BREE
I’ve been staringat the same paragraph for two hours. The words swim before my eyes, mocking me with their clunkiness, the mismatched metaphors, their inadequacy.
My heroine, Lorna, is supposed to be having her first meeting with her mail-order groom, but everything I write sounds stiff and unbelievable.
“This is hopeless,” I mutter, closing my laptop with a pout.
Nina glances over from where she’s wiping down the display case at the Busy Bee, her bakery that smells of cinnamon and comfort. I’ve been camped at a corner table all morning, nursing the same cup of tea that went cold hours ago.
“Writer’s block?” she asks sympathetically.
“Writer’s canyon,” I correct.
“I have chocolate.”
“I’ve eaten my allotment for the … year.”
She laughs like I’m joking and refills the napkins at the coffee station.
“I can’t make this mail-order bride plot feel authentic. It’s toocontrived.” My voice ventures toward a whine and I’m not proud of that.
Nina raises an eyebrow. “Says the woman who’s been running from romance her entire adult life.”
Like a toddler, I protest, “I don’t run from romance. I just don’t believe in the kind I write about.” No, I sprint.
“Exactly my point.” She flips theOpensign toClosedand turns the lock.
I huff, paging through my notes with ink-stained fingers, desperate for something to leap out at me, swat me across the head, and say,This is the missing piece to the romance puzzle, now get writing!
“You can’t write what you don’t believe. You need some firsthand experience,” Nina says over her shoulder.
“Are we really going to have this conversation again?”
She raises an eyebrow. “I thought we already came up with a solution.”
I squinch up my face because it was an ill-conceived idea fueled by copious amounts of hot chocolate. I really should probably lay off the stuff.
“You’re not backing out now. We already filled out all those questionnaires.”
I regret agreeing to Nina’s ill-conceived idea for how to break my writer’s block.
The kind publishers love to put in marketing materials.The author lived as a mail-order bride to write this authentic romance!
I put Heartland Happily Ever After: a modern mail-order matchmaking service, out of mind.
I skimmed the details while Nina, insistent this was the solution, filled out most of the questionnaire for me. I was too tired and desperate to read the fine print.
What Ididpay attention to was thatthey offered a stipend for participants. Enough to cover this month’s student loan payment, buy groceries, and keep me afloat while I finish this book. And if I can write about the experience of being matched through a service like this, maybe Meredith will see that I haven’t lost my edge. That I can still deliver something fresh and authentic.
“I know, but—” I begin.
“No buts, except for that cute one in those jeans. I need to get a pair,” Nina interrupts, sliding into the chair across from me.
“They’re from a thrift store in Wyoming. Second hand—” Along with everything else in my life lately, including but not limited to love.
“Think about it from a historical perspective. Your character, Lorna, is basically what they used to call a picture bride, right? Women who married men they’d never met based on exchanged photographs and letters back in the old days?”
“Yes, but?—”
