It’s been a crazy busy coupla weeks.

So how about something easy and fun for a Friday?

Imagine….

An extraterrestrial being knocks on your front door. This being comes from a planet where love does not exist.

The being asks, “What is love?”

Let’s Talk: How would you answer?

I found out my novel was nominated for Book of the Month over at The Book Club Network. If you read and enjoyed Wildflowers, hop on over to vote! 

The lovely Caroline Starr Rose asks me some fun questions on her blog today. Hop on over for a chance to win a free copy of my book!

If you’re currently reading my book or have read my book and would like to discuss your thoughts/feelings (like whether you love or hate Bethany) with others, check out Christian Fiction Book Club.  

There are a million and one TV romances out there. But here are a few that have caught my attention through the years….

Come on, fess up. Who used to watch Saved by the Bell? In my preteen days, Zack and Kelly were the bee’s knees.

In college, all the girls on my dorm floor would get together and watch Dawson’s Creek. I was totally Team Pacey…

Also Team Ben. But I really liked Noel too!

I dare you to watch these two and not smile…

Rory Gilmore and Logan Huntzberger. Sigh. Why did Gilmore Girls have to end!?

Ultimately, my allegiance lies with Stelena.

My new favorite! Just started watching Friday Night Lights and I’m in love with the relationship between Coach and his wife. In. Love!

Let’s Talk: What are some of your all-time favorite TV couples? 

For a chance to win my debut novel, Wildflowers from Winter, hop on over to Casey  Herringshaw’s blog, where I divulge my favorite part about being a debut novelist.

If you’d like to purchase my book, you can do so on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or these other retail outlets. 

If you’ve read the book or are currently reading it, Christian Fiction Book Club is discussing it online for the entire month! 

For all you local folks, my book launch party is tomorrow at Books-A-Million in Davenport from 1-3 pm. I’d love to see you there! 

Love and marriage. They go together like a horse and carriage…

That song is totally going to be stuck in my head now. 

Oi.

But seriously…

Marriage and love.

Love and marriage.

It’s not a simple thing, is it?

You live with a person long enough and it becomes incredibly easy to take that person for granted.

I promise you, I’m guilty.

Here I am, a romance author, and yet sometimes I feel like I could use a lesson in romance. How’s that for ironic?

I just finished reading Far from Here by Nicole Baart and wow. There are so many things I loved about this novel. The prose. The characters. The story. 

And the poignant, honest moments when the main character, Dani, faced the truth about her marriage. 

Here’s a paragraph that really grabbed me. It comes right after Dani’s husband, Etsell, tells her that she is his home.

I was twenty-one years old. Too young to realize what he was saying to me. Too naive to know that gravity fades. That is dissipates with distance, sometimes becoming a link so weak and tenuous it’s a wonder we continue to orbit each other at all. Etsell and I treated love like a state of being, a law of physics that would exist simply because it always had. I didn’t learn until much later that love is actually a choice. The sort of choice that we have to make every minute of every day, even when we don’t feel like it. Even when all we want is to be anywhere but where we find ourselves.

Because when home is a person, it will always be a moving target.

When I finished reading that part, I had to put the book down and let the words soak. Let them settle.

And when they had, I was convicted.

Not because I don’t choose to love my husband. But because there are days when I don’t show that choice to him.  There are days I’m so wrapped up in my own thing that I neglect him altogether.

Thankfully, he’s a gracious man. A wonderful, amazing man. 

He understands.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t work on getting better.

In different news, I have lots and lots of ARCs to giveaway, thanks to my awesome publisher! So I’d like to do a giveaway today! One random commenter will receive a copy of my debut novel. So comment away! 

Let’s Talk: How do you keep the love alive in a marriage?

Nicole is one of my favorite authors, so I was very excited when she agreed to endorse my debut novel, Wildflowers from Winter. To read her endorsement, click on the link and scroll down. 

I’m totally that person who loves the special features on a DVD. If I like a movie, I will rewatch the entire thing just to hear the commentary.

Which is why I want to offer my readers these fun extras. If they fall in love with Wildflowers from Winter, I want to give them some surprises on my website.

Right now, I’m working on a page for my hero and heroine, titled A Romance Blossoms. 

Only I can’t figure out what I should put on it. I have an inkling. But nothing is solid yet.

Which is why I need your help! 

Imagine you are reading a book or watching a movie. It’s romantic. And you completely fall in love with the hero and heroine. The story ends, only you’re sad. You want more. You want the experience to continue.

Let’s Talk: What special features would you love to see?

I’ll be with junior high students 24/7 this weekend and won’t get home until Sunday afternoon. I’m sure I’ll be too tired to write next week’s blog posts. Instead of taking the week off altogether, I thought it’d be fun to ask some questions. I hope you’ll jump in the conversation!

*photo by Dimitri N

I’m a romance writer, which means I would be remiss if I ignored Valentine’s Day.

Right?

I have to be completely, straight-up honest. Hubby and I don’t really get into Valentine’s Day. We don’t do cards or chocolate or cute little teddy bears. It’s not because we’re not romantic people. It’s more because we’re not holiday people.

Before anyone gasps in shock and horror, let me assure you.

We enjoy holidays. We really do. 

I’m  just saying, there are two types of people in this world.

There are those who go balls to the wall with decorations and festive hats and holiday traditions. Like my aunt Marlene, who has earrings and sweaters and funny head apparel for every holiday known to man. Reindeer antlers and glittery Fourth of July top hats and fuzzy black cat ears. 

Then there are those like me and the hubs. Sometimes we watch fireworks on the Fourth of July. We hardly ever stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. We don’t hand out candy on Halloween because we’re too lazy to keep going to the door every other minute. And we don’t exchange cards on Valentine’s Day.

I will admit though. Our son had a Valentine’s Day party at preschool and everyone exchanged cards. It was incredibly cute watching Brogan choose the Valentine’s he wanted to give his little friends. He picked dinosaurs. When I got them out, he kept trying to play Memory with them.  

But I digress.

The point of this post is to talk about Valentine’s Day. 

And although I just admitted I don’t get into the holiday that much, I do have one Valentine’s Day in particular that I will always, always remember.

Four years ago. New York City.

Hubby and I decided to go for a long weekend.

On the last night, I had a dream that I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. I woke up in our hotel, The Wellington (sounds fancy, doesn’t it?), and was super bummed. I wanted to be pregnant.  So I decided to take a pregnancy test.

And guess what? It was positive!

Four years ago, I found out I was pregnant on Valentine’s Day in New York City with my husband. For the rest of the trip, we joked that if we had a boy, we should name him Wellington. We could call him Wells for short. It didn’t stick.  

By far, my favorite Valentine’s Day ever.

Let’s Talk: What do you think about Valentine’s Day? Tell me about your favorite Valentine’s Day memory. 

*photo by tashalynn0708

What say you?

Are they found or are they made?

Boy meets girl.

Boy chases girl.

Boy gets girl. 

Or switch the boy and girl, if you so please.

It’s a common plot for many a romance.

What’s not common is the age of the boy and the girl.

We’ve got Twilight, where the boy and the girl are in high school. (Granted, the boy is actually incredibly old…but let’s put that aside for the moment.)

We’ve got Remember Me, where the boy and the girl are somewhere in their 20s. 

We’ve got my most recent (and wonderful) read, When Sparrows Fall by Meg Moseley, where the boy and the girl are in their 40′s and upper 30′s.

We’ve got Letters to Juliette, where the boy and the girl have gray hair and wrinkled skin.

We’ve got The Notebook, where the boy and the girl go from high school, to young adult, to a nursing home. 

My question to you is….

Do you have a preference? Or does a good romance transcend age?

Let’s Talk: When you read or watch a romance, do you have an age you prefer the hero and heroine to be? If you write romance, do you find yourself gravitating to a certain age?

When the hubbers and I got married, the very first book we read together was The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.

Great stuff. Seriously. Great, great stuff.

Even now, seven and a half years later, when either one of us is feeling unloved or unappreciated, we will say to each other, “My love tank is feeling empty.” And we know what’s up. We know how to fill it. 

Basically, there are five popular ways people express love. And often, how we express love is also how we receive it.

The five languages are:

• Acts of service
• Gift-giving
• Words of affirmation
• Quality time
• Physical touch

I’m an affectionate mom. My son has grown up with a mother who gives him too many hugs and too many kisses and too many cuddles and too many pinches. I can’t help it.

Have you seen little-boy underwear? I think it might be the cutest thing in the world. So when he’s walking up the steps in front of me with Mater on his tiny hiney, I really have no control over my pinches. 

Not to worry. He laughs and giggles and races up the stairs. 

And I promise I won’t continue when the little boy underwear turns into boxer briefs. I’m determined to give my child as few complexes as possible.

Anyway, I’m digressing.

This post is about affection.

It’s about how I grew up in a very affectionate home, where hugs and kisses were never lacking. It’s about how much I love to lavish that same affection on my wild-child of a son. And how precious our cuddle times are before bedtime, when he whispers, “I love you, Mommy” into my ear. And how sad I get when I think that someday, he won’t want to cuddle anymore. And how this last thought makes me want to treasure every single cuddle he gives me between now and then.

Let’s Talk: Did you grow up in an affectionate home? Are you an affectionate person? If your kids are older, at what point did they stop wanting to cuddle?  

What say you?

Does it exist or does it not?

I say no. It doesn’t.

And I might get absolutely slaughtered by the comment I’m about to make. Like, totally clobbered. So imagine me saying this from behind my couch.

But for me, love at first sight didn’t even exist with my child. Unlike the movies you see in Hollywood, I was not a teary-eyed mother overcome with emotion and love for my wee little babe. I was more like, “Thank you Lord that this kid is out of me and holy crow, he looks like my brother.”

I was enamored by my little one. And excited for what was to come. But I don’t think I fell in love with him the first time I saw his squishy, Elmer Fudd nose. He still felt like such a stranger.

It was over the course of sleepless nights and bare-skinned cuddles and his little fist wrapping around my finger and first smiles and all the other million things a mother experiences in that first month of motherhood that made me fall in love with my son.

So I’ll ask it again.

Let’s Talk: What say you? Does love at first sight exist?

*photo by Maxybonremovetweetmeme