Guest Post: Jessica @ Laugh Love Write

Good morning everyone. As you might of noticed last Thursday, I’m featuring guest posts & interviews this month from fellow bloggers that I love. I am so excited to do this and am thrilled all these fabulous ladies agreed to visit for a bit!

Today I have the lovely Jessica from Laugh Love Write  over for a guest post. Make sure to stop by her wonderful blog, after reading this of course. =) She has a lot of great reviews, interesting posts and even a giveaway. Thank you so much Jess for coming over! 

She's put together a post about romance novels for us that is absolutely amazing. I wish I had the knack to put my thoughts into words like Jess because she has managed to define why I love reading romance perfectly!

So without further ado, here she is…

(((Hiya Everyone)))

First and foremost I want to thank Crystal for having me over here at the Reading Between the Wines Book Club. I am so honored and excited. I brought something to share too. Sangria and a cheese platter with figs, fruit paste, goat cheese, dried apricots and pecans. Hope you like. I actually just found out about that cheese platter combo over Thanksgiving with the fam, but that is neither here nor there.

So romance books. Yay. I can’t think of anything better. They are the quintessential product of all the best libraries and aren’t called escapist literature for nothing. The greatest thing about romances is the power they hold to allow us, readers, to escape amidst the pages and travel to a world that is not our own. Now you might be saying, “Yeh, yeh Jessica, all books do that.” But, not all books can make you cry and laugh during the same novel, or give you butterflies, or make you feel like you need a cold shower. I mean c’mon, we all read romances for the hunks right? Well, if you don’t you can at least admit to loving romances for the love story. Some of the greatest love stories can never die, mainly because of how they make the readers feel. Now Romeo and Juliet is an obvious choice, as is Pride and Prejudice. Both stories captivate you with such an intensity that a part of you actually lives the story ride along side the characters.

Many people think this is a bad thing. That these romances give readers a false hope of love, of perfection that doesn’t exist. I disagree. Romances aren’t perfect. In fact romance novels are never perfect. Take J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood books for example. The Brotherhood consists of a bunch of huge, hunky, sexy, take-a-cold-shower-when-you-think-of-them, vampires that have many faults. One of the vamps; Phury, has only one leg, another vamp, the warrior king in fact, is blind. Now the women who love those imperfect men (or vampires rather) know that their life is not going to be perfect. There is sacrifices and compromises and everything in between. Sure there is sweaty love making that makes readers swoon, but there is also arguments and worries and things that need to be overcome. Often times, romance novels can teach readers how to overcome the stress of their own lives. “Heck if so-and-so character can do it, than I can bloody do it,” has become a favorite saying of mine. I live in books. Within the pages of a romance novel I learn to grow, to fight vampires and run free with were-wolves, I learn what can be done and what can’t be done and when that book’s ending comes and I have to turn the last page, I take a little bit of the book with me. A part of the characters, a part of the story line, a part of their gumption seeps into me while reading a novel, just as a part of me is left behind somewhere between Page 1 and Page 272.

Romances are not just fun fluffy reads, they are often deep and meaningful and entirely unforgettable. They inspire and help heal those who are broken. They are a place to escape to, a place to run to and a place that will never turn a reader away. I know the characters are always ready to tell me the story if I just take the time to open their book. So, basically that is why I love romances. G.K. Chesterton puts it better: "Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." Gotta love a good fairy tale.

I hope that makes sense, and I am sure you are all wondering who I am now. Who is this crazy girl talking about fluffy romance novels giving her courage to face the day…well let me tell you: I am a reader, writer, book reviewer, editor and everything in between. I am currently the proud blogger of Laugh Love Write where I write about the “Musings of a Reading Writer” as I like to say. I am also the Romance Fiction Feature Writer for the Suite101 online magazine, the Louisville Writing Careers Examiner for Examiner.com, the happy writer of hundreds of published articles and poetry and a freelance journalist who takes on darn near anything to do with the writing industry. God and family are also very important to me. They keep me grounded when I am at risk of flying away to another world amidst the pages of a book. No, actually they are more like… who I come back to when my feet hit the ground again. And I could go on for decades about my passion for traveling and the places I have been but I don’t want to bore you. If you want to chit chat about anything I am always available. I frequently comment here at the Reading Between the Wines Book Club and I am always around over at Laugh Love Write.

So, thank you again Crystal for having me over today and I will leave you with the words I use to get through any and everything…

Write ON!