How to Keep Writing Romance When Your Life is Far From Romantic - Guest Post from Sarah Harvey

Sarah Harvey - welcome to Books with Bunny!  It's a pleasure to have a guest post about writing romance ahead of publication of Sarah's novel 'How to Hook a Husband'. 

 

 

 

Men.  A word that can be said with so many different tones and vocal inflections.  Love them? Hate them? Couldn’t eat a whole one? What would our life be without them?  Well actually the phrase “a whole lot easier” springs to mind straight away, which shows you the state of my love life at the moment, “state” being the operative word, even more so when paired with and following the word “right”.  Recently divorced, slightly acrimoniously, it wasn’t difficult to see where my marriage had gone wrong.  I wanted a partnership, he wanted a dictatorship, I wanted Prince Charming he wanted Cinderella, but still covered in ashes and shackled to the kitchen sink.  Our dreams and desires were so different they just couldn’t coexist.  I wanted children, he didn’t, I wanted to travel, he didn’t, I fell madly in love with a seriously sexy younger German man, oddly enough he wasn’t terribly keen on that idea either.  Unfortunately neither would it seem was the German.  So now here I am, single very, disillusioned very.  I aimed for the fairytale and actually ended up turning into the pumpkin.  And yet my whole working life, my calling I suppose, is dependent on having a serious affinity with love and a firm belief in “happy ever after”.  So how do you do it?  When you just want to spend your days weeping into the warm furry shoulder of your long suffering and constantly damp pet dog, when the sight of happy couples skipping down the street hand in hand, makes you want to pull out a large anti tank gun and blast them into an emotion free oblivion, when picture perfect happy families strolling in the park, make you mutter “bah humbug” like a miserable Scrooge of romance who’s allergic to love instead of Christmas.  When your heart is actually really rather broken?  How on earth do you write about romance?

Well I think to be a romance novelist, you have at heart to be a romantic, and there is something in us romantics that never seems to be completely lost, no matter how lost we feel ourselves.  Even when your own love life is a disaster, there is actually something rather wonderful and cathartic in writing a beautiful love story, with a perfect happy outcome for your hero and heroine, because it reminds of you the something that still remains.  You see whilst there is still blood in your veins, and your old romantic heart is still beating, even though its as limp as a week old stick of celery, whilst you are writing story where love conquers all, it gives you hope, hope that your own story will turn out just as well, that you can write your own life in a way that will be just as wonderful.  So how can you write when your is broken?  Well when that same heart is still full of hope, anything is possible.

 

How to Hook a Husband is published in ebook by Manilla on July 28th, priced £4.99.