Love & Romance

Gillian Layne you are the winner of my Valentine's Day Week contest. Please email me at: www (.) christie-craig (.) com and let me which book you will be wanting.

Thanks everyone for playing along! Happy Valentine's Day!

Oh, on Friday, I will be guest blogging over at Jenyfer Matthews blog site: http://www.jenyfermatthews.com/blog/ Please pop over and learn how I deal with people who need to be gently educated on the romance genre. Okay...maybe I wasn't so gentle, but they deserved it!!! Bless their hearts.

CONTEST! Post a comment today and be entered to win the prize of: one of my books, a "silly" pen, a pack of note cards, and some yummy chocolate.

Also, please pop over to: http://www.examiner.com/x-3098-Houston-Romance-Novels-Examiner
and read my interview. (You might learn things about me that you didn't know.) If my interview isn't on the front page hit the word "previous" and it will take you to my article. Now for my blog . . .

LOVE AND ROMANCE


I don’t consider myself an honest-to-goodness expert. Not because I don’t feel qualified in the topic. Why, if I’ve earned a degree in any subject in this college called life, I’d have a masters in . . . The Matters of the Heart. The only reason I don’t think I’m a true expert is because love is a tricky son of a witch. Love sometimes befuddles me. It comes in all stages and degrees. It makes us laugh; it makes us cry. It makes us bare our souls and it turns some of us into stone—cold fear hits at the first glimpse of this mighty emotion, and some lock their hearts away, refusing anyone passage into their lives.

Love is all-consuming, it’s beautiful, it’s the cream in life’s cream puff. It’s the prize in the box of life’s Cracker Jacks. It makes us strong; it makes us as vulnerable as a new born child left alone in a snowstorm. Love is the thing that most people, facing the end, will measure their lives upon. Unfortunately, in so many cases, love comes with an expiration date.

Some could argue that short-term love was never really love at all. But try telling that to the person in short-term love. Some think that it takes two hearts to be a true love. But try telling that to the person who has given their heart and received nothing back.

Some believe it takes years for love to grow; others believe love happens at first glance. Some believe that you can truly love only once. But tell that to a young mother and widow, who finds a hero willing to help raise her child and build a life with her. Tell that to the elderly couple who found each other in a nursing home.

Some will insist that love heals all wounds—that with love there is nothing that cannot be conquered or overcome. Others will tell you that that little tidbit is the biggest pile of horse crap they’ve ever heard. That love alone is never enough.

So love confuses me. However, this so called masters degree in love that I feel I’ve attained stems from both personal experience and from an in-depth study. In my study, I’ve written not one but almost fifteen theses on love. Yup, I’m talking about romance novels.

I’ve created 19th century heroines, who found their hearts taken by Native Americans who refused to love. I’ve penned stories about women who fell in love with a man determined to take the child she considered her own. I’ve created heroines who talked to dead people and fell in love with a half-fairy whose only fear were ghosts. I’ve written about a nervous puker falling head over heels in love with a sympathy puker. Every character, every story taught me something about love.

Personally, I’m known the beauty of this sweet emotion. I’ve experienced the chills and the thrills of lust which is so often love’s companion. I’ve been used and abused by the one person who was supposed to love me. I’ve suffered from a broken heart. I’ve watched my parents with over twenty years in a marriage, walk away from each other and the life and love they had built. I watched a beloved aunt, divorce the same man three times--and marry him four. I’ve held hands with my sobbing grandmother as she watched them lower the body of my grandfather, the man she’d devoted her life to for over sixty years, into the cold ground. I’ve lived with, and loved my own hero for twenty-four years. I know the sweet intimacy of making love to same man for the thousandth time.

So what has all this taught me, what is it that I really believe about love?

I believe love and relationships are like the plant in my window sill—without food and water, it will flat-out die.

I don’t believe love solves problems, but I believe love can instill in us the ability to work through them--even if it takes three divorces and four marriages to find what works.

I don’t believe love is 50/50, but it’d better be about give and take or it will pack its bags and skedaddle.

I believe the “firsts” that we experience in love—the first touch, the first kiss, the first “TIME” are mind-blowingly awesome. Almost as wonderful and seeing an elderly couple—married for fifty years—holding hands as they make the last of their journey though life . . . together.

I believe a lot of people walk away from a real love so they can re-experience those firsts. Sadly, they have forgotten that the real prize is the kind of love they just left—that what our hearts are really seeking is someone to make this journey with.

I believe love comes with a price—death being the highest, but it’s a price worth paying.

I believe some people suck at love—the cheaters, the abusers—and they don’t deserve it.

I believe love is a gamble—we sometimes can’t tell the keepers from the creepers—but it’s a gamble worth taking—no matter how many times we get our butts burned.

I believe love is an enigma.

And last but not least, I believe love makes fools of us, but only a fool doesn’t want it.

So there are my thoughts on love. What do you believe? Would you please share?

Come on, this is Valentine’s Week and today I’m giving away one of my books, a pen, a pack of note cards, and some chocolate. So . . . don’t be shy. Post a comment to be entered in my contest. And make sure you come back tomorrow to see the winner posted at the beginning of my blog.

Crime Scene Christie