ROMANCE FOR THE LONG HAUL
Kathleen Eagle
I didn’t see myself as a serious romantic until I wrote my first 
book and started looking for an agent. Of the half dozen or so query letters I sent out, half generated positive responses. I weighed the pros and cons and chose the one who had a secretary. Sure sign of success, right? I wasn’t sure about his comment that I would be entering the market at the perfect time because “Romance is becoming very popular.”
Romance? I wrote a story about a woman who took an east-west journey similar to mine, and I set it a hundred years ago. It was a cross-cultural story set in Indian Country, but there were no captives, certainly no savages. Wasn’t that what they were selling in the grocery stores these days? I’m an English teacher, a Lit major, a fairly down-to-earth kind of woman. Sure, I’m optimistic. I see the glass half full—accentuate the positive half of the agents’ responses and the uplifting nature of my story. But I’m not really a romantic. Not seriously. I’m very serious. I have Scandinavian ancestry. Serious, practical people. How did I come up with a Romance?
Okay, so I fell in love with a cowboy who’s also American Indian. He’s two Romance heroes in one. The first time I saw him, he was taming a horse. I was mesmerized. Practically, seriously, positively captivated. He smiled, and my heart skipped a beat. He spoke poetry. He took me for a ride on his horse, and that was the beginning of all she wrote.
Three kids, three grandkids, two different careers, nearly fifty books and almost as many years later, I can say without reservation…um, I mean, without hesitation…that I’m a romantic. The glass is always measured in terms of its fullness. Half-full, brimming, running over, life is the glass we fill for ourselves and those we love. What we fill it with is up to us. I choose to flavor mine with Romance.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Kathleen Eagle’s latest Bell Bridge Books publication is THIS TIME FOREVER
The Last Good Man is $1.99 at the Kindle Store (Amazon) and the Nook Store (Barnes & Noble).
This Time Forever is $1.99 at the Nook Store (Barnes & Noble).
You Never Can Tell is $1.99 at Kobo Books .
