Showing posts with label happy endings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happy endings. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Get Me to the Wedding by Delsora Lowe


As a romance writer and reader, who doesn’t love weddings?
And June is synonymous with the premier wedding month. Although, I have to say, I vowed never to get married in June. Fall is my favorite month, and I planned that someday I would marry in September or October. My wedding date was June 5. 😊

As anyone who had been involved in a wedding, whether the bride or the bridesmaid, the mother-of-the bride or an excited guest, we know getting to the wedding is a journey.

In my Starlight Grille series, Moonlighting, book three (SPOILER ALERT) ends in a proposal, and books one, The Legacy of Parkers Point, and two, Come Dance With Me, (SPOILER ALERT) end in weddings. It took a lot of community and character building, plus support and encouragement from friends, for each couple to get to their happily-ever-after.
In my new release, The Prince’s Son, book one of the Cowboys of Mineral Springs, (you guessed it) the ending has to do with this subject, BUT I’m not telling you what happens. Book two, The Rancher Needs a Wife, due out this fall, same subject (but again NO SPOILER).
Can you see a theme here? I do love the epitome of a happy ending. My very first book, which remains packed away “under lock and key and under the bed” was inspired by my daughter’s wedding, in the true-life Maine town in which Serenity Harbor (of the Starlight Grille series) was based on.

The twist in this book was the mother-of-the-bride found her own happily-ever-after during the week leading up to the wedding. This book was a book of my heart—my first book and a book about a woman my age (at the time I wrote this book, I was a LOT younger). And someday, when I can find the typed version of the manuscript (somewhere in a packed box), I will rewrite it. Sadly, the whole book got wiped out when a repair person came to update the internet and computer in 2001. But I still remember various parts of the story.
The newest romance trope is writing about “seasoned” characters, as they find love the second time around, a twist on the second chance trope. Although I’ve personally vowed never to marry again 😊, I’m pretty sure if I found the perfect mate, I would.
So, of course, I have thought about weddings for the over-fifty generation. I imagine they will look much different from the weddings of the younger crowd. Probably smaller and more intimate. Not as formal. Perhaps a destination wedding with family and close friends. Or elopement, then a big party. Or maybe no wedding at all. Living in two homes, with partially separate lives as they mold their relationship to fit into long-held, single-status of both, but still wanting to share most of their time together in their own version of a happily-ever-after. The options are endless.
This is the fun of writing about weddings. There are so many variations, that the topic is always fresh. And for those writers who pen series, the love story of a primary set of characters in book one can result in a proposal and wedding in the books that follow. You may have noticed that trend in several Hallmark movies that have turned into a series of movies that end with the wedding.

One of my college friends was married in a tiny, old, and very cold chapel in February, back in the day when New England winters were frigid and the snow was high. The setting and ambiance were breathtaking. Another was married by the ocean. And another in a sweet, old church renovated into a small event venue overlooking a cove filled with working lobster boats.
So much potential. Weddings. Celebrate them, whether in June or October or any other month of the year.

Oooooh, I think I have several wedding story ideas percolating. With that, I’ll say goodbye and start making notes.

Until then, enjoy the myriad of wedding-based romance books and movies that are sure to be released this month.
Tell me if you have a favorite wedding story, fictional or not. Or a favorite dream wedding venue or location.

~ cottages to cabins ~ keep the home fires burning ~Delsora Lowe writes small town sweet romances and contemporary westerns from the mountains of Colorado to the shores of Maine.
Author of the Starlight Grille series, Serenity Harbor Maine novellas, and the Cowboys of Mineral Springs series, Lowe has also authored short romances for Woman’s World magazine.
Social Media Links:

Author website: www.delsoralowe.com
Author FaceBook page: fb.me/delsoraloweauthor
Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Delsora-Lowe/e/B01M61OM39/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
Books2Read Author page: https://www.books2read.com/ap/8GWm98/Delsora-Lowe
BookBub Author Page: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/delsora-lowe-93c6987f-129d-483d-9f5a-abe603876518
Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16045986.Delsora_Lowe

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Monday, November 19, 2012

Mom, Grandma, and Jane Austen


by Christy Carlyle

Strong women? Women who've influenced me? So many spring to mind, from my personal life, from history, and from the literary pantheon. But if I'm honest, there are three that stand out and impact who I am, what I love, and how I live my life more than any others.

Grandma
My grandmother, Phyllis, took care of me when I was little while my mother, Linda, worked. Those two women, one who worked inside the home and one who worked outside of it, are an integral part of who I am today. I still struggle to balance those two identities within myself, with a deep yearning to be a homemaker and a real necessity to be a wage earner. Despite all their other responsibilities, my mom and grandma taught me, loved me, and prepared me for how I should interact with the world.

My grandmother gave me one of the greatest gifts of all. She taught me the alphabet and helped me learn to read. Later, she indulged my love of books and bought them for me regularly. My mother also encouraged my love of reading and let me fill our house with more books than anyone believed I would ever be able to read. Okay, there might still be a few back in Indiana that I have yet to read from cover to cover.

Mom wrote stories. She wrote them out in a steno notebook, but she never made any fuss about them or mentioned a desire to be published. Still, I can’t help thinking that seeing her write had something to do with the young girl I became, a child who spent an inordinate amount of time banging out stories on her mother’s green Hermes typewriter.

Somewhere amidst typed up stories and reading my way through the pile of books I’d found at the library or Goodwill, I came across Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I was in my early teens. I wanted to be Elizabeth Bennet and I wanted her to fall in love with Mr. Darcy. While reading his first proposal scene, I remember feeling a burning in my chest, as if my own heart was breaking rather than his. That was the moment I knew I had to become a romance writer.

Later, in studying all of Austen’s works and her life, I came to admire the woman as much as her writing. She was a diligent writer who believed in her work. She made sacrifices for her writing; some might say too many. She was a brilliant writer who has taught me more about characterization than any craft book I have ever read. And most importantly, her stories always have a happy ending.

If my writing life and my personal life have a happy ending, I know it will be because of the choices I make and the work I do. However, there are three women who influence those choices and my drive to tell stories. My gratitude goes to Mom, Grandma, and Jane Austen.

Who taught you to read or to write? Did they influence you to become a book lover or a writer?
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