Vows and True Love

This year, I've been to three weddings.  A colleague married in early summer, and my precious goddaughter married in mid-summer.  Yet another relative married this weekend.  I'm thrilled for these young people and wish them the best, but at one time, I questioned the validity of marriage.  Many of the couples I'd met were unhappy, arguing over money, sex, and children.  We live in a world beset by misery: crime, corruption, and natural disasters afflict the whole world.  Why do people stand before clergymen and take vows? Maybe that's the reason I started to write romance.  I believed in true love in the abstract, but I had little faith in it in reality.  Nevertheless, I wanted to believe that true devotion and commitment were possible. Many of my books look at lovers who hold it together no matter what the odds.  In Love at War, my protagonist Nuala joins the war effort to avenge the death of her husband.  In Pirate Woman, Grainne supports her husbands--both of them--even when they are idiots.  In The Doctor and the War Widow, wounded Harley finds true love again after losing her husband to war. (All of my books are available at wwwredrosepublishing.com.)

I still, however, felt love had eluded me personally. Then, after Hurricane Isaac when I was really down, I met Ben.  There was just something about him.  I made him chase me--but not too far. He called me a lot, and I liked it.  After several months, something started to happen.  I really missed him when he wasn't around.  I always wanted to be with him. If he was ill, I worried about him.  He makes me happy. I want to make him happy. Instead of only shopping for myself, I find myself shopping for Jerry Garcia ties.  He buys me skirts and calendars.  I now listen to the Grateful Dead and call myself his Scarlet Begonia.  Love, who would have thought I'd find it? I guess it's only write that a writer find real love.