Archive | romance novel

Leaping out of Loneliness: Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

By Sigal Wilnai on April 19, 2013 in romance novel

When I got divorced, one of my friends suggested that I now had a golden opportunity to meet my real self. “As an adult you’ve known yourself only inside a relationship,” she said. “Now is the time to get to know the true Sigal.”

I followed her advice and spent five years trying to get to know the me-without-the distraction-of-a-man, and let me tell you, the me-without-the-man is the exact same me: confused, yearning for love, and eager to please. I found no secret me, because even without a man, my life was full of relationships, relationships with my kids, dogs, parents, friends, and even with my own ever-present desire for a relationship. I searched for five years, and finally found myself in the spot I had never left, because the truth was that I wanted to love, and I wanted to be loved, and that was in essence who I am.

I was thinking of my years alone as I read Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ wonderful romance, Natural Born Charmer. The novel follows two characters who choose aloneness. Blue is a nomad painter. Having been raised by a chain of foster parents chosen by her absent mother, Blue prefers not to get attached to anyone. She is safest on her own. Dean is a famous quarterback. He had been raised by an addict mother who was often absent and a father who refused to acknowledge him as his own. Flings Dean does. Settling down with one woman? No.

The motivation of romance characters is often to find love and to belong, and their conflict is the belief that love and belonging cannot happen to them (there is always a “because”). This is also true for Dean and Blue. Trusting each other with their hearts requires a seemingly impossible forgiveness, courage, and letting go. “I’m crazy about you,” Blue says at one point, “but I don’t fall in love.”

Dean and Blue meet in the land of fictional dream, but they are drawn together because they are both lonely and alone.The real them was not waiting to be found on a solo road, but instead blossomed through their interaction and willingness to take a leap of faith and fall in love.

Like Dean and Blue, I believe that we humans belong together. We are creatures of love, touch, and sharing, and we ought not to be alone. There is too much aloneness in our world, too many people who live their lives without getting even a hug a day, without feeling accepted or cherished by anyone else.

Sometimes people start talking to me in the street or the supermarket, and my first reaction is to walk away, back into my “normal” life. Then I tell myself: maybe this person just wants the spark of having connected with another human being today. And I try to smile, and be polite, and later, regretfully, walk away.

Dean started talking to Blue when she walked down the street in a beaver costume, but in order to know whether or not he walked away, you will simply have to take your own leap of faith, and read the book.

Seducing Mr. Knightly by Maya Rodale

By Sigal Wilnai on January 28, 2013 in book review, romance novel

Annabelle Swift, the fourth writing girl from Maya Rodale’s Writing Girls series, never much attracted my notice. Quiet, shy, and easily overlooked, Annabelle did not strike me as having much potential to be the heroine of a sassy or steamy romance like her counterparts, fiery Julianna, daring Eliza or confident Sophie. Having read and loved the first three novels in the series, I wondered what kind of romance would befall Annabelle. She’s been in love with the newspaper’s owner, Derek Knightly, but that love, so far in the series, had only been expressed in a sigh upon his entrance to the weekly staff meeting. How would Annabelle seduce Mr. Knightly? I found I very much wanted to know.

Mr. Knightly, Annabelle’s employer and the object of her affections is a hard and unscrupulous man. He does not notice her as a woman or writer. He doesn’t even read her column, Dear Annabelle, in which Annabelle gives love and etiquette advice to the newspaper’s readers. Something drastic would have to happen, I thought, for that to change. Annabelle seducing Mr. Knightly seemed tantamount to the seduction of a lion by a mouse. But Annabelle, lovesick and feeling near to death with being sick from love, takes a desperate measure and instead of giving advice in her column, turns to London with a question of her own: “For the past few years I have loved a man from afar, and I fear he has taken no notice of me at all. I know not how to attract his attention and affection. Dear readers, please advise!”

Knightly expects that Annabelle is the last person in London to cause trouble, but as Annabelle discards her old habits by the advice of her readers, he soon learns to think otherwise. Annabelle lowers her bodice, buys herself new silken underthings, learns how to gaze at a man in a sultry fashion, practices fainting, climbs trees, and dares to keep going in her quest for love no matter how ridiculous, silly, or embarrassing it gets. With baited breath, I (and the rest of London) followed the progress of Annabelle’s attempts to gain Knightly’s attention, and fell completely in love.

“That was one amazing woman, sitting there, making herself invisible. She was kind, beautiful, generous, daring and funny. She possessed the courage to ask for help and to share her triumphs and embarrassments with the whole city. She possessed the strength to do the right thing even when it was the hard thing.”

A character like Annabelle is exactly why I love romance novels. Romances open up a possibility for grand gestures, self expression, and crazy daring in love which in real life most of us could only dream about. There is room, in romances, for women to be everything and anything they want to be, and they are always, always loved, appreciated, and accepted for it. Watching Annabelle put her heart on the line and go all the way for what she wants reminded me that getting hurt once in a while (as when Knightly asks her if she has something in her eye when she throws him a particularly seductive gaze) can be worth the risk in the long run, if one but has the courage to laugh, as Annabelle does over the pages of the newspaper: “…this led to a mortifying disaster. Rather than succumb to the fervor in my gaze, more than one person inquired if I had something stuck in my eye.”

Maya Rodale, I am a fan!

Click here for my review of Maya Rodale’s The Tattooed Duke
Maya Rodale’s Website
Maya Rodale’s GoodReads Page

Stephanie Laurens’ A Rogue’s Proposal

By Sigal Wilnai on January 25, 2013 in book review, romance novel

The word rogue has the following synonyms in my dictionary: scoundrel, villain, good for nothing, miscreant, reprobate, and wretch — and in its more archaic use: blackguard and knave. I’ve already written in the past about the abundance of rogues and rakes in romances — they are well loved. But in Stephanie Laurens’ romance, A Rogue’s Proposal, Demon (otherwise known as Harry or Harold) Cynster is a rogue of a different kind.

I did not fall in love with Demon — something that I absolutely am looking for in these romantic heroes. He irritated me from the first, chasing after Flick the boy who he suspects is a woman because of the shape of his (or rather, her) bottom. Mostly, however, Demon irritated me because he wouldn’t give Flick (Felicity) even the slightest chance to prove that she can get along just fine without being rescued by him. If he was a rogue, he was a rogue in that.

By continually rescuing Flick, Demon managed to compromise her honor twice, lost the trail of the man they were both following, and made Flick feel lonely and unloved (in an attempt to keep her reputation intact). Fortunately, Stephanie Laurens kept rescuing him: the lord who saw Flick and Demon together got mumps, Flick’s lenient and apparently too optimistic guardian always believed their stories, their quarry magically reappeared in the corner of the street in front of their eyes, and an old aunt popped up to explain to Flick why Demon was ignoring her.

So many romance novels present the strong, independent heroine. I felt sad for Flick to miss being in those ranks. A natural leader, responsible, led by a strong sense of justice and fairness, courageous to a fault, I wanted Flick to experience the same excitement and freedom as other regency heroines. Every time Demon stopped her from rushing headlong into an adventure, every time she felt she had to ask him for help, every time he rescued her from what he perceived as a threat, I cringed. I wanted Flick to get her wings.

Stephanie Laurens, however, had a plan, which perhaps I might have seen had I stopped being so irritated with Demon all the time. Demon is a man who is used to seeing women in black and white, as either weak and helpless maidens or as temptresses. Innocent yet smart, loyal, brave, and often rush, Flick is neither damsel in distress nor a woman of the world. Demon starts out by reluctantly allowing her to lead the way out of a room, but he ends up, whether he wants to or not, admitting that she’s just as capable of rescuing him as he is her.

I ended up enjoying this novel a lot more after I understood what Stephanie Laurens was about, though I did not love Demon to the end. Too controlling and uncommunicative to my taste. A Rogue’s Proposal is the fourth in the Cynster novels (of which there are twenty). I’m thinking I might check the first one out.

Check out my review of another Cynster Novel here: The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae

Woman and the Reformed Rake

By Sigal Wilnai on November 3, 2012 in romance novel

Typing in the word “rake” on Amazon brings up hundreds of novel results: romancing a rake, reforming a rake, running away with a rake, redeeming a rake, or taming a rake. Hundreds more come up for “rogue” and “scoundrel.” The general outline of these novels tends to be the same: an immoral, experienced man meets an innocent, inexperienced woman. She will teach him that he can love and be loved, and he will set her free by teaching her the mysteries of her own body.

This basic plot repeats with fascinating variations. Most recently I read The Devil in Winter, by Lisa Kleypas, where young “wallflower” Evie requests the protection of Sebastian, a notorious rake, promising him her fortune if he marries her; and the fabulous Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah Maclean (on which I wrote a blog before). The male protagonists of these two novels are reformed by the end, tying the knot, promising fidelity, falling in love, and allowing their woman to twirl them round her little finger.

Richardson’s Pamela is an eighteenth-century example of this kind of novel, but Richardson’s novels, written nearly three hundred years ago, were moral lessons, aimed at teaching young ladies the importance of keeping their virtue intact. Pamela was able to resist Mr. B.’s attempts at ruining her — though I seem to remember a certain rather juicy scene where he tries to kiss her, and she evades his embrace by lying on the floor face-down (Richardson thought if she lay face-up the scene would be too sizzling). Pamela marries Mr. B., but her successor, the heroine of Richardson’s later novel Clarissa, is not so lucky. Clarissa’s rake offers to make amends and marry her, but for Clarissa, once ruined, her only choice was to die. Neither Lovelace’s offer of marriage nor his regrets could save her, no matter how willing he was to be reformed.

Today, reserving innocence till after the wedding is less wide-spread than in the eighteenth century. “Rake” novels no longer warn girls of succumbing to the charms of a rake. Instead, they promise delights beyond our imagination to a girl who is willing to live by her own rules. Not less important, however, is the message that it is okay for women to take pleasure, to seize the day and take control of their own destiny.

Truth be told, I do not read romance for its lessons, moral or otherwise. The chase, the attraction, the tension between the two main characters is what makes me come back to them again and again. In a way, because most romances were written by women, I am willing to forgive the male protagonist a lot. I do, however, believe that in between the fabulously decadent scenes, romance novels offer a vision of the modern woman, perhaps not yet 100% free of her expectations from men, but ready to jump into adventure and experiences, try new things, and leave all the norms and regulations imposed by society in her dust. And the best part is: she always lives to tell the tale.

Minimizing My Goals

By Sigal Wilnai on October 30, 2012 in romance novel, writing

So here I am, sitting in front of my computer, not two days after writing my blog about letting go of ambition, and what do you think my brain does if not invent new ambitions and goals. The newest goal: write a first draft of my romance novel, letting it flow out. Seems simple, no? But in my brain, a conversation goes on between my different parts, putting a stop to any writing attempt.

The enthusiastic part: “Let’s go! Come on! Let’s write! You’re at over 19,000 words! You can do this! We can finish a first draft!

The “I don’t want you to be disappointed” part: “Wait a second. Let’s not get all over-excited here. Don’t you remember what happened last time? We wrote a first draft, and then we felt overwhelmed. We felt out of control, like we have no idea what was going on in the novel and like we have no idea how to even start to revise.”

The critic: In order to avoid that, you need to write really well the first time. Make it perfect right off the bat. Just really delve into the scenes, think what the characters are thinking, see what they see, make every word count.”

The enthusiastic part: “No, stop stopping me! Just write! Let it flow! We can do it! It’s going to be great! It’ll be fabulous to have a first draft! We’ll revise later. Let’s go, write now!”

The “I don’t want you to be disappointed” part: “You’re rushing and you’ll regret it. Don’t just write. You’ll hate it later and become discouraged. Take it slowly, or even better, let it be. You don’t need to write today. Write tomorrow or the day after, when you’re in a better mood. Write when you’re in your groove. Not now with all this chaos.”

The critic: “That’s the lazy way out. You never get in your groove. You have to write now but write your best work only.”

And so on and so on. They argue with each other louder and louder in my head until I want to scream: “What do you want from me? Let me be. I’m not going to write today!”

But perhaps there is another way. Perhaps a new goal, a smaller, unambitious, calmer goal: I’d like to write today and enjoy it. I’d like to feel like I got sucked into the story for just a little while, even five minutes. I’d like to write and feel the magic of writing without time limits or word counts, and without thinking of the end result, free of expectations and rules.

Can we do it, my parts? Can you step back for just a little while this morning and allow me to have fun? Tomorrow, if you like, we can have the same conversation again, or maybe, if you see that my new goal was a success, we can forgo our usual process of judgement, over-excitement and fear and cooperate: the enthusiastic part can make my ideas flow, the cautious part can make me think, and the critic can keep me organized.

Losing Control for True Love

By Sigal Wilnai on April 12, 2012 in Love, romance novel

Yesterday I finished reading The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae by Stephanie Laurens. The finely-wrought romance, set in 1820 England and Scotland, is full of rich descriptions of people, dress, scenery and customs, but I had a hard time relating to any of the characters. In other words, I didn’t fall in love.

Angelica, the female lead, lives in her head even in matters of the heart. Wearing an heirloom necklace which allows her to recognize her true love, she sets out to make the chosen man, Dominic Earl of Glencrae, fall in love with her. Dominic fully intends to marry Angelica. He needs her in order to get back another heirloom, the coronation cup which he must hand over to bankers by a certain date. As far as he’s concerned, love need not come into it.

Angelica agrees to help Dominic but refuses to give him an answer about their marriage. Her plan: to make him fall in love with her before she accepts him. Slowly she leads Dominic through the intricacies of falling in love. She shows him that she can manage a household and a skittering horse and that she’s interested in learning about Scotland, but each of her actions smacks just a little too much of over-thinking for me.

For Angelica, love is a carefully-planned campaign, the purpose of which is to bring Dominic to admit his love for her. For Dominic love equals a loss of control, a potentially life-long insanity. I’m not surprised that it takes the two of them over four hundred pages to fall in love. And even then I was not convinced that Angelica learned to love Dominic apart from the necklace which proclaimed him her hero.

In so many novels I find characters struggling with the fear of falling in love, afraid of losing control over their life. Yet I remember how much I wanted to fall in love as a young girl, the longing to feel the butterflies, the excitement. I fell in love with the idea of love, the sensations of love.

For a while I loved Haggai, then Avi, then Mitchell and Topaz. I remember being head over heels in love with Oron in seventh grade and later with Ze’ev, who I never realized liked me back. A first boyfriend, Tamir, when I was in tenth grade. And in the U.S. there was a red-haired teenager who I mooned over. And Yoni, the first boy I kisses. He was young!

I don’t think I ever resisted love or was afraid that it will disrupt life somehow. Over the years, my one most sincere, innermost and most often expressed wish was to be in love, to love, to be loved back. What is life without love but a desert of sorts? I always wanted to live it up a little. Fall in love. Sing and dance in the pouring rain.

And today, lucky me! I’m in love.

YES to Opportunity and Magic

By Sigal Wilnai on March 3, 2012 in creativity, dreams, inspiration, romance novel, writing

A few days prior to the writers’ conference this year, I tried to decide what I want to get out of it. If I had a goal, I reasoned, I would be more likely to leave the conference a wiser woman. I could learn more about the craft of writing children’s books, meet other writers like me, perhaps get lucky and say hello to an editor or an agent, but what do I really want? For the last few months I’ve been writing a romance novel for adults — what am I seeking in a conference aimed at children’s books?

I do have one novel for teens that is being considered by an agent, and I have been playing around with a sequel to it (playing around equals to about one hundred and fifty pages written before I got the main characters stranded on a magical mountain). That makes me count as a children’s fiction writer still, even if I am concentrating on romance right now.

And craft is craft. Perhaps no one will teach me here to write better rolling around in bed scenes (notice the euphemism?), but I could learn about revision, creativity, and dreams. That settled it for me. I was coming to the conference to be inspired. What better goal than that? And, just to be on the safe side, I chose a secondary goal: to give twenty of my business cards away. The least I could do, since Dar printed about five hundred of them for me.

The conference began yesterday with Charlie Price, author of Desert Angel (and more). After listening to him, my first action once I returned to my room was to buy the novel on kindle. Price spoke about his creative process and how he watches the movie of the story unroll as he writes. I could see his movie myself on the page once I started reading. Price’s writing is visual, raw and real. I felt connected to Angel, the main character, from the first paragraph, and I’m sure this is a book that I will write about again. I was lucky to sit next to Charlie Price’s wife at dinner and talk books and work ethics with her. That was great.

After dinner I expected great inspiration. I had heard Dan Yaccarino speak before (and I wrote about his YES presentation). But this time he surprised me. After speaking for about an hour about his success, which he attributes to his saying YES to every opportunity that came his way, Yaccarino added: “For every project you see here there are ten that didn’t make it.” I was amazed and inspired by how Yaccarino keeps challenging himself, working hard, trying new things, never afraid of being ridiculed or making mistakes. Truly inspiring.

So inspiring, in fact, that I’m writing to you this morning before I even had breakfast, so I’m going to do it now. Wishing all of us a wonderfully inspiring and enriching Saturdday!

Inspiration

By Sigal Wilnai on March 1, 2012 in inspiration, romance novel

This morning I came by an Ella Fitzgerald quote which read: “It isn’t where you came from; it’s where you are going that counts.” The quote accompanied a photograph of fog misting through a forest scene with a path climbing up and disappearing into the picture. I considered the photo and the quote for a few moments. Something felt not quite right seeing them side by side. Then I realized. To me, that photo said: it is not the destination but the way that counts.

Ella Fitzgerald says that where we come from does not count, but I remember where I sat as I wrote the very first stirrings of The Princess’ Guide. Princess Anna Mara came to life just outside the doors of Ostrovsky High in Ra’anana, Israel. I wrote her story for my friends to read if they were bored during their next class. I remember my enjoyment as I wrote it, my laughter, the magic.

“It’s where you are going that counts,” Ella Fitzgerald says. But I wonder, how true is that? I used to feel that every choice I made created ripples which obliterated everything around me but that one direction I chose. Every choice was epic, unyielding, unalterable. But lately I begin to think, what if the choices I make are not as life-shaking as I imagine. What if deciding on road A does not take me that far from where I’d have gone on road B in the end? What if the destination is more or less the same, but it is the way there that counts?

I guess I am in a philosophic mood today. After all, I’m going to turn 40 in a few days and become middle aged, as my son announced. I’m allowed to be a bit more introspective than usual. It is raining outside, a soft pitter patter of rain that gently wets the ground, and the scene outside my window is not so far removed from the photo above Ella Fitzgerald’s quote. This is where I am now, on those stairs, in that mysterious forest. I’d like to believe that my way goes up that path in the photograph and not down, but perhaps up and down are both illusions, existing only in my own mind.

And at this moment in time, as I stand there on my path in my forest, I wonder if it even matters what my destination is or which direction I first came from. The only thing that matters is that I’m here now, in this beautiful place, getting a little wet, it’s true, but breathing in the fresh air that the rain cleaned with fresh oxygen exhaled by those ferns below. Can you tell I’m happy where I’m at right now? At least for today, I am.

My wishes for my birthday month: to write a few pages daily in the romance novel. To walk in the forest a few times each week. To take deep breaths. To accept what I am given with love and appreciation. To smile and laugh every day.

Do you have any March wishes?

Menacing Middles

By Sigal Wilnai on February 11, 2012 in romance novel, writing

My romance novel has been running on neutral lately. Whenever I start writing, doubts creep up if I’m headed in the right direction. It’s the dreaded middle which is stopping me, and I’ve decided I need an outline to show me the way.

Yesterday, coincidentally, two of my friends brought up the subject of middles. One friend told me, after I confessed being stuck, that she sees the subject of middles as an on-going issue in my life. She argued that I easily start new projects or say I’m done, but middles challenge me. Another sign of flakiness, right?

A little while later my other friend called. She is pursuing a new project and confessed she worries about her follow through. She had tried many careers, and what if she loses interest in this new one too? I realized that instead of praising herself for searching for her next goal, my friend believes that her shifting focus is wrong. Switching jobs perhaps means no commitment to the middle of any one job.

But what is a middle and who decides how long it will be?

With books it is easy to recognize beginning, middle and end. My daughter likes to tell this story: “Once upon a time, the middle, the end.” For an opera singer, the beginning, middle and end of an opera are often clear: there’s a first and a last performance and however many in between.

But sometimes in life it’s not so easy to determine what the middle is or how long it should be. I was married for eight years when I decided to end the marriage. Had I admitted failure when I ended it so soon? Or perhaps my failure was not recognizing earlier that the marriage was bad? Perhaps I would have done better to end it sooner?

I know people who have worked in the same place their whole life, and I know others who move routinely from place to place. I don’t think either is right or wrong. As always, it is the circumstances that mean the most, and I wouldn’t want to judge anyone before walking a mile in their shoes.

My life has been, so far, a continual search. A search for love and happiness. A search for self actualization, self faith and belief. Many endings led me to new beginnings, and there were always middles following, some good and some bad, some satisfactory and some that I tried to escape. I don’t have everything (or really anything) figured out. But I do see my life as a journey to explore all I can, with no road map or outline that I can consult. I make it up as I go and hope that at least some of it will turn out to be fun.

Perhaps this is why I love to write. There’s order in a novel. Only one way to follow. It’s easy, simple and clear. And an outline exists, a beacon of light to lead the way to the landing strip of the end.

Ah, the Joy of a Writing Routine!

By Sigal Wilnai on February 1, 2012 in israel, romance novel, vacation, writing

I had a image in my mind for my month of vacations, and it began, every day, with me writing. In my mind I saw myself producing page upon page of fabulous material which would bring me ever closer to finishing a first draft for my new novel. In Roatan Island I pictured myself sitting with my laptop in my lap on the beach, the wind caressing my hair and the sun blinking in and out of my eyes (such a romantic image). In Prague I imagined myself writing away in a cafe, surrounded by literary-looking types. And in Israel I specifically planned to write every day at my aunt’s house, seating by my grandmother’s little table upstairs.

The result? In Roatan Island I hated everything so much that my mind was not open to creativity. In Prague I walked with my boyfriend from morning till night and was too tired and jet-lagged to think about blogs or romances. In Israel we rushed from cousins to grandmother to brother to friends, and I only wrote once. At least that.

Now I’m home, and I feel like a truck has driven back and forth over whatever order I had in my writing life. I can find a smidgen novel here and a piece of a blog post there, but putting them together seems impossible. I don’t remember how to get back to the routine I had before. I’m disappointed I didn’t fulfill the writing expectations I had. And mostly I just have no idea how to find the flow again.

Coming back from vacation is always hard for me, but most often I face an opposite problem to the one I’m feeling now: usually on vacation I am my better self, I write, I exercise, I spend a lot of time in the fresh air. And when I come back I feel like I’m losing my better Sigal to everyday life, worries and chores. But coming back is much worse when my better self never showed up at all!

So how to get back to writing, I ask myself. This is a corner of joy, not of complaining, and I already whined enough last week. How do I retrieve that rare joy in writing which permeated every moment of my life for the three months before we left on our trip, the confidence in my imagination, the connection which I felt with my dreams?

Perhaps if I let go of how I expected myself to be on these vacations and allowed myself to feel the enjoyment I received from spending time with Dar, my family and friends, I will open the way for the writing to return. Perhaps by writing this page I am already opening the door. And perhaps I held the door closed because I was afraid of the flood of words waiting behind it, yearning to be written. But writing is one area of my life, I really do not wish to dam.

1 2 Next →

Navigation