Sigh, a Wedding

PLEASE NOTE: I am running my first-ever contest. To learn more, click on the little blue "Contest" tag at right. Welcome!

My writing career began with a Silhouette Romance (#702, BENEATH SIERRA SKIES, in February 1990) and then another and another. Before I really knew I was a novelist, I was a romance novelist.

And then, after eight romances, I wanted to write something different. I still believed in romance (heck, after 41 years of marriage to the same great guy, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool believer!) and I still saw the power in stories of couples overcoming differences to work in tandem. (Think of it as a metaphor: If a he and a she can overcome their most basic differences to cooperate, why can't groups, corporations, nations, worlds! But I digress.)

My latest book, A SECRET FAMILY RECIPE, has a few romantic elements. There is a long-married couple who are still mushy about each other. There's a young couple cooperating in their first joint venture, due in about six months. But it's a family story, not a romance, and I loved working on it.

The current work-in-progress is a mystery with some fun paranormal elements and I'm having a great time creating it.

Still as I write, I'm preparing for a family wedding, the joining of a much loved nephew and his adorable perfect match. (Congratulations, Sean and Ashley!) And there's nothing like a wedding to put me in the mood to write romance again.

In fact, I'm thinking that Sarah Kimball's little sister, Baby Ruth from RIGHT CLICK, should be just about ready to find somebody. Hmmm.....

Stay tuned for more on RIGHT FACE, now in progress.

Setting Sail into the Future

PLEASE NOTE: I am running my first-ever contest. To learn more, click on the little blue "Contest" tag at right. Welcome!

In some manner of speaking, each of us, each moment of each day, is "setting sail into the future." Yet there are times and occasions where the change is obvious.

A wedding is one of those marked changes, and as I write, I'm on my way to see a nephew married.

Sean has grown up with my children. We think of him as a close part of our extended family and we thrill to see him marrying a darling girl who seems his perfect match. Someone asked me the other day if I had any advice for the new couple.

Where would I start? What have I learned in decades of marriage and more decades of observing other marriages that I could convey in a bumper sticker to a couple of kids who have seen little of the world?

"Be good to each other. Be patient. Remember that if you are having to put up with him (her), he/she is also having to put up with you." Oh yeah, I can think of some things, but what does any of that really mean to kids in their 20s?

It meant little to me when I was making my choice of a life partner, nor is it likely to mean much to them.

Perhaps the best advice anyone can give them is to make a mental snapshot of how they feel about one another as they take their vows, hold that emotional image in mind and call it up again in bad moments that come in the future, because they will have moments. We all do.

Congratulations, Sean and Ashley. May you always love each other as much as you do today and daily love each other more.