Stepping into Romance

A few years ago, a friend of mine from college thought I'd be good at writing romance fiction.  I forgot exactly why she brought this up; I think I had mentioned a somewhat romantic gesture that she thought was sweet.  If I could tap into that touching creativity, she thought I might have something to work with.

And then I said something along the lines of, "What kind of medication are you on?  I want some."  For the record, I am a card-carrying dude.  The idea of writing romance fiction never stuck with me.

However, now that I'm on a bit of a break from Ain't No Grave, and even when I get back to work on that book, I've noticed that I can't sit around thinking about zombies all the live-long day.

So in a fit of inspiration, I decided to write a serialized romance centered on Andrew Ursler, the main character in my last story Are You Proud of Me?.  Andrew, when we last saw him, was a struggling artist caught by his mother indulging in a drinking habit.  You can read the story here if you'd like.  This isn't so much a self-promotion as it is a chance to let you guys follow along with this good and early.  My friend Ashley of Arts Collide seemed receptive of the idea, so here's to me giving it a shot and maybe giving AC a stable long-term feature to help draw in readers.  Because Lord knows I think that site deserves the readers.

I'm not expecting romance to be an easy genre for me given that I've never, ever read a love story.  And trying to write a romance in a series in thousand-word increments makes things even more tricky.  On the other hand, love stories are fairly natural because we've all been exposed to it.  We've seen either our parents go through a relationship or our friends.  We've each had our fair share of crushes and heartache.  So I'm hoping that intuition might help balance things out what I'm lacking in literary experience and an ample word count.

I just hope I don't wind up like goddamn Jane Austen!