Happy ever afters

Today's a special day for me.

35 years ago (was it really that long?) I woke up on a rather cool, slightly showery July day, went downstairs to where my Mother had prepared me a breakfast of boiled egg, toast and tea, then I had a relaxing bath, dressed casually and went out to the local hairdresser's to have my hair done.

After that, I came home, joined my mother, aunt, and youngest sister my godmother and her husband for coffee chatting with various people who called in, including the Babe Magnet (who wasn't a Magnet then, just Steve) his brother, and one of our best friends from university before spending some time doing my makeup, putting on a dress that my not-yet Mother in law had made for me and the veil that my grandmother had worn on her wedding day some 60 years before, getting into a car and going to Sacred Heart church to get married.

35 years! And I know that at the time there were several people who were convinced it wouldn't last - we had no money, no jobs (straight out of university) no house, just the promise of a flat. . .

I was thinking about this today, obviously, but it also made me think about the way that when people learn what I do for a living some people - and it's happened more than once, to me and to several of my writing friends - accuse me of creating unrealistic dreams and selling them to gullible women who then have unrealistic hopes for their lives.

The problem is that you can only ever prove that 'happy ever after' does exist and does last that 'ever after' when you get to the end of it. And the books I write end at the beginning of that 'ever after', not at the end of it. The characters I've created start out on what they hope and believe will be a relationship that will last a lifetime. No one says it's going to be hearts and flowers all the way but the real 'romance' in the rest of the story will be that both he and she will committed to working at it, to sticking there through thick and thin, 'for better for worse', coping with the bad times and enjoying the good.

And that made me think of just how many friends I have in the writing romance world who've had long, loving sustaining marriages too, some of them for longer than these 35 years. Perhaps that's why we can write romances that ring true in the minds and hearts of our readers. Because we know the glories of love and its special moments, but we know the difficulties too, the workaday moments, and the times when it seems that it's all gone wrong. Perhaps instead of calling us 'pink and fluffy' and unrealistic and idealistic, some of those commentators and critics should look at the successful partnerships that so many romance writers share - and wonder if perhaps we know a little bit about these man/woman relationships after all.

So - Michelle Reid, Anne McAllister, Liz Fielding, Sandra Marton, Marina Oliver, Joanna Maitland, Jacqueline Baird - and many many others - tonight when the Magnet and I raise a glass to another anniversary, we'll be raising a glass to you too - and to all those real, true happy ever afters

Here's wishing you all a happy ever after too.

And Steve - thank you for more than 35 very special years as my real life hero and the inspiration for 55 fictional ones - and counting . . .

PS to the description of my wedding day - yes I did see Steve on the morning if the wedding - so there's that 'bad luck' superstition disproved once and for all.

This picture was taken on our 30th anniversary which we celebrated

at the Harlequin party at RWA Conference New York