
Keep Your Pets Safe in Hurricane Season

As a romantic suspense author, reading is like homework for me.
I read as many best selling suspense and romantic suspense novels as I possibly can, and work hard to learn something from each and every one.
My most favorite author of all time is Wilbur Smith. He writes what I can only define as exxxtreme romantic suspense, although actually, his books cannot formally fit into the romance genre, as they don’t necessarily have a happy ending. They are immoderate, intense, terrible, wonderful, exceptional and graphically passionate. Maybe they are so vivid because he comes from Africa, like me, and Africa is a very vibrant place. It’s the first thing that always hits me when I go back to visit. There’s a unique pulse to it, and even the colors are brighter.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell has to be my most favorite love story of all time. Now that I live in the south and have visited some of the places she wrote about, it has really come alive for me. It too, cannot be termed a romance in the true sense of the book world.
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak comes a close third. Maybe I just like sad endings? I don’t write them, though. I like my heros and heroines to get together in the end.
Other romantic suspense authors whose books I adore are Danielle Steele, Sidney Sheldon, and of course, Nora Roberts.
I’ve read and enjoyed romantic suspense novels by plenty of other authors, but I’d love to get some recommendations from other readers and writers, so I can expand my knowledge of romantic suspense, and hopefully keep improving as a writer.
Please feel free to comment.
Peace and Love.
I know everyone who reads this will, like me, want to send loving thoughts or prayers, and condolences to the victims of the horrific attack in Aurora Colorado last night.
I cannot begin to imagine the shock and pain of the wounded, and the families of all the victims.
If only there were some sort of magic spell we could cast on all of society so bad and crazy people would all change their ways, and everyone could just be happy and live in harmony.
The sad thing is–if anyone were to write about a world like that, it would be a fairy tale–and readers would get bored.
In the fantasy world of fiction,and even stories based on true events, readers thrive on conflict and tension.
It can be romantic tension, where we live through the minds of the lovers, willing them to kiss, or take the next step, longing for them to touch one another.
Tension and conflict are also present in the lives of people who have to make choices, because we can never be sure if we are making the right choice. Even in our own lives, we all go back and wonder what would have happened if we had chosen the other path.
I know I don’t have to describe the tension created by horror or fear.
Sadly, most of the ideas for suspense novels come from real life events and people. Truth is stranger than fiction, so they say.
Maybe if we all wish for a world without evil our wishes will one day come true and evil will only exist in fiction..