More on RULES FOR ROMANCE

Inspiration for this blog:
The Sometime Bride, written c. 1993, e-published in 2000 by Starlight Writer Publications, soon to be uploaded to Kindle, Smashwords, Nook, Sony, Palm, etc.


As I plowed my way through The Sometime Bride, re-editing all 144,763 words of it, I made a mental list of things I now know not to do when writing a book. But the only things I actually changed were places where experience has given me a better insight into sentence structure. For example, making occasional sentences more active. I left all the other horrible beginner’s “mistakes”exactly as they were.

Why?

Because it’s still the best book I ever wrote.

What did I do “wrong”?

I wrote in the style of the books I had been reading for the previous forty years, not in the style dictated by romance how-to books (which I didn’t know existed).

The Sometime Bride is too long.

The heroine is too young.

Bride is too historical - it even offers historical news bulletins!

The hero and heroine are separated for long periods of time.

The hero and heroine have separate adventures.

Just about everybody has a point of view, which inevitably leads to head-hopping.

The hero commits adultery in the first few pages.

The hero takes the heroine to an herbalist for birth control information.

Foreign languages—Portuguese, Spanish & French—are not translated.

The expediency of war kicks romance to the gutter.


It’s still the best book I ever wrote - the true book of my heart.


I’m sure I’ve failed to mention other broken romance rules, but you get the idea. Bride is a long and challenging read. It’s also fun and fascinating, as we watch a young girl become a woman during the course of the Peninsular War. Cover & blurb will be featured on my next blog.

I hope to have The Sometime Bride ready for upload shortly after I get back from an RWA conference in St. Augustine. If I don’t get lost on the Ghost Tour!

Until then, enjoy the lovely month of October.