It’s a Friday night. After the stress of a long week, I take a long bath, prepare a pot of tea and get my kindle. There’s just one problem. I’ve got nothing to read. I don’t mean to say I can’t decide which scrumptious story I should read. I mean I have been searching without much success to find a Goldilocks romance. That just right story that doesn’t rely on pages and pages of pen porn to carry the plot; or a starched, sermonizing treatise where romance is an afterthought and passion is a sin.
I do find some success; but it is marginal. Even “faith stories” have swung to exhausting and frustrating extremes. There is the good old church drama where the pastor reigns as crown prince of the harem; and then there is the Bronte-ization of the genre. Heroines are abused and angst abounds to the last page. I would spend hours searching for a good book. Eventually, I begin to entertain the most outrageous idea: write the story you want to read. Write about flawed people who want to do the right thing. Spin tales which celebrate the passion and faith of the Song of Solomon. Perhaps the idea should not have been so outrageous. As a teenager, I used to write short stories and tuck them under my bed. But taking that first leap of faith to write and publish a novel? The thought was terrifying. Readers can savage an author’s labor of love. Or worse, they can completely ignore it.
When I published A Suitable Woman (after two years of staring at the manuscript on my computer) I nervously waited for the first review. I still remember the shrilly, uproarious laughter I belted out when the first review was posted. This is why I write. I want readers to indulge in a guilt-free, faith-filled, thoroughly romantic escape from the harsh realities of the real world-even for a few hours.
Let’s read.