{"id":5060,"date":"2007-02-02T14:53:13","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T14:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shilohwalker.wordpress.com\/2007\/02\/02\/pursuit-of-happiness\/"},"modified":"2007-02-02T14:53:13","modified_gmt":"2007-02-02T14:53:13","slug":"pursuit-of-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shilohwalker.com\/website\/2007\/02\/pursuit-of-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Pursuit of Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some people see romance books as a waste of time.\u00a0 Something meaningless and\u00a0trivial. Usually these are people who will admit they’ve never read a romance, not once, not ever.\u00a0 A lot of time, they think of romance in the terms of ripped bodices, clinches and Fabio.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s fine~they can think what they\u00a0want.\u00a0 I enjoy reading romances and not just because I want to read about two people falling in love, getting married, having sex…. *G*\u00a0 even though all of that is good.<\/p>\n

But that’s not why I read it.\u00a0 I love to read.\u00a0 I always have.\u00a0 I read in a lot of genres, almost all of them, when the mood suits me.\u00a0The only genres I don’t really read are nonfiction, self help, westerns and erotica (yes, weird I know, I write erotic romance but straight erotica doesn’t appeal to me).\u00a0 Oh, the literary stuff.\u00a0 I’m sorry but literary fiction bores me to tears and it tends to be depressing as hell.<\/p>\n

I write romances,\u00a0and I read them, for one simple reason.\u00a0\u00a0 The HEA.\u00a0 Happy Ever After<\/em>.\u00a0 Think about it.\u00a0 How many things guarantee you a happy ending?\u00a0 Movies?\u00a0 Sometimes.\u00a0 But sometimes, the hero dies in the movie.\u00a0 Real life?\u00a0 Not for all of us.\u00a0 We never know what’s coming.\u00a0\u00a0You\u00a0don’t whether or not you’ll meet the love of your life and if you do, no person on earth knows whether you’ll be able to grow old together.\u00a0 Maybe a happy ending for some has nothing to do with marriage and\/or kids.\u00a0 Maybe it’s the job.\u00a0 Or the dream. Your version of a HEA may vary greatly from mine, but just because you’re after that HEA in life doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.<\/p>\n

Things happen.\u00a0 Life happens.\u00a0 Accident happen.\u00a0 You could be perfectly happy today and tragedy strikes tomorrow.\u00a0 We simply never know.\u00a0 Right now, I’m living my HEA.\u00a0 I’m married to the man I’ve always loved, we have three beautiful kids, I’m doing what I always dreamed of and I’m paying off credit card bills.\u00a0 What more could you want?<\/p>\n

That’s easy.\u00a0 A guarantee.\u00a0 I want to know that I’ll grow old with my husband. I want to know that I’ll raise decent, hardworking honest kids that grow into people of value.\u00a0 But I can’t have that.\u00a0 For all I know, God could take one of them, all of them, me, tonight.\u00a0 Anything could happen that will change my HEA so that guarantee is out of the question.\u00a0 Well, we could wax spirituality and that leads to a whole different kind of HEA, but that’s not the point of the post.\u00a0 ;o)\u00a0 I ramble a lot.<\/p>\n

The point of the post… oh yeah!\u00a0 I want my HEA when I read.\u00a0 Yes, I’ll read a good mystery.\u00a0 I’ll read a bloody horror.\u00a0 I love a good sci fi and I can’t tell you how much I’d like more books written by Mercedes Lackey featuring Diane Tregarde.\u00a0 But none of those genre guarantee a HEA.\u00a0 When I read, I get connected to the characters.\u00a0 They may suffer.\u00a0 That’s fine.\u00a0 They may lose people.\u00a0 Cool,\u00a0 I’ll deal.\u00a0 But I want to know at the end of it all, there will be a HEA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That means…a romance.\u00a0 It’s the only genre where you guaranteed that the main characters will live thru it (in some shape or form) and they’ll be together.\u00a0 Reading a romance leaves me feeling good.\u00a0 It’s a distraction when my book isn’t cooperating.\u00a0 When I was living with my folks, it was a distraction from their constant arguing.\u00a0 When I was working a day job, it was a distraction from the stress there.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I read them for that ‘feel good’ factor recently discussed at RTB<\/a>.\u00a0 If wanting that feel good factor is trivial,\u00a0 hey, that’s fine by me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people see romance books as a waste of time.\u00a0 Something meaningless and\u00a0trivial. Usually these are people who will admit they’ve never read a romance, “Pursuit of Happiness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10161045129738658_54762468447":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[542],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"yoast_head":"\nPursuit of Happiness - Shiloh Walker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shilohwalker.com\/website\/2007\/02\/pursuit-of-happiness\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pursuit of Happiness - Shiloh Walker\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some people see romance books as a waste of time.\u00a0 Something meaningless and\u00a0trivial. 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