Tag: contemporary-romance

When Giving Up is a Good Thing

I have given up writing my latest Kringle Christmas romance. I don’t like giving things up, but the premise of the book became untenable upon writing.

I had given up writing it once before, feeling that the timing was all wrong. Then I got an idea to expand the time period of the book so that I had more time to develop the relationship. It turns out it wasn’t enough; I don’t have enough time left in the story to develop the downturn of the relationship, where the couple starts second-guessing the relationship and their own fitness for it.

Let me explain: My Christmas romances generally run from a few days before Thanksgiving through mid-December. The relationship develops fast, but I have about three weeks of plot-time to develop the relationship. That’s enough to take them from developing relationship to devolving relationship and through the reconciliation. With Kringle All the Way (the book I just abandoned), the couple had from the 17th through the 25th to get through all those stages. Try as I may, I didn’t have enough time in which to develop the relationship. In a Christmas romance, the happy ending has to happen by Christmas. What’s more depressing than a breakup over Christmas? That’s why the timing is so important.

This is the first story I’ve given up! I have a story that I’ve set aside for a while with a promise to get back to it eventually, but that’s not the same. I don’t enjoy giving up, but this story is fatally flawed. To spend any more time on it is to waste that time. That’s why giving up is sometimes a good thing.

Me and My Romance

I am almost done with Kringle Through the Snow, which is the Kringle (Christmas romance) book I almost didn’t write. I thought I was done with the Kringle series (this makes six of them) until one of my Facebook friends told me I needed to write more. It took little arm-twisting, but I always wonder if the current book is the last.

I never thought I’d write romance. And, in fact, my romance is clean (only implied sex) and funny. It’s much more relationship based, although it promotes the Instalove trope, which means people getting attached quickly; I think because that’s always been my personal experience. There’s also several friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, and one age gap. (Two if you count the 100,000-year-old Su and the 6000-year-old Luke.)

Is romance realistic? It’s not supposed to be. It’s grounded in its society (whether that society be modern American, fantasy, science-fiction, etc) and fantastical in its romance elements. Some of the things that happen in romance would not or should not happen in real life (borderline stalkerish behavior, grooming, teacher-student romances) and some only happen in very defined and conscientious contexts in real life (S&M). Some things that happen in romance are just unrealistic. But romance is a type of fantasy — define the rules of the world and you can dream freely on the other parts.

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