What is love?

The world of fiction lost two writers this week.

Robert B Parker died 'at his desk' at the age of 77. I learned this from Anne McAllister's blog. So if you want to know more about him, she can tell you more than I can. I never really read any of his Spenser detective novels. In fact the only time I was ever aware that Spenser existed was way back when, when there was a TV series starring Robert Urich that I watched for a while.




The other author who died at the weeked was Erich Segal who was 72. Segal was of course the a classics professor at Yale University who he wrote the book, Love Story which became an Oscar-winning 1970 film starring Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw.


Love Story was the film that was famous for coining the line that everyone went around quoting at the time - and that is :

Love is never having to say you're sorry.

That infuriated me at the time and really it still does. It was too simplistic, too neat . I never fully believed in it.

Thinking about my own writing now and the resolutions of my books where my hero and heroine have to sort out the conflicts between them to reach a happy ending, I think that if I had to say why I don't like this line it's because I'd need to say that loving someone means that if you're the one who needs to say sorry because you've hurt someone you love, then you'll really really want to say it.

And if you're the one someone has to say sorry to, then you know you're happy to forgive them - so in one sense they 'never have to say they're sorry' but you're so glad they want to say sorry because that shows they know they hurt you and they regret it.

Of course there are different ways of 'saying sorry' and actions can speak louder than words . . . but well now perhaps you see why I always found this line too simplistic and rather sentimental. That's also why I always find writing romance so fascinating and complex and I don't get bored with it.

But it made me think of an idea for a one off quick contest. Because yesterday I received some author copies of the bok from the Mistresses collection that contains one of my earlier stories. This is the book with the lovely cover. The full title is Mistresses Shackled with Rubies and my book in it is Her Secret Bridegroom.

I got far more copies of this book than I was ever expecting so I'm giving away one as a prize today.

All you have to do is to leave a comment completing the following sentence -

Love is . . . .

And I'll pick out a favourite and the poster will win one of the extra copies of Mistresses.