The beauty of the mundane

I'm a romance writer, so today I'm going to talk romance and love stories...

There's an awkward moment about 99% of the time when someone asks what you write, and you tell them "romance." (Christian Historical Fiction sounds so much classier). Yes, maybe it's Inspirational Contemporary Fiction or something equally lofty sounding, but at its root, whatever I've written has been a romance novel.

And here's where people get it wrong. Romance isn't just the "bodice-rippers" and erotica. I would even go so far as to say, a true love story isn't either of those. At least, not solely that. My absolute favorite stories happen in the everyday. No grandiose gestures of love from a billionaire hero. No celebrity lifestyle that leads to an epic proposal. Just people falling in love during the ordinary days of their life. But it's that love that makes the days so much more than ordinary.

There's a quote I love:

" Life isn’t a love in, it’s the dishes and the orthodontist and the shoe repairman and ... ground round instead of roast beef. And I’ll tell you something else: it isn’t going to a bed with a man that proves you’re in love with him; it’s getting up in the morning and facing the drab, miserable, wonderful everyday world with him that counts."

It's from Yours, Mine, and Ours (the original version). And my husband thinks it's the least romantic quote ever. He may have even said the most depressing quote ever. ;) But I think it's where the real romance comes in. True love, formed not in the peaks of life's overwhelming moments, but in the slog of the everyday. That's the love that's going to last. And those are the stories I love to read. And love to write. The stories that find the beauty in the mundane. The stories that put the beauty in the mundane.