A Book … or My Book? Rising to the Challenge!

 

Today is Day 6 of the MAGIC UP YOUR BLOG Challenge! If you’d like to join the party, go here: http://bit.ly/1oO4JB4 It’s not too late, just start where we are today!

 

Today I had the choice of writing about my favorite book, or choosing a group of 5 or 10 favorites. That was choice 1. Impossible, right?

Choice 2 was to tell my readers about a book I’ve written. Ooooh. Something I haven’t done yet, since it’s not ready. (I know, how many years until it will be ready? My beta readers are asking that question as well!) Since this is a Blog Challenge, I think pushing myself is the point, so I’m choosing Topic #2. Please be kind.

 

With several books in the pipeline, I had to concentrate on one WIP as the first I would publish, so I chose my least complicated Contemporary Romance novel, that is also the first part of a series.

I read and write Romance for the escape, but primarily for the happily-ever-after guaranteed at the end. There can be tension, and there can be breakups. They can be thrillers, mysteries, very sexy or family approved. But you know they all have happy endings. My own personal inspiration and guide has been Nora Roberts, along with several others of Romance’s great authors.

My personal addition to the genre involves wrapping life lessons into the plot, showing our foibles and how we inherited them, and honoring our strength of character while showcasing our loving and forgiving spirit. That’s the low-down! The down-low is, I try to write them without lessons being obvious. Most readers will just feel they had a sweet summer read – I laughed, I cried, they lived happily ever after. But I’m providing a peek at possibilities behind a door they may have closed at one point of their life.

“The Second-Story Man” asks the age-old question “can the good-girl ever find happiness with the bad-boy she is so attracted to?” And what a bad boy! He breaks into houses for a living. He was raised by his father, a break-in artist and burglar, who has recently died. She is a divorced fourth grade school teacher and single mother, who lived with her grandmother and 8-year-old son until her grandmother’s recent death.

She discovers the intriguing stranger evaluating her grandmother’s antiques in the downstairs apartment, chatting with her son. She had been forced to leave her son home alone while she attended an unplanned, private meeting at school. The roller-coaster ride begins there, where most people would have ended it.

It is a story about second chances, taking responsibility for your life, and making those hard but right choices for yourself and those you love. I hope my readers will be cheering for love to conquer all, and believe that everybody can change if they can find the lighted path. My writing is full of everyday life: dogs, cooking, raising children, friends, work, and building a future. But trouble also comes into our lives in many forms: threats, secrets, deception, crimes, and sometimes, resurrected from our past lives.