Seekerville: The Journey Continues: Elaine Stock

Friday, June 7, 2019

How to Keep the Romance in a Romance Novel with Guest Blogger Elaine Stock

Happy Fri-yay, Seekerville!! I am delighted to welcome Elaine Stock to the blog today - I love her heart & her books, and it's always a pleasure to hear from her.

Before I turn it over to Elaine, let's take a look at her new book, When Love Blossoms...

The journeys in life take you to unexpected destinations. The love of a good person brings you home.

Kierra Madden, proprietor of the Kindred Lake Inn, struggles for stability after her engagement ends, family strife continues, and business slows. When her mom, sister and teenage niece move in with her, life becomes a lot more complicated. There’s certainly spare room…until one guest arrives…on his bicycle. Ryan Delaney is fit and trim…quite the eye candy.

Ryan, a TV news anchor on a leave of absence following a horrific incident, enjoys the peace long-distance biking offers. Only in town to mend his strained relationship with his teen daughter, he never expects to fall for Kierra fast and hard. Despite her policy of separating business and pleasure, mutual attraction pulls them closer until unforeseen consequences threaten to wedge between them.

Surrounded by springtime beauty, will the temptation of desire bloom into a more powerful and lasting love?

Won't you join me in giving her a big Seekerville welcome??

How to Keep the Romance in a Romance Novel
By Elaine Stock

Always a forever first: Thank you, Carrie Schmidt, for all things Seekerville related and especially for your utmost patience and confidence in me.

Hello, Seekerville! Thanks for welcoming me back!

Here are a few not necessarily random tidbits about me:

--I love Cole Porter songs

--As a child I paired up my Crayola Crayons in couples (the bright colors were girls, the dark colors boy)

--This July 4^th will be my 37^th wedding anniversary (I was a child bride—LOL!)

--When seeing a father carrying a child on his shoulders or a mom kneeling on a cement-hard store floor before her little girl to gently calm the child’s sobs—all complete strangers to me—I will break out in tears over the beauty of family love.

Why? Because in addition to uniting couples in my fictional worlds and tossing at them obstacles to challenge their budding love for each other, I’m Passionate about love’s dynamics between family members. And yes, that is a capital P in passionate!

Ah, but it’s a romance you want to read, huh? Maybe that’s where I’m a wee different…or not (I’d love to hear your take on this in the comment section), because I believe that for love to be strong and lasting for Jack and Janelle or Alex and Ariel the love must transcend past the point of immediate attraction and desire and encompass how this growing, heating relationship affects their loved ones, be it family or friends. The couple likely won’t hop into their private plane and fly off to a desert island to forever exclude all others from their lives. Love can only thrive when not in isolation.

Enough with the philosophy of love. You’re writers and readers. Are you wondering how to write/read romances that expand beyond the hero and heroine, yet at the story’s end you will sigh (hopefully) in joy? I could spend hours analyzing the authors who are stars at writing romances, but instead I will offer what works for me:

Keep the hero and heroine in the limelight. This is their story. It helps to limit the Point of View to only his and her perspectives.
Like descriptions of surroundings, sensory perceptions, and many other etceteras, all secondary characters are secondary including their premise, plot, turning points, and conflicts, yet…
The hero and heroine must be seen engaging with these secondary characters (for me, it’s typically family, though you may have another association in mind). For instance, can your heroine ask for advice from an older brother? Will the hero’s aunt, the one who raised him but then disowned him, step back into the picture and wedge between him and this woman he’s falling madly in love with?
If your secondary characters’ sub-story is strong enough to impact the hero and heroine then keep their plot line, descriptions (physical, emotional, likes, dislikes, the way they act) to a minimal. They must not take over the story and take away from the romance. Keep the romance in the reader’s mind at all times.

To paraphrase Cole Porter in his song, Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love): everyone and everything falls in love; love is what keeps us alive.

Elaine Stock is an award-winning author of Women's & Inspirational Fiction to uplift with hope of better tomorrows. Her novel, Her Good Girl, received the Outstanding Christian/Religious Fiction in the 2018 IAN Book of the Year Awards, 2018 Readers’ Favorite Silver Medal in Christian Fiction and the 2018 American Fiction Awards in the Christian Inspirational category.

Elaine is a member of Women’s Fiction Writers Association, American Christian Fiction Writers, and the Romance Writers of America. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Elaine has now been living in upstate, rural New York with her husband for more years than her stint as a NYC gal. She enjoys long walks down country roads, visiting New England towns, and of course, a good book.