When you write romance novels, or chick lit, or a lot of the other stuff that I write, it's pretty much mandatory that your story ends with a 'happily ever after.' In fact, most romance imprints actually have that requirement in their guidelines. It doesn't necessarily have to be heroine ending up with the gorgeous Prince Charming, but it has to be a happy ending of some sort.
Unfortunately, I had my happy ending pulled out from under me a couple weeks ago. When I'm sitting here, wondering where it went, it's hard to find a happily-ever-after for someone else. I was so sure that I knew how my story would end, yet it turned out to be completely the opposite of what I was expecting. I'm having a hard time moving forward with my WIPs because of that. There's a lot of doubt in my mind now - does the ending that I think I'm going to have really work out? Is it remotely realistic? Why hasn't he dumped her whiny ass by now?
So I don't think I can work on the things I've been working on in the past few months. But that's okay! It is, really. I have proven to myself that I can set things aside, and then come back to them and finish them later. That's what I'm going to do for now. I'm going to put all of the romantic crap off to the side. In the meantime, I'm going to work on a science-based piece. There doesn't have to be a happy ending here - one of the MC's is a murder and rapist, and not at all likable. In fact, I'm pretty sure that he's going to die a miserable death. No happily-ever-after for him! Once I'm done that, maybe I'll be ready to work on happy endings again.
In unrelated news, I discovered GoodReads today! It is wonderful! I spent most of the evening inputting the books that are in my bookshelves (although I'm quite certain that there are other books around here that have been missed). I appear to have 255 books (fiction only - non-fiction are currently in boxes in the closet), and of those, 124 are on my 'to-read' list. Seriously? I have that many unread books??? But then I thought about it a bit... I bought a lot of books at a Friends of the Library book sale last year, and haven't gotten around to them yet. And there are four series that I've been collecting, but haven't started yet because they looked like the type that I would want to read all at once - I hate it when I have to wait a year for the next book to come out! On the bright side, that means that I don't have to buy anything at all for summer reading!
And speaking of summer reading, I've finished Soul of Fire and moved on to Faith of the Fallen. If you look at the widget to the right, you'll see that I've got three books on the go: Faith of the Fallen is the primary, Murder List is from the kitchen at work (for the days when I forget Faith at home), and Anne of Green Gables is actually an audiobook (for the ride to and from work, and to and from D&D games).
Have I mentioned that I love GoodReads?
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