Beneath the Covers,Past
A Romance Column

The Genre of Romance: The Romance in Me

    I am a very romantic person; I love romance; I read romance; I crave romance; I believe in love at first sight; I am waiting for my soul mate; I know romance exists. I think I am addicted to romance.

    I love when a man walks down the street, and he stops when he sees the most beautiful woman across the room. He’s spell-bound, captured by her beauty; muted and frozen to the spot; and in love. He has met the woman he’s going to spend the duration of his life with. The two meet, court, and then get married, and they live happily ever after.

   Who are we fooling? Does it really happen this way? I think so, and I do believe.

    Romance is the apple to my banana; the ice cream to my cone; the syrup on my fattening pancakes, and the bacon to my eggs. I love romance.

     In my debut book, I CONFESS, I wrote twenty-two short stories of romance, and most of my characters find love in all the right and wrong places. I want my characters to find love against all odds. I make it happen which is why I love writing and reading romance novels.

    I’d say that I’ve been in love twice in my life. I was in a bookstore reading, and he was in the same bookstore reading. He was already at his table, and I was browsing the many books, trying to figure out my five purchases for the day. They had so many books so how could you choose?

    I finally found the five I wanted, paid for them, and then went to find a table to take a break. I began reading the first book, and then something kept irritating me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I left my book and stared around the bookstore, and then there he was.

     The man with the green eyes was actually staring at me. He had the most memorizing eyes, and I thought I was going to fall out of my chair or do something quite embarrassing to my existence. I couldn’t look away, and he didn’t bother hiding that he was staring at me.

     I finally found the nerve to finish reading when I looked up about five minutes later, still reading the same page. The man with the green eyes was right upon me and my heart was beating so fast, I thought I was going to die on the spot, and it would have been a great send off.

    He sat down, we exchanged the preliminaries of meeting someone, and six months later we got married, and living happily ever after. It does happen and romance does exist. I am proof positive.

    I can sum up romance in an excerpt from one of my many short stories.

“I was a thirty-seven year old woman, searching for love and romance, and at the end of July, finally I met Robert. I was getting off work at 4:00 in the afternoon, walking across the street to the bus stop. It was a hot day, and I couldn’t wait to get home to shower and change into a pair of shorts and a cool top. Then I would plant myself in front of the air conditioner to watch my favorite soap operas, which I taped every day.”

“Seeing Robert that day, and by chance again for the next two days, at the bus stop was a wonderful surprise. I was thinking about making the first move, but rejection was a big concern for me because I wasn’t petite. The man was clearly looking at me, but I was tired of just that. I wanted more. I longed to get to know him.”

“However, as we got off the bus on our third encounter, no words were exchanged? I told my best friend Rachel about him, and she told me to ask him out. I peered daggers at her as if she was actually losing her mind. There was no way I was going to get rejected, so my mouth was sealed. I believed that since he was the man, that he should make the first move. If not, then he wasn’t the one for me. I was so depressed that weekend after meeting the handsome stranger.”

“It was Wednesday of the next week when the handsome stranger finally had the nerve to talk to me. I was on the bus, sitting in the back”…(Will My Jealousy End Our Hot Affair – Jive Magazine, November 2000 issue, My first published short story).

      Suffice to say Robert and I finally rocked our worlds and then some, and romance was the key to the ingredient of our love, and then marriage. So the genre of romance is popular and it depicts the revolution of everlasting love for all eternity. Believe me, romance is real!

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