The Month of Love

In my early twenties, before I even considered publication, I tried writing my first novel. I've always been a big fan of the movies of the 1930's - all that fast, great dialogue - and I thought there should be novels like that. So I tried writing one.

I set it in the '30's and I had my hero and heroine zing all over town, foiling mobsters and solving mysteries and dodging bullets. The plot made no sense - I barely understood it myself - but I was having a good time.

In one scene, the hero ended up at the heroine's apartment one evening and saw her in her ratty old bathrobe. The next day, he wrote her a note that furthered the plot - this book was all plot - and, before I could stop him, he wrote at the end: "Get rid of that old robe, it's awful. P.S. On second thought, don't change a damn thing."

I looked down at that line and realized that he was in love with her. Then I looked back at my other scenes - she kept claiming to hate him, but could never quite stay away - and realized she was in love with him, too.

At that point I had to admit that, despite disdaining them and never having read one in my life, I was in the middle of writing a romance.

It wasn't the easiest way to go about it. I had to go backward and learn my genre properly before I started my next novel. But, once I started reading them - and once I started writing them with an idea of what I was doing - I never looked back.

It's the honest truth when I say that, even if I never see publication, I'll still be doing this. I've learned over the last year that the entire industry is full of shit - but the writing never is. And there is nothing, nothing more fun, or more fulfilling, than writing about love.

Happy early Valentine's Day,
Abby