I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the idea of hope. Perhaps it's the recent election and the atmosphere of change hanging in the air, perhaps it's the way I look toward each day with a big smile thanks to my toddler daughter and her views on the world. To her, every day is full of new and wonderful experiences. Every day is full of hope.Perhaps I've been thinking about hope because I write romance and let's face it, romance is full of hope. And not just the promise of hope, but the promise of a happily ever after.
After all, what other genre guarantees that at the end of each book the reader will walk away with a sigh, a smile and the knowledge that true love conquers all?
As a writer, hope is the theme that carries through whatever I'm working on, be that straight romance, romantic suspense or romantic comedy. Hope lights my creative writing fires and keeps me coming back to my stories again and again. As a reader, hope keeps me turning page after page, often into the early morning hours.
No matter how scarred, how desperate or how wounded a character might be, there's hope things will get better, mysteries will be solved and hearts will be healed. There's hope love will conquer all, and even the most stubborn of heroes or heroines will find redemption and wholeness in loving another.
We may differ in the things that ignite our hopes and keep our hopes alive, but I'd venture to say we all agree that hope is one of the things—if not the main thing—that drives us forward. Hope is the thing that leads and inspires our thoughts, our actions and our dreams.
One of my favorite quotes follows:
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer." –Albert Camus
People often ask me when I started writing and why. The short answer is that I started writing when I was in second grade and never stopped. Yet, I didn't get serious about my writing until the summer of 2001. It was then that I knew I had to write.
My transforming moment came several months after our first daughter died. I picked up a book—a romance—by Barbara Delinsky. For the first time in a very long time, I was transported away from my broken heart. My grief fell away. I lost myself in the pages of that book and found a wonderful, safe escape.
I found hope.
I vowed then and there that if my writing might someday provide a similar escape for a reader, I had to try. Hope, after all, is an incredible thing to find between the covers of a book.
These days I can point to a spot in each of my books where a character realizes there's hope, be it hope for the future, hope for survival or hope for true love. In my newest release, Christmas Confessions, hope pervades every aspect of story and characterization.
My heroine, Abby Conroy, hopes she can find a way to ease her guilt through her work at her confession site, Don't Say a Word. Yet when a killer uses her site to confess his crimes, her hope becomes focused on uncovering the truth, on trusting the hero, on surviving.
Abby realized her only hope of survival now was a Christmas miracle…named Jack.
(Christmas Confessions, Harlequin Intrigue, November 2008)
For my hero, Jack Grant, hope died years earlier with the brutal murder of his sister and the killer's acquittal. Now, with the anonymously-made confessions, Jack has hope of finding justice and closure, not just for himself but also for the families of four other victims. Yet as the story progresses, Jack's hope shifts from the past to the present, narrowing to the hope of saving Abby, no matter the cost.
He was a brother who had lost a sister, a detective who wanted justice, and a man who wanted the woman he loved to live to see the years of life ahead of her.
For them both, the hope of love and trust and healing hovers at the edge of every move they make, every look they share, every moment they spend together.
She still held on to hope Jack might show up on her doorstep one day. For Abby, Jack Grant had unlocked far more than a case. He'd unlocked her heart.
That's the beauty of romance. The power of hope. The promise of a happy ending.
Just for fun, share what you're reading now. What genre gives you your favorite escape? And what hopes keep you turning the pages late into the night?
Until next time, happy reading!
Kathleen LongChristmas Confessions
"...a first-class mystery with a wickedly surprising ending."
-RTBookReviews
