This and That

Work has been busy so I haven’t had time to do much as far as posts go.  This is a good thing/bad thing.  It’s nice to be busy once again – which is good,  but then I don’t have time to do posts for blogging, which I’ve gotten used to doing again so that is bad.  But both my care coordinators are off doing other things so I have some free time.

Not only that now, but my fellow worker bee who was supposed to work this upcoming weekend from 12 to 8 has managed to get trapped in Scotland an extra day so I said I would work the day for her.  I may have time in the evening as it’s not really that busy on the weekends after 6:00 pm or so.  And as I kept telling her – take a large suitcase with holes in it so you can bring Jamie back in your luggage.  She’s a real fan of Outlander too.  She said she would do that – but she would keep him and not share.  Maybe now she will.

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I love visiting All About Romance.  Years and years ago when I thought I was alone in my obsession with romance books I happened to come across this site and discovered that low and behold, I “had people”. 

There were indeed others who were as nutty about the genre as I was.  There has been many an interesting discussion on the boards there and one of the recent ones that caught my eye was authors who blow up HEA’s.  And one thing just about all romance readers consider sacrosanct is the HEA.  As a writer of romances, the worst thing they can do is mess with the HEA. 

The happy end is an essential part of the whole experience of reading a romance book.  I’ve seen over the years a few ‘new-to-the-genre’ speculate that maybe it’s not so necessary, that maybe we, the readers, should be a bit more bendable on the issue.  But for the true romance fan, that just is not an option and woe betide the author who messes with it.

I’ve had a lot of bad stuff happen to me over the years and I expect that almost every single romance reader can say the exact same thing.  It’s a very rare thing to skate through life with no pain.  Romance is our oasis, our escape from whatever might be hurting us and to mess with an HEA is like the oasis just being a mirage when we believe we’ve reached it after a long and painful journey.  So don’t mess with it.

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I'm not proud to admit this, it's my dirty little secret but I watch soap operas once in a while to de-stress when I get home from a hard day at the office.  Though often they have the opposite effect, they raise my stress level at the end of the day.  But I’ve come to the conclusion that they are anti romance.  They appear to be very similar on the outside, beautiful women, handsome men, lots of passion and love.  But when you see the inside they are everything we are against in our romances.  Adultery rules the day.  Marriages, even the ones that would appear to last forever, end.  Children are raised with a sense of entitlement and worst of all EVIL triumphs every time.  Luke and Laura, Bo and Hope, Steve and Betsy, Victor and Nicky, Erica and any man – none of them worked.  The main ones I watch, when I watch them these days, are The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful.  There isn’t a person I can route for in either of them.  Victor never gets his just desserts,  Brooke continues to sleep with her mother/daughters/sisters fellas.  Hypocrisy abounds and any kind of loyalty/friendships dissolve when it comes to lust.  So why do I watch them every so often?  I don’t know – I really can’t answer that question.  It makes no sense that I watch something where every single character is sleazy in some shape or form.

I have a whack of reviews I’ve been working on too – so they will be up next.

 

‘til later.