy. I’m not in the Caribbean, but sitting at my desk in my small office. Rather than blue-green water, I face a window overlooking the spindly rose garden. It’s winter and all the roses are gone. I once saw a fox bury a dead squirrel under one of the bushes. That’s about as exciting as it gets around here.

Sure, there are romance authors who make scads of money and could afford that mansion overlooking the Caribbean. There’s no doubt they worked very hard to get there. My hat is certainly off to them and their success.

For the vast majority of us writers, though, life is much different. I liken romance writing to the entertainment industry. In the movie business, there are those actors who make the mega bucks. You know who they are: Brad, Angelina, Jennifer, etc. You get the picture. Then, there are the thousands of actors who struggle for jobs and eek out an existence working for Starbucks between acting roles. Some of these actors eventually make a living at acting, but we barely know their names. As tough as it is, most won’t give up acting because they love their chosen work.

It’s the same with writers. Some of us will never publish; some of us will publish one or two books with small presses and make minimal money, maybe enough for a few lattes at Starbucks. But we won’t give up. We can’t give up. We love writing. There are stories in our heads crying to get out. We can’t not write. I know that last line is a double negative, but it says it so well.

Let me tell you about a day in this writer’s life. And it doesn’t include a house in the Caribbean and hunky houseboys. Or a cook who makes lobster bisque. I’m the cook and I don’t know how to make lobster bisque.

When I was a corporate drone and cubicle dweller, I wrote every lunch hour at my desk. I squeezed in writing every Tuesday night and every Sunday afternoon. It was all I could manage, but I was organized and I wrote five books while working full time. I published two of those books.

Now that I’m no longer working, I’m not so organized. I wish I could make myself sit at the computer by eight every morning and write away. But I had to be to work by eight a.m. five days a week for decades and I now enjoy my leisurely breakfasts too much. Much as I love writing I need balance in my life, so I’ve devised a schedule of sorts. Four days a week are devoted to writing, with time out to go to the gym. Exercise is very important, especially with such a sedentary occupation as writing. I manage to write between five and six hours on my “writing” days.

I have a house to maintain and meals to cook and food to buy. And my husband actually expects me to talk to him once in a while. Plus, there’s my fat black sweetheart of a cat, Killer, who craves my attention. She comes into my office during the day, crying for me to pet her or walk her to her food bowl. How can I resist those big yellow eyes?

Left alone, I’d never leave the house, but spend every waking hour writing.

Balance. We all need it.

Therefore, three days a week I devote to everything else that doesn’t involve writing: cleaning, food shopping, doctor’s appointments, hairdresser appointments, etc. Even on my supposedly “non-writing” days, I manage to keep up with emails, do online promo and squeeze in a little writing.

Where do I write? In the aforementioned office. I do have a very nice side porch though, overlooking the driveway. On warm days I take my laptop to the porch. Until two years ago, I wrote at a desk in the crowded, dark basement. My husband and I converted a spare bedroom on the first floor into my office.

Not a very exciting life by a long shot, is it?

So what’s my point? Writers, especially romance writers, are compelled to write because we love the genre, love the written word, love those sexy heroes and the happily-ever-afters. We don’t need the fabulous lifestyles of the rich and famous, although we wouldn’t turn it down. Our imaginations will transport us to that house on the Caribbean, to that ranch out West, to glamorous cities, and lovely small towns. Our imaginations will take us back in time to Ancient Rome, Medieval France, the American West. We’ve got a wealth of stories knocking around our heads, a plethora of evil villains and beautiful, strong heroines fighting for freedom and for love.

We’re rich, after all. That’s the life of a writer.

PS-I love Starbucks, and their lattes are awesome.

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