Busyness

I haven't written a blog post in a long time.  Not since the beginning of October.  My excuse is simple.  Just pure busyness.  An overused excuse perhaps, but valid.

Soon after my last blog post we went to Disneyland to celebrate my sister's 30th birthday!  It was so much fun with my family, my sister's family, our parents and our dear friend, Meghan.  I brought my computer along.  I thought I might have time to write, but it was no use.  We got up early to get to the park as soon as we could after it opened, stayed until the park closed and fell into an exhausted sleep almost as soon as we got back to our room.  It wasn't a relaxing trip, but we had a blast!

After getting back I focused on finishing up writing my Christmas novella.  I wanted to get it finished by the end of October so that hopefully I could have it edited and published by Thanksgiving.  I wrote in any free moment I had which sometimes did not seem like nearly enough.  My house is evidence that I took moments that weren't really "free" because I should have been doing laundry or dishes, but instead I was writing.  However, I got it finished this week!  I need to go through and do my editing before sending it off to be edited further, but I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  This is always the exciting part where I can see the fruits of my labors ripening.  Soon they'll be ready for harvest.  (Seems like an appropriate metaphor for fall, doesn't it?)

It's been interesting to see how I can write more quickly with each book.  My first book, Best Laid Plans, took five years for me to write (and is the shortest of all the KW Consulting books by a lot!).  I wrote Smell the Roses in a year and I've written Dress for Success and a Christmas novella this year.  It makes me wonder what I might be capable of doing next year!

Here I am with Ashley and Meghan in front of a "Frozen" backdrop at Disneyland.

What do you write?

Whenever I mention that I just published a new book or that I have published books, the next obvious question is, "So what do you write?" I kind of dread this question.  In fact, it makes me feel embarrassed about my writing.  When I reply, "Christian romance novels", I always duck my head and mumble it.  I love to read the genre and I have so much fun writing these books, but I dread the reaction that I'll get for three reasons.

Christian
As soon as the word "Christian" come out of my mouth, I have people completely shut down.  I can see the look on their face and it says, "I wouldn't touch your book with a ten foot pole".  Or even worse, a feeling that it isn't a "real" genre or book.  Yet Christian novels can have interesting, deep characters as well as secular novels.  Their stories can be as varied and interesting.

Romance
The reaction I get from this is mostly from men.  It's a look of "Aw, how cute."  If I wrote mystery, suspense, drama - almost anything else - they would be impressed, but romance?  Of course a girl would write romance.  Inevitably the teasing will begin as images of the covers of romances in the grocery store come to mind with the bare chested male with the helpless damsel clinging to him.  I hate telling men that I write romance novels.  The common view seems to be that they're the easiest to write and the least important of all the genres.

Novel
I don't get nearly as much negative reaction from this, but there are a few intellectuals out there who would be much more impressed if I wrote theological commentaries or history books.  Instead, I write novels.  The feeling I get is that only untalented writers, nonintellectual writers would write novels - and especially romance novels!

I was realizing how much I dread answering this question as it came up over and over again with the publication of Dress for Success.  Yet, I also get support - mostly from women.  I have women respond with "That's my favorite genre!" or "I love Christian romance!"  Those answers keep me from being completely discouraged.

While thinking about these things, I was reading Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.  Jane Austen got lots of criticism for being a woman author and an author of romance novels at that.  In this book, she says that the main character, Catherine Morland, read novels and followed that statement with this one.  "Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom, so common with novel writers, of degrading, by their contemptuous censure, the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding: and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust.  Alas!  If the heroine of one novel be not patronised by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?  I cannot approve of it. . . . "And what are you reading, Miss - ?" "Oh! it is only a novel!" replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.  "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language."

And so Jane Austen encouraged this new writer nearly two hundred years later.  I will never write a book that becomes a classic like Pride and Prejudice, or works that last for centuries, but I enjoy what I write and I have readers who enjoy reading it.  I strive to get better with each book.  I know I have more to learn.  But I will no longer be ashamed to claim to be a writer of Christian romance novels!  (At least I'll try).

If you are one of the readers who love to read Christian romance novels and you haven't seen my books, you can find them by clicking on the links below.

Best Laid Plans
Smell the Roses
Dress for Success