August is here! It’s so HOT in Texas, and it is also Read a Romance Month. Advocates, fans and writers come together to support this event that was founded by Bobbi Dumas a few years ago. So, fans of romance I must ask, who was your first? Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Which writer were you exposed to that changed your romantic literary life?
I still remember mine. It was Kathleen Woodiwiss. At the tender age of thirteen, I went to visit my grandmother who lived at the Old Folks Home in town. From across the living room of her small apartment I spotted on the TV stand a dramatic book cover and was captured by the image of an attractive, if windblown, couple who had trouble keeping their clothes on. In fact, the man didn’t have a shirt on at all! And, he didn’t look like other men I had seen without shirts on in my naive Vermont youth. I lifted the book from the stand to read the blurb and was caught red-handed by my grandmother who said with a knowing smile, “Go on and read it. Learn something new.”
Did I ever!?! Three hours later I was a woman. I sighed with cheeks reddened, and was hooked forever with a love of romantic novels. Before that literary moment, there had been childish Nancy Drew, a burgeoning love for spy novels with Tom Clancy but after that I mentally devoured all of my grandmother’s romance novels. In fact, to this day I still have two Kathleen Woodiwiss books in my nightstand that I take out and read occasionally: Ashes in the Wind and A Rose in Winter. I sigh with a light heart and a need for conflict solved by enduring and overwhelming love. Read these stories if you haven’t.
Romance is not for the faint of heart, conflicts and struggles must be overcome for two people to be together. In reading, as it is in life, this is often easier said than done but so joyously wonderful when it happens. Pick up a romance novel and read, discover and become a fan all over again.
I still remember mine. It was Kathleen Woodiwiss. At the tender age of thirteen, I went to visit my grandmother who lived at the Old Folks Home in town. From across the living room of her small apartment I spotted on the TV stand a dramatic book cover and was captured by the image of an attractive, if windblown, couple who had trouble keeping their clothes on. In fact, the man didn’t have a shirt on at all! And, he didn’t look like other men I had seen without shirts on in my naive Vermont youth. I lifted the book from the stand to read the blurb and was caught red-handed by my grandmother who said with a knowing smile, “Go on and read it. Learn something new.”
Did I ever!?! Three hours later I was a woman. I sighed with cheeks reddened, and was hooked forever with a love of romantic novels. Before that literary moment, there had been childish Nancy Drew, a burgeoning love for spy novels with Tom Clancy but after that I mentally devoured all of my grandmother’s romance novels. In fact, to this day I still have two Kathleen Woodiwiss books in my nightstand that I take out and read occasionally: Ashes in the Wind and A Rose in Winter. I sigh with a light heart and a need for conflict solved by enduring and overwhelming love. Read these stories if you haven’t.
Romance is not for the faint of heart, conflicts and struggles must be overcome for two people to be together. In reading, as it is in life, this is often easier said than done but so joyously wonderful when it happens. Pick up a romance novel and read, discover and become a fan all over again.