Choose Your Own Romance Ending: Sidewalk Flower Hero Edition

This week the Rockville 8 welcomes the beautiful and talented Carlene Love Flores! She's here to talk about her debut book, Sidewalk Flower, which has one of the yummiest heroes ever to hit the page. I'm still reading Sidewalk Flower, so I can't say for sure that Carlene actually chose the right ending, but I can tell you that she chose the right hero! Lucky captured my attention from the moment he walked up to Trista's Jeep . . . and he can capture yours, too, because Carlene is giving away a copy of Sidewalk Flower to one lucky commenter!

Welcome to the Rockville 8, Carlene!

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Okay, I know I’m supposed to be cool and sophisticated now that I have a book out there…well that’s not happening!  I am having the biggest Holy Moly moment because this is the very first time I have been asked to guest blog!  Uh-huh, oh yeah!  Okay, now I will revert back to the non-silly guest that the esteemed and lovely Rockville 8 ladies intended to present to you today ;)   Need I say that I am honored to have been asked?  Thank you!

Remember the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books?  Man, I loved those.  My favorite was “Jungle Safari” by Edward Packard.  I loved it so much that at the tender age of ten, I wrote my very own and completely unique (snickers and grins) CYOA called…The Jungle.
I guess it’s not a huge surprise that my debut novel, Sidewalk Flower, at one point was on track to becoming a “Choose Your Own Romance Ending” book!  I can smile fondly now at the discarded “When it was this guy or when it was that guy” files on my laptop, but at the time I was beginning to feel like the anti-cupid.
You see, it took a while to find Trista, the story’s heroine, just the right guy.  The Sheryl Crow lyrics “Are you strong enough to be my man” sum up our hero search and the answer was all too often NO.  I’m not kidding when I say it took years.
There were moments when desperation set in and I asked Trista to consider her best friend, Jaxon, as her hero material.  After all, “friends-to-lovers” is one of my favorites to write.  Yeah, no.  “Ew.  That isn’t happening, Carlene,” she said to me.
Then there was the time I tried to push Sin Pointe’s (the band Trista works for, led by her besty, Jaxon) webmaster on her.  All I can say is poor, poor Benny.  Not only did he have to pull me aside and let me in on the fact he’s pretty deep into a secret crush on another woman but next to Trista, he’s the most overworked, underappreciated, low-man-on-the-totem pole in the Sin Pointe world.  “No time for love for the Benny,” he said to me.
Finally, I had resorted to writing Trista these silly love poems in attempts to cheer her heart and assure her I wasn’t giving up on her happily ever after when KABLAM!
He.  Showed.  Up.
Potential Romance Hero #3 was holding his own in their scenes!
It took a few months to work things out, (theirs is a roller coaster of a romance ride) but Trista and Lucky made the best ending ever.  I hope you’ll agree and enjoy reading Sidewalk Flower!
It was my absolute pleasure to be here with you today at Rockville 8!
So tell me, if you could take your favorite romance novel and choose your own ending, how would it go?
Happy 2013!

What Makes a Hero?

This week we welcome one of our favorite authors, Mary Blayney, to talk about one of her favorite subjects: Heroes.

What fun to be asked to spend the day with the Rockville8. Not long ago I spent a weekend with most of them at a writers’ retreat that I hope is well on its way to becoming a tradition. In the course of our free-wheeling, food and drink aided discussions, I brought up the subject of heroes. I am going to enlarge on it here because it’s a favorite theme of mine. Thanks to the 8 for giving me a chance to share it with a wider audience.

First one very important caveat: for this exercise I use hero as a gender neutral term, with thanks to Keely for reminding me of that.

For romance writers heroes are our stock in trade. Because the happy ending, or at the least an uplifting one, is an essential element of our stories, the hero triumphs, almost always on more than one level.

Due to early exposure to Joseph Campbell’s HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES I’ve been thinking about my definition of a hero for years. After writing more than fifteen books and novella I’ve got it! What fun to open it up for further discussion here.

For me and my characters a hero has honor at the core of his being and is willing to give more than he can afford to give.

Every hero I have written accepts the burden of those two qualities. With gender neutrality in mind, I would say that Charlotte Parnell in TRAITOR’S KISS is the ultimate expression of those elements. Charlotte lost and then rediscovered her honor in a hard school. By the time we meet her Charlotte is willing to give up everything, including her identity, to right wrongs of which she has been a part. Her behavior in living her concept of honor does not ring true with her nineteenth century peers, but it is there as deep and sure as it is in the more conventional hero, Michael Garrett in LOVER’S KISS.

As disappointing as it is, I know not everyone has read my regency set romances published by Bantam or the novellas Berkley publishes. (But, hey, you can always check out the title at MaryBlayney.com)

With that in mind, let me give you some more widely known heroes in literature. Atticus Finch in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ranks high as does Sidney Carton in TALE OF TWO CITIES. My favorites are lesser known but worth the effort if their names do not ring a bell: Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith from the book CORDELIA’S HONOR by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Aral and Cordelia meet when they are on the opposite sides of a war set some time in the future. Their journey to a much challenged happily-ever-after is the epitome of honor and willingness to sacrifice. Indeed, it’s hard to decide whose sacrifice is greater. In fact Aral does sacrifice his honor for a greater good, but then Cordelia is willing to jeopardize hers to spend her life with the man she loves. Cordelia’s success at maintaining her honor is the theme of the second half of CORDELIA’S HONOR.

Cordelia and Aral’s journey brings them together for a lifetime that we, as readers, share through the journey of their son, Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. In the rest of the books in this series Miles struggles constantly with the same questions.

I would love to know what your definition of a hero is and if you have any suggestions for my list. How about someone loved by readers who does not exhibit those qualities? Both Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara come to mind. Is that why their love story fails? I think that’s the subject for another blog. If I’m invited again.

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You can find Mary's latest Novella, "The Other Side of the Coin" in the anthology The Other Side, out now.