'E' is for Ever Ever After

(Like the Carrie Underwood song.)

I devour romance novels, and then I sigh and smile over them hours after I finish them. I have been known to shed tears at the end of Nicolas Sparks’ novels, and happy tears after many a Mills & Boon. If I see a couple holding hands on the street or in the tube, it brightens my mood, and I watch proposals and first-dance videos of complete strangers on youtube, and sigh over those too.

Yes, I do all of those things. And while you may think that qualifies me to be called a ‘hopeless romantic’, I prefer to think of myself as a ‘hopeful romantic’.

And why not?

Love does exist in the universe. Sure, divorce rates might be going up, but there are also those couples celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. So what is wrong with believing in love?

And what is wrong with being a romantic? Isn’t it a good thing to be an optimist? To expect the best in people?

(I’m having a bit of a vent. Can you tell?)

I am a romance writer and my big dream is to be published by Mills & Boon one day. It is what I am working towards, have been working towards for over a year now and I do not appreciate people rolling their eyes at this! If you don’t read’em, if you know nothing about’em, then you don’t get to have an opinion on them.

So there!

Okay, I’m done.

In other news, my M&B manuscript stands at about 18000 words and I’m feeling pretty good about it right now. The plan is to finish by the end of this year and then send off the partial and synopsis early next year. Hopefully, that’ll work out.

In the meantime, there’s this competition by Harlequin (American version of M&B) - very coolly named 'So You Think You Can Write' - which asks for the full manuscript rather than the usual first chapter or whatever. The final date is the 15^th of December and while to even dream about having a complete and polished MS within the next five weeks sounds mad, I’m going to try anyway. Good luck to me!

Also in the meantime, I’ve decided it’s time to try and make this blog a proper one, like I had originally intended it to be, and talk about stuff other than myself and my writing. Lately, I’ve read some good books, some mediocre ones and some horrendous ones, and I’m going to try my hand at writing reviews for them. Just my humble opinion as an avid reader. So watch this space, dear invisible readers of my blog!