embracing the first step to recovery

My name is Katherine and I love romance novels.

We’re talking about the “trashy” ones. The dirty, sexy books.  Sure, there is the occasional branching out to paranormal-romance, young adult-romance, suspense-romance, thriller-romance, urban fantasy-romance, etc. (Sensing a theme here?)  But basically I HEA’s and “steamy reads.”  Easily having read several hundred, and owning more than I should, they’re my addiction. I crave them. At my core, I cannot stop the adoration of HEA’s and “steamy reads.”  Every minute free, I’m typically reading romance or watching a romantic film.  The feeling of being weak in the knees, passion, typical boy-meets-girl scenarios, heart-stopping (and drool-inducing) covers that make people blush with one glance at that glossy paper.

The reason for this admission?

I also want to BE a romance novelist.

And what’s the problem? Well, this genre of novels is still not widely accepted as “socially acceptable.” Even today, I can’t bring myself to admit to my own family that I even own such a scandalous type of book. But to move forward with the goal of becoming a great romance novelist, I need to actually admit to those I care about, along with writing peers, about this facet of me.

The link to this particular post was shortly after sent via email to my friends and family.  You could go as far to say this might be my ‘coming out’ party.

But to know me is to understand the facts: I practically INHALE these less-than-clean novels on a daily basis.  I’ve always hidden them from view, changed out the covers, never let someone look at my iPad 2 because of aforementioned drool-inducing covers of such books. But there is a deep need for them to understand this incomprehensible joy I receive from meeting new characters. Enjoying the increased heart rate from their first meet-cute, mourning their loss when the hero and heroine are at odds with one another, only to revel and celebrate at them finding their way back to each other.Until the creation of this blog, admittedly it had been several months since I’d written a single page. After coming to terms with this, (cocktails and tears may have been involved in the healing process), I needed to find a way to commit to my writing as much as possible, and to not lose momentum.  So here’s my attempt at full commitment. I’m embracing the first step to recovery by admitting I have an addiction.
My name is Katherine and I love romance novels.

Daily Writing Challenge

Day 2: Create a character. Write a brief scene of them in a setting. Also use this paragraph to introduce the character to the reader by how they react to their setting.

Margaret chewed the end of her pen while trying to listen to Mr. Anderson give a lecture about…something.  Eyeing the clock all period, which was a few minutes short from the end of the school day, she sighed.  Typically the ideal student, never late, took good notes, and focused, today was different.  When the school bell was to ring, it marked the end of the day, and she wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow. Tomorrow was her birthday and she was dreading it.  This year was going to be even more embarrassing, because she was turning eighteen.

As usual, her Aunt Liesle would wake her up for the annual “Midnight Brownie Birthday Tribute”, which was always welcome.  However, on the evening of each birthday, her aunt and best friend, August typically took her out to some restaurant with bored wait staff singing poorly, and loudly, while making her wear some ridiculous hat. And Liesle had the wall of photos to prove it. This portion of tradition was less welcome.