Understanding Your Own Romantic Tastes

Understanding Your Own Romantic Tastes

I’ve struggled writing book 3 in the Blood & Bone Trilogy and I thought it was just because I struggle with romance in general (I know–a romance writer who struggles with romance???). I ask myself why I write romance and I do it for a couple reasons:

  • I love reading romance
  • It seemed the easiest place to dip my feet into self-publishing
  • I REALLY love reading romance
  • I have the most experience with what could be classified as romantic stories (from, again, a reading perspective and I feel it’s pretty sound advice to write in a genre you’re familiar with)

But like on a personal level I am about the least romantic person I know. I don’t get real life romance. I feel like a computer going DOES NOT COMPUTE. So, I’ll read a story where two people falling in love is the central theme and just goggle over how amazing it is, sitting down to WRITE the gritty details of how that works has been…difficult. Overwhelming. Like staring up at a clifface knowing I’m supposed to climb it and being frozen with fear because guys–i HATE rock climbing, legit hate it.

Falling-in-love vs Realizing-you’re-in-love

Embed from Getty Images

But in the last month, while I tried to wrangle what it was about Book 3 I was stuck on specifically I realized something both about the book and about my own reading tastes:

I almost always read stories where the characters are basically already in love and either a) pining or b) oblivious to their own feelings. But the point is, the “in-love” stuff already exists.

Book 3….well…Pat and Ethan aren’t pining OR oblivious to their own feelings. Like, they legit are not in love with one another. The thing that was tripping me up is how do two people FALL in love? This is a conundrum that is not readily answered in the sorts of stuff I like to read AS A READER. It’s pretty uncharted territory.

I keep wondering, if I just lock them in the starboard broom closet and mash their faces together will they eventually fall in love?

(also searching Getty Images for “two men in love” returns srsly hetero results, what’s up with that getty images?)

2 thoughts on “Understanding Your Own Romantic Tastes”

  1. Loved both books! Pat & Ethan both love solving cases and are dedicated to their careers. Just focus on the traits they have in common and how it bonds/binds them: they are both committed, intense in their own unique ways, and they have sexual chemistry. People have fallen in love with much less to go on! 🙂

    1. aw, thanks for the encouragement! and i agree, as much as i get tangled up with the things that make them different, there are also a BUNCH of things that make them perfect for each other (i’ve started carrying around a list in my car i add to about this lol)

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