by Darlene Marshall

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about HEA, romance shorthand for “Happily Ever After” endings on romance novels. Two events in particular focused my thoughts in this direction: One is a divorce, the other is the wedding of a young couple.

First the sad story. A couple we know is getting divorced after four decades together. I don’t know the details, because it’s really none of my business, but my husband and I were both shocked to hear the news. My husband in particular was stunned, and gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look:

“I think she left him because she was bored,” he said.

This, naturally, has led me to incorporate a new catch-phrase into my vocabulary. I say to my dear husband of over 30 years, “Careful, you’re starting to bore me…” and it’s amazing what a difference that can make in, oh, all sorts of activities!

But I digress.

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…When There’s Nothing Left to Say

What do you ramble about when there’s nothing left to say?

After you’ve already blogged about the inspiration behind the book…

When you’ve already done interviews here and here and when you’ve already hijacked the forums and blogs of friends. When you’ve got interviews of the characters coming up, ramblings the book going on…what do you say?

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I’m so excited that Bam agreed to hook me up as a guest author on her blog! To mark the occasion, I’ll be giving away two copies of my debut novel, DANGEROUS TO TOUCH. Leave a comment below and you’ll be entered to win.

I didn’t write DANGEROUS TO TOUCH with Harlequin in mind, so the original version had its share of dirty words and inappropriate-for-category content. In case you don’t know, category romances are shorter and less expensive than most other paperbacks. They also tend to be sweet and traditional, but it depends on the line. Harlequin publishes dozens of these every month.

To make a long story short, literally, an editor from Harlequin liked my story. She asked if I would be interested in scaling the book down from single-title length (about 90,000 words) to category length (60,000 words) and submitting it to Silhouette Romantic Suspense.

I said yes. Breaking into this business is difficult, and to be honest, I didn’t have any other offers.

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and the winner is… Lightlyfell. Lightlyfell, you get a free download of Measure of a Man. Yay! Please email me, so we can hook you up. Woohoo.

How do you feel about romances with a happy for now ending? Does the conclusion leave you feeling unsatisfied if you have any doubts about the possibility for a long term relationship for the couple in which you’ve become so emotionally invested? Do you find yourself displeased when all the ends aren’t neatly tied up? Or do you like to carry on the story in your mind, shaping a sequel of your own in which those loose threads begin a new piece of fabric?

“According to the Romance Writers of America, the main plot of a romance novel must revolve around the two people as they develop romantic love for each other and work to build a relationship together. … Furthermore, a romance novel must have an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” - Wikipedia

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By Jenna Petersen

Before an aspiring author is published, one of the things they can do to get feedback and also get their work in front of an editor is to enter contests, which are held by local Romance Writers of America chapters across the country. To enter, the writer sends some amount of money (these are also fundraisers for chapters), three to five copies of the first few chapters of their manuscript and then they wait. Other authors normally judge the preliminary rounds and then finalists are announced. These finalists have their manuscripts sent to romance editors or literary agents, who then rank the winners and occasionally ask to see more of the manuscript.

As you can imagine, these contests, especially ones with prestige, are very popular.

Before I was published, I entered three. I wrote over 10 manuscripts, for 4 years and I entered three. Why? I was never that into the contests, I always worried about too many cooks in my creative kitchen and those things can get expensive. I sold via a query letter that landed me an agent who then sold my work to a publisher. In other words, the old fashioned way.

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