Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

It’s the last day of the year, and normally, the tendency is to think about the ending of one year and the beginning of another. But in my house, we’ve started a new tradition. I liken it to the bonus features you get on a DVD–they come after the end of the movie and make it seem like the movie isn’t really over, but just getting started. You get to visit some more with the characters, see inside the making of the story, etc. In our family, our Bonus Features are pretty simple:

Favorite Memory: This is exactly what it implies, your favorite memory from the past year. For my youngest, his memory doesn’t extend past Christmas morning, so his favorite memory is opening those presents. The favorite memory can be anything done alone or with friends. As we talked, we discovered lots of gems from the past 365 days.

Favorite Family Memory: We take a lot of trips together as a family and I made both kids (the teenager included, even though she rolled her eyes) tell their favorite family memory of something we all did together. This opened up a whole competition between the several different places we went, because each of us had a different favorite. It spurred a whole bunch of remembrances, and a long, half-hour reminiscence.

What We Wish We Did: This is the plan-for-the-future kind of discussion that we have, the trips we didn’t take or adventures we didn’t go on. From this, we end up planning out the next year’s family activities, or making next year’s resolutions (like, “I really wish I’d gone down that raft ride at the waterpark and I’ll go next time”).

People We Remember Most: These are the people who touched our lives over the last year. Loved ones who have passed, or simply new friends we have made. We talk about why they were special and how they made a difference in the last year.

The Bonus Features are the moments we want to preserve, sort of a time capsule of the last year. By having that discussion (we had it on a long car ride back and forth to the airport for Christmas travel), we bring the whole year full-circle, rather than concentrating on just that one holiday week. We discovered that 2007 had been full of so many changes and big events, things we had forgotten, until we started talking about them. We grew a lot as a family and as individuals, and although we can’t go back in time and preserve any of it, we can hopefully remember to hold on tighter to some of those moments in the year ahead.

If you have a moment, try it–either with yourself or with your own family. You just might be surprised to find the Bonus Features are just as wonderful as the year itself!

One of the things I love about December are all the year-end lists. Best movies, best television shows, best books. For this blog, I thought I’d look back at my year as a reader. What I read, what I liked, what I just didn’t get. So, here goes. Feel free to agree, disagree, or share your own good, bad, and ugly reads.

Books I read: 53. My original goal was 50, so I beat that, but only because I read a bunch of “The Sandman” graphic novels by Neil Gaiman in December. But on the flip side, I also wrote/edited/finished four books this year. Writing a book is like reading five, right? Maybe even ten. Using that fuzzy math, I’d actually be way ahead of my goal.

New authors I read: 24, including Nalini Singh, J.R. Ward, Anne Stuart, Suzanne Enoch, Neil Gaiman, Jim C. Hines, Diana Peterfreund, and Barry Eisler. I’ll try reading anybody once.

Genres I read: Romance, fantasy, mystery, thriller, young adult, comics/graphic novels, etc. The only genre I’m not too crazy about is science fiction. No sci-fi on my list this year. Also, I read mostly fiction, so no biographies or history books on my list either.

Authors I read more than once: 8. They were Neil Gaiman, J.R. Ward, Anne Stuart, Robert Parker, Jim C. Hines, Lawrence Block, and Richard Stark and Donald Westlake (who are actually the same person).

Authors I plan to read again: Neil Gaiman, Anne Stuart, Suzanne Enoch, Robert Parker, Donald Westlake … just about everybody on my list actually.

Best overall read of the year: “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” by J.K. Rowling. Sure, it dragged in places, but was there ever a more satisfying conclusion to a series? Especially given the pressure? I don’t think so.

Best overall romance I read this year: “Shadow Touch” by Marjorie M. Liu. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

Other top romance reads: “Black Ice” by Anne Stuart and “Lover Awakened” by J.R. Ward. Really enjoyed both of those.

Books I read more than once: 1. “Hit List” by Lawrence Block. I got about halfway through before I realized that I’d read it before. Yep, my memory is going already. But it was good, so I still (re)finished it.

Most imaginative world: The “Harry Potter” universe. Enough said.

Most imaginative world (other than Harry Potter): “Visions of Heat” by Nalini Singh. I don’t usually like sci-fi/fatansy hybrids, but Singh’s Psy/Changeling world was different, interesting, and complex.

Weirdest read: “A Dirty Job” by Christopher Moore. I was fine until the little puppet-like people showed up. It spun out of control after that.

Something I am tired of: Possessive, alpha men who go into a tizzy if someone so much as looks at their women. Creepy, not sexy.

Biggest confession: I’ve never read a Nora Roberts romance. I’ve read some of the J.D. Robb “Death” books, but never a straight Nora romance. Anybody got any suggestions of a good Nora to read?

Looking ahead to next year: Currently, my TBR pile includes Stephanie Meyer, Rick Riordan, and a book of essays on “Veronica Mars.”

Reading goal for next year: 50 books.

Writing goal for next year: 5 books.

What about you? What was your year in books like? What was the best read?

P.S. For a complete list of books I read, visit my blog, www.jenniferestep.com/blog, and click on the “Books I’ve Read” category.

I am a huge reality TV fan. I watch everything from the biggies….Survivor, Amazing Race, American Idol…to lesser known wonders…Made, The Shot, Work Out. I have learned a ton from these shows and not just about things like not to wear tapered pants (What Not to Wear), or how (if I were the kind of person to ever do this) to make my thighs to appear thinner when posing in a bikini (America’s Next Top Model). I have learned a lot about people and how they interact. And believe it or not, I’ve learned a lot about being an author.

• People don’t always play fair- (America’s Next Top Model) In ANTM, Bianca tells Jenah to trot across the street because “they had so much stuff there”. The critique partner who “loved” your idea of making a your hero a sexy cyclops, works a one-eyed hunk into her own tale, then corners an agent (you told her about) in the bathroom for an impromptu pitch session right before your pitch appointment.
  We tend to think we can trust people and that they operate under the same general rules we do. But the sad fact is, when people want something as badly as they want to win a reality TV show, or sell a book, fair often loses its spot in their personal tool chest.
• People lie (sometimes to themselves)- (America’s Next Top Model) Brittany swears she told her cab to pick her up where she didn’t. (ever heard of instant replay?), Above mentioned CP swears she’d been planning a one-eyed series for YEARS, and the agent? Oh, you she didn’t know you were planning on pitching your cyclops story. But you couldn’t expect her to miss an opportunity like that, could you?
• It’s only one person’s opinion- (American Idol, Simon on Taylor Hicks.) When a contest judge says your hero’s weak and your heroine rankles, or a reviewer insinuates you have “issues” with sex/historical accuracy/strong women/strong men/verb usage it is just one person’s opinion. Even if that person is an editor or agent who you really wanted to impress, he/she is still just one individual with one individual’s outlook. Other people will have different, maybe completely opposite reactions. Take all comments (good and bad) with that in mind.
• Knock offs happen- (America’s Next Top Model , Make Me a Supermodel.) This can be good and bad. If you catch the wave early, this may ease your entry, but if you pay too much attention to what others are doing you won’t get a chance to learn the next lesson.
• Know who you are- (American Idol, Chris Daughtry; The Next Great American Band, The Clark Brothers & Six Wire) In both of these shows contestants are asked to perform a wild array of music and one of the things that made these performers stand out was that they took whatever the judges threw at them and made it theirs. They didn’t try and sing it like the original, or like they thought they “should” sing it. They made the song fit them. I think you can take the same lesson to books. In the dedication of Tonya Huff’s first Blood book, she tells how she had told her husband she wanted to write a vampire book, but couldn’t write the vampires she had read. He told her not to write vampires the way someone else would or had written them, to write them the way Tonya Huff would write them. And he was completely right. No matter what you write, make sure you are doing it the way you would do it–do not try and imitate someone else or it will read like that, a weak imitation of the original.
• Be Flexible- (What Not to Wear) I personally thought I wrote light–period. I read dark and loved paranormal, but really didn’t believe I could write a dark paranormal myself. However, when the Nocturne line was announced, I decided to try and guess what? I discovered I had a whole other style, one I’d been completely denying.
  So, you may think you know who you are, but if you’ve only tried one style, you may actually be fooling yourself. Don’t be afraid to try a new look. It may just suit you more than you think!
• Passion counts- (The Clark Brothers on The Next Great American Band ) Personally, I think this is the number one lesson to be learned. And while it has roots in things like knowing yourself, it’s also about taking risks. Don’t be afraid of going over the top, especially in a first draft. And don’t let fear of “one person’s opinion” (whoever that person or persons may be) keep you from writing things as they flow into your mind. Don’t get caught up in trying to make every word perfect, slicing out passive verbs, or seeing exactly what year Okay was actually used. Just write the book. Let your personal style flow. Let your passion for the story come through. Then go back later and knock off any rough edges, but remember the winners in Reality aren’t the ones who sing every note perfectly and know exactly how things “should” be done. They’re the ones who feel the music, live the emotion and pull you, the listener/reader, along for the ride.

So, that’s it. Those are just some of the lessons I’ve learned from reality TV. How about you? Do you watch reality TV? Learned anything useful?

It’s the day after Christmas and, even though I have written this in advance of the date, I know exactly what I am doing. I’m at my parents’ house in Connecticut, probably wearing a bunch of sweaters and extra thick socks since, after five years in Los Angeles, my blood is finally starting to thin out when it comes to winter weather. My brother and sister-in-law will have packed the kids in the car right after breakfast and taken off to drive back to Virginia. My mother probably has classical music on the stereo while she reads the newspaper, and then maybe Christmas music later as she tries to figure out what we should have for dinner. My father is in the living room reading one of the books I got him for Christmas. And me? I’m sitting in my childhood bedroom, curled up under my down comforter and propped up with pillows, with a cup of tea on the bedside table and a book in hand. Doesn’t matter what book — it might be a new acquisition or some old favorite pulled off the shelf — and I may even read more than one. What does matter is that I’m not paying attention to anything but the words on the page in front of me. All day, from just after breakfast until late afternoon, pausing only when it’s too dark to see in order to flip on more lights. This is tradition, and has been for as long as I can recall.

At some point my mother will come knock and ask if I’m hungry. Chances are she’ll have to knock more than once, and will eventually give up and just poke her head in to get me to respond. I will try to answer while still actually reading. If the book isn’t too high-brow, I might succeed, but if it requires my undivided attention, chances are I’ll frown when I am forced to stop reading and look up. But eventually I’ll comment as required on her various dinner options, and a half an hour or so after she goes back downstairs I will finally put down my book and wander after her, following the smell of reheated leftovers in some new form. I’ll set the table and open a bottle of wine and toss salad or whatever other little last-minute tasks my mom has left for me, knowing that despite my best intentions I won’t have been able to stop reading until the last possible minute. Then there will be dinner and conversation and discussion of books read, and plans for the next day that will involve movies or walking through the snow or venturing into New York to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. No more long, uninterrupted reading days — just that one. But that’s okay, because sometimes one is all it takes to remember just what a treasure they can be.

Best wishes to all of you during this holiday season, and may you find at least one uninterrupted day to spend exactly as you wish.

My baby bleats.

It’s not a nice sound. And she never does it when she’s happy. When she’s happy, she sings. I’ve never known a 9 month old who sang before, but if you catch her while she’s playing and her twin isn’t pulling her hair, my daughter sings. The songs are sweet and tuneless, but they are definitely the sounds of happy. And when you sing to her, she smiles, touches your face and tries her hardest to follow you with breathy notes. It’s adorable and endearing and I’m going to tell her all about it when she’s old enough to understand and tell her that God has blessed her with music.

But when she’s not happy, she bleats.

“Ehhhhhhhhhhhht! Ehhhhhhhhhhhht! Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhht!”

No tears. No distress. No signs of physical discomfort. Just standing, mouth open, long notes of displeasure being sirened off like an assembly line masterpiece.

I was coming down the stairs the other day, arms full of laundry I didn’t want to do, all to the chorus of the above bleating. Her sister sat next to her, chewing absently on a sock that scant seconds before had been on her foot and if her expression was anything to go by, even she thought the bleating was a touch excessive.

“Are you okay?”

“Ehhhhhhhhhh!”

“Anything broken?”

“Ehhhhhhhhhh!”

“Bleeding?”

“Ehhhhhhhhhh!”

“Did someone do something to you? Beat you up? Threaten your life? Steal your food?”

“Ehhhhhhhhhh!”

“So you’re saying no one has done anything to you at all?”

“Ehhhhhhhhhh!”

“Okay, just checking.”

The bleater kept bleating and the chewer kept chewing and—sad as I am to report—the mommy kept doing laundry. It’s my life now. I wake up, not sure if I ever quite went to sleep, and I usually find two little bleary faces looking around for someone to cuddle, preferably someone with milk under their shirt. Some mornings, my son tiptoes into my room and in a stage whisper worthy of Shakespeare, requests if he can watch cartoons or play games or if I’d like to make him bacon. I change diapers and sort squabbles and feed babies and boys and talk to hubby about careers and dreams and goals and so on and so forth. It’s a domestic woman’s dream—well, it would be if I could keep the house a bit cleaner. More important, it’s my dream.

You see, it’s my Christmas wish.

When I was a kid, I spent every Christmas Eve and Christmas, looking for the Christmas star. I was positive if I could just find it, all my dreams would come true. I usually settled for the North Star—occasionally, it was a helicopter, I have to admit, but only because I’m wildly myopic—and wished with all my heart and soul for what I wanted the most. I took a lot of flack for not wishing for a million dollars. Or a day with Joe Montana. Or new clothes. You know, useful stuff. But nope, all I wanted, all I ever wanted, was a happy family all my own. I wanted a wonderful husband who made me feel loved and cherished and happy. And I wanted children who were happy and healthy and cute and looked just like him. And I wanted a home that was warm in the winter and cool in the summer and I wanted to know that it was as safe as I could make it so that nothing would ever happen to any of them.

I was told my wish was crazy. It was unrealistic. Trouble always comes, they said. You shouldn’t have such high expectations, they said. You’re unprepared for the heartache, they whispered. Maybe I was. Kids hurt. Husbands leave their socks out. I can’t cook. I spend a lot of time somewhat broke and Joe Montana’s signature would probably be worth a hell of a lot of money these days. But it was my Christmas wish and I don’t think all those years were wished in vain.

Because I have a husband who holds my hand when he sleeps.
Because I have a son who explains to me in slightly bored tones the very obvious differences between Sonic and Shadow the hedgehogs.
Because I have a baby who would rather chew her socks instead of wear them.
And because I have a daughter…who bleats.

Here’s wishing all of you the best this holiday season and that all of your Christmas Wishes come true. (Especially if that wish is effortlessly clean laundry.)
Dee

Like so many others, I come to the end of another year with some reflection about what I’ve read in the past twelve months — and what I haven’t. More than a few folks have complained about extended reading slumps (and I’ve been among them), and there’s been sort of a low-level grumbling about paranormals (too many?) and historicals (not enough?). Lots of speculation has been offered for why the market is this way or that way. There have been suggestions that “average” Romance readers just want simplistic, formulaic fiction, while others have wondered if publishers are only interested in books that meet current trends.

Most days I think that the Romance market as a whole is beyond understanding, except in those momentary flashes of clarity one might have after a few glasses of 90 proof egg nog. In fact, I’m not even sure chaos theory can touch the labyrinthine processes that comprise Romance publishing, marketing, and sales. Clearly profit seems to be important, and to make profit one must sell books, which entails some idea of ‘what readers want,’ even if we argue endlessly about what that is. And there are some things that seem in line with that overall goal that also strike me as logical, but whether or not they’re true I have not a clue. So I figured I’d put them out there for a yay or nay from those of you who have more insight into the business of Romance than I do (which is probably most of you).

The first thing I’m thinking is that great books aren’t sitting in a trash bin or slush pile somewhere, neglected because they don’t meet a current trend. After all, in the 400-500 Romance novels published a month, aren’t editors looking for the next hot trend? And don’t most trends start with some break-out book that grabs readers by the throat and makes us hungry for more? So why would anyone in the business of selling books turn down a brilliantly written, plotted, and characterized book just because it doesn’t fit a mold, when so many of the current molds started out with mold-smashing books? In fact, I’d think that the different and brilliant book is pretty much what editors live for, since they’re always buying at least a year or two in advance.

Which brings me to the next thing I’m thinking which is that brilliant books aren’t not being published because they fail to conform to some list of “Romance rules.” As much as I’m seduced by this argument (reading so many books that seem to conform to an unspoken norm), I have to reconcile it with the fact that the most brilliant books I’ve read have also been rule-breaking books. And those that haven’t broken a ton of rules have basically re-imagined them in a wonderfully novel way (e.g. the upcoming Joanna Bourne historical The Spymaster’s Lady, which takes ye olde spy plot and polishes it to such a high shine that it feels brand new). Now I’m not saying that I question the notion that certain unspoken rules do exist in the genre, and we’ve certainly seen several overt examples of authors admitting to pressure to change things in their manuscripts. But it’s hard for me to imagine an editor reading a mind-blowing manuscript and rejecting it because the heroine isn’t a virgin or near virgin or because the hero is unfaithful after he’s met the heroine. It’s always those authors who can take me somewhere new, somewhere I didn’t think I could go, who make me happy I’m a reader, and I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels that way.

What I’m left thinking, then, is that there are many manuscripts out there that range from middling to strong, and that editors see them as interchangeable. So if one feels like it will fit better into a current trend and another doesn’t, the trendy one will go to publication. So I’m basically imagining a critical mass of books clustering around a certain level of craftsmanship and originality, providing a pool of options for editors trying to place books in line to sell. And while I realize that beauty and brilliance is in the eye of the beholder to some degree, I’m wondering if editors see a comparable level of brilliance in available manuscripts that evens out across certain considerations (hot subgenre or hot erotically or hot character trends). And that books that really get editors excited – in that they-can-barely-contain-themselves kind of way – really are exceptional, both in content and number.

This doesn’t mean that I see the genre as a sinkhole of mediocrity. But I do think that with so many books in circulation – past and present – that it takes something really special, super-duper special, to blow away the seasoned editor/reader. And that the grinding pace of Romance publishing makes that breakthrough book more difficult to write (let alone more than one). I’ve read so many really promising first books by authors only to be underwhelmed by their second. And I’ve read so many books that basically fall around a certain level of okay or good that great seems even more elusive. And since I know I’m not the only one who has this type of reading experience, it’s really tough for me to think that editors aren’t doing everything they can to find that “next big thing.”

So tell me: am I right or wrong? And while we’re on the subject, what’s the most rule-breaking Romance you’ve read and loved – or hated, for that matter.

I don’t think anybody does Christmas like Harlequin and Silhouette, and I never even try to make it through the season without them. When you take a helping of romance and add a dash of holiday zest, a truly heartwarming happily ever after is the result.

And seriously, who doesn’t want a secret baby for Christmas?

Anyway, I go through a heap of category romances during the holiday season. A warm, fulfilling romance that doesn’t require a huge investment of more-precious-than-usual time is the perfect antidote for the stress of the season, and the price is definitely right. Four bucks, give or take a little, isn’t too great a burden on the gift budget.

Plus, whether it’s because the holiday is so family-focused or because I’m too exhausted to feel all that jolly, I’m not in the mood for the graphic sex overload. I also don’t want heavy violence and graphic terror. I just want some ooey-gooey, warm and fuzzy, a little over the top true love. Give me a holiday banquet of Special Editions, Romances, Desires, Historicals—and, okay, a Blaze or two because you’ve gotta be a little jolly, after all—and I’m a happy girl.

My plan, every year, is to grab a few category romances for my stocking. (Some people think it’s sad I fill my own, but you can fit a lot of things moms don’t usually buy for themselves in there—that Victoria’s Secret lip gloss instead of Chapstick…the $15 salon nail polish instead of Wet-n-Wild…the pen nobody needs to know was $80.) And every single year I creep down into the basement and pluck them—one at a time—out of the Official Christmas Present Hiding Place (aka near the washer and dryer because you can all guess how often my guys go there).

So far this year, these are the series stocking stuffers that didn’t quite make it to my stocking:

Dear Santa by Karen Templeton (SSE)
Texan for the Holidays by Victoria Chancellor (HAR)
His Christmas Bride by Helen Brooks (HP)
Christmas Presents and Past by Janice Kay Johnson (Everlasting)
Her Christmas Surprise by Kristin Hardy (SSE)
A Christmas Wedding Wager by Michelle Styles (HH)
A Spirit of Christmas by Margot Early (Everlasting)
Baby, It’s Cold Outside by Cathy Yardley (Blaze)
Christmas in His Royal Bed by Heidi Betts (Desire)
A Western Winter Wonderland by Pam Crooks, Jenna Kernan, Cheryl St. John (HH)

Oops. I’m definitely going to have to restock this weekend. It’s a good thing there were a couple of holiday Supers I had my eye on.

So what about you? Have you read a fabulous holiday category you want to give a shout out? Or do you have an old favorite worth haunting the UBS for? (If it’s not available as an ebook—yay for the growing awareness of building digital backlists!)

Let’s hear some holiday cheer for the publisher and authors who bring us the best in Christmas romance year after year!

For the last week or so, the world of Romance Scholarship has been thrashing out, yet again, whether Our Beloved Genre is or isn’t (or is only sometimes) “full of patriarchal propaganda.” Don’t stop reading! I’m headed in an entirely different, much happier direction. To follow me, though, a quick recap might be helpful.

The dust-up started here, in the British newspaper The Guardian. The editors asked Julie Bindel, a lesbian activist who “shuns heterosexuality,” to write about Mills & Boon romances. That’s a bit like asking my cousin the vegan to report on the menu at Fogo de Chao, the Brazillian steakhouse, but such is journalism. And, to be fair, the fracas prompted some thoughtful debate and some promising follow-up projects.

If you want to read the Bindel Brief, along with a paragraph by paragraph commentary, swing by Teach Me Tonight. The beat goes on this week at Access Romance, and will surface again in January’s Internet Event of Stupendous Proportions on Louise Allen’s Harlequin Historical, Virgin Slave, Barbarian King.

In this post, though, I want to think about something quite different, based on a minor aside in Bindel’s article.

Near the start of her piece, the columnist says this:

The hero is behaving in a way that, in real life, causes many women to develop low self-esteem, depression and self-harming behaviour - blowing hot and cold, and treating her like dirt. But all comes right in the end. After the heroine displays extraordinary vulnerability during a crisis, Mr Macho saves the day and shows her he cares.

In romance novels, the heroine doesn’t “develop low self-esteem, depression, and self-harming behavior”: or, if she does, she recovers. Does Mr. Macho get the credit? I think not.

Over and over in romance novels, the heroines don’t just get “saved.” They rebound, rebuild, and revise the stories they tell themselves about their lives. The past gets healed, or at least left behind; the present is transformed from a dull stretch of duties or forest of fears into something to savor; and the future? Even at the worst, it looks mighty promising.

Now, sometimes the heroine does get help from the hero as she moves from discouragement to hope. (I think here of Molly in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ This Heart of Mine, which I finally read this week.) And, she in turn may help the hero go through similar changes. But with or without him, in a separate or an interwoven plot, romance novels are pervasively novels of resilience, and I suspect that the lessons they teach are often quite good ones, empirically so.

It’s a little bit early for New Year’s Resolutions, but here’s one of mine. While some of my fellow academics wrestle the politics of romance, I’m going to focus this year on two other core values of the genre: learned optimism, and authentic happiness. I get both terms from psychology professor Martin Seligman; they’re the titles of two of his books for a popular, non-academic audience, summarizing a decade of research into happiness, pleasure, gratification, strength of character, and so forth.

There seems to be a whole branch of psychological inquiry out there called Positive Psychology: not some fuzzy set of platitudes and bromides, but (in Seligman’s words) “a science that seeks to understand positive emotion, build strength and virtue, and provide guideposts for finding what Aristotle called the ‘good life.’” My hunch, which I plan to test across the next few months, is that romance novels are often primers in positive psychology, in ways that measure up quite well against current research. Some romance authors clearly know about this work–Jennifer Crusie refers to “learned optimism” at a couple of crucial moments in Agnes and the Hitman–while for others the sources may lie elsewhere. In either case, I have some awfully gratifying work to do, and I’ll keep you posted here on how it’s going.

So tell me: what romance novels have you read that particularly picked up your mood? Are there books that you return again and again to for some sort of encouragement or “lift”? Any especially resilient or optimistic characters or authors I should investigate? Any tough sells or counter-examples I’d better consider if I want to keep this inquiry honest?

Christmas is in one week. That’s right, seven more days. I’d know this even if I hadn’t gotten a trillion emails over the weekend from every retailer on the planet it seems reminding me of the imminent shipping deadlines for package receipt by Christmas Eve. Not a single day has gone by since Thanksgiving that my five-year-old doesn’t repeatedly ask, “Mommy, how many more days?”

Still it feels like it’s been hard to rustle up the Christmas spirit this year. Oh, it’s easy to get into the swing of things: buying and decorating a tree (not yet), planning and purchasing gifts for family and friends (done), sending out Christmas cards (very few, begrudgingly), listening to Christmas songs (absolutely) or watching the Christmas television specials with your family (you bet!) I’m even preparing to bake 150 cupcakes this evening for my three sons’ classes and a teacher holiday party.

Yet something was still missing and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I wasn’t until I mulled it over on my way to work this morning, while listening to “The Little Drummer Boy”, the Darwin Hobbs gospel version, that I figured it out. I was in need of an attitude fix.

Christmas is and has always been my favorite time of the year. It’s special, magical…holy. I know and love the “reason for the season”, celebrating the birth of Christ. I also know that this time of year is all about giving as much as receiving. But there’s more to Christmas, and it’s that more, the romance of Christmas, that I’d lost sight of.

Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of the holiest night of the year in a romantic sense? Romance readers and writers alike ooh and ahh over Christmas engagements and weddings. Somehow they’re more special than those at any other time of the year.

Because romance, like Christmas, is all about faith and hope and joy, about bringing out the best in ourselves and the people around us, and about realizing one’s heart’s desire.

The more I thought about it, I occurred to me that romance is part and parcel of the Christmas story.

Think about it… A woman and man are engaged to be married. Her older cousin is married and with child. She’s held on to her virtue and now it’s her time. She and her intended will marry and live happily ever after, right?

Not quite. In the spirit of a good romance novel, a disaster must loom. And one does. Mary, a virgin, turns up mysteriously pregnant. Unwed pregnancy is not easy for a woman today. It could not possibly have been a walk in the park for Mary some two thousand years ago. However, her fiancé, Joseph, a good and righteous man, decides to stand by her and marry her anyway. Time for celebration, right?

Unh-unh. Not yet. The Roman emperor calls for a census. Everyone must register in the town of their birth. This means Joseph and his very pregnant Mary must now travel miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, about 70 miles, to register with the House of David, this long before the advent of motorized transportation. No, they travel by donkey. How painful was this for Mary, ripe with child and ready to deliver, and for newlywed Joseph who had nothing better to offer his pregnant wife? However, they arrive safely at their destination, so here’s where we start to cheer, yes?

No. They arrive at the inn in Bethlehem only to learn that all the rooms are booked. There’s no room for them. (It’s not like they could have called ahead on their cell to make a reservation!) To top things off, Mary’s body has decided that it is time for this baby to be born. Now. Can we say “black moment”?

Ah… But just as in a good romance, although things seem pretty bleak at this point, their fortune begins to turn. Mary and Joseph are able to take up lodging in the nearby stables. Not the best accommodations but, at least there’s some protection from the elements and perhaps a degree of privacy. The baby, Jesus, is born alive and healthy, and they are able to bundle him up and place him in a manger to sleep.

The night of His birth is crystal clear with stars shining brightly against a midnight sky. (Tell me that isn’t romantic!) For the next few days, one particular star stands higher and seems brighter than the others. It leads a group of important visitors bearing gifts to the place of Jesus’ birth. Mary and Joseph, still together and in love despite the hardships they’ve endured, leave Bethlehem with a beautiful, baby boy and with increased fortune, as the gifts they are given—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—are great in value.

HEA.

Staying focused on the romance, this is about Mary and Joseph, not Jesus, so I’m content to end the story here and sigh in wonder at the romance that upheld this couple through their ordeal.

Anyway, I’ll never again celebrate Christmas without remembering the romance of the season. How about you?