A to Z Challenge Blog 2024 The Letter L

Here we are at the end of the second week of the challenge. It was a busy week with family visiting, the eclipse, and warm weather that made you want to sit outside and worship the sun, but we’re back to seasonal weather for the next little while. That will make it easier to stay on task and get things done. No, not my spring cleaning, although that is on the list, but I need help with that both inside and out.

Today’s letter is L. I’ve chosen to talk about the focal point of all romance books regardless of the genre: LOVE. How much love is enough? In some of my books, the romance is more front center than in others where I emphasize the plot, at least in the early chapters. Sex at the drop of a hat isn’t love, it’s lust. There is love at first sight, but should that lead to instant physical action? In my humble opinion and based on a 52-year-old marriage, I believe that to truly love someone, you have to get to know them, to become friends. Maybe yours is an older-than-time relationship that explains how you can get from A to Z in the blink of an eye. Are your characters soulmates, twin flames that had a fiery relationship in the past, or in a PAST LIFE, that ended suddenly in some fashion where the two were ripped apart, like Mount Vesuvius exploding in Beneath the Ashes, or a jealous sorcerer wanting what wasn’t his and angering the gods in Listen to the Stones. In both of those books, love is the impetus that will make things right as the lovers are finally reborn to pick up where they left off.

Thanks to television, movies, and social media, too many people put physical attraction at the top of the list when they look for a partner, but a soulmate won’t necessarily look exactly the same from one lifetime to the other. There will be something familiar about them, but it will be their personality and hearts that will draw them together as well as those vague memories and the sense of deja vu they’ll feel when they meet. But how much of the book needs to be dedicated to the actual aspects of their love, the physical joining as it were?

Let’s look at my current WIP. I started my novel, Listen to the Stones, with a dream sequence that identified the book as contemporary, paranormal, and romantic. I dropped hints that there might be danger involved throughout the story, but essentially, the first half of the book is dedicated to both the hero and the heroine trying to understand what’s happening to them in the here and now and why. The story focuses on plot and background, not in one quick blob, but slowly, methodically, the way a real person might discover that what she’s always believed to be true isn’t at all that way, bringing them all to the appointed place in plausible ways with just enough knowledge to move on to the next part of the story.

The conflict itself is explained in dream sequences, magical explanations, and paranormal events, but things don’t start to come together until all the players are in place–Callea, the sorceress, Raven, the messenger of the gods, the two separated at conception but who should only have been one, and the prize, the reborn daughter of the sea king, raised away from the sacred place for her safety. The future rests in her hands. She must choose between between two men, one who has loved her across the ages, and another who lusts after her and only wants the land. If she chooses love, those who have been imprisoned for eons will be released. If she’s blinded by the pretender, they will remain prisoners of the stones for eternity. A difficult choice to make and the only thing to help her will be her ability to recognize true love despite the obstacles she’ll face.

That’s it. Come back on Monday to see what I come up with for the letter M

Check out blog posts from other participants here: https://tinyurl.com/w54yupwe