Dear all,
Life is stranger than fiction right now. I’ve talked to so many people that liken the Corona Lockdown world we’re now living in to a science fiction or horror film. This is hardly a stretch, considering the number of films out there that have been preparing us on some level or another for years.
We’re all worried right now. We’re juggling our home and work lives, adjusting to ever-tightening restrictions on our movements, worried about the health of the elderly, of those with pre-existing health conditions, worried about having corona and unwittingly infecting others. Some of us have already lost someone. It is a time of global tragedy.
Luckily, the human spirit is alive and well in the midst of all this uncertainty, and in many places, our modern world is still functioning. There are amazing health care workers, cleaners, police officers, grocery store clerks, garbage collectors, sewer workers, those working to keep the water flowing into our taps and the electricity and gas coming into our homes, food on our tables and countless others who are keeping the world functioning.
There is another wave of human spirit keeping us motivated during quarantine and lockdown that is being expressed through humor, kindness and love.
Considering I’m a romance writer, it will come as no surprise that I would like to focus on the love at this time. I’ll start by asking each and every one of you to send your love to a friend, family member or even a stranger. Keep love alive in these dark and scary times.
It’s hard being locked up with family members, partners, roommates. No matter how well we get along during the best of times, being shut in together with less personal space than to which we are accustomed, means that tensions are running high. Things that you used to view as charming idiosyncratic behavior are suddenly maddening under the microscope of a lockdown.
We need to stay calm, practice kindness and compassion and utilize breathing, meditation, exercise and online resources to teach us just how to accomplish this.
There’s another area of love I’d like to touch upon.
I know I’m not the only one to have thought of this play of words on Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But yeah. Let’s talk about Love in the Time of Corona. There are a lot of physically active, virulent humans locked up at home right now. They’re spending too much time on their computers or binge-watching series on Netflix and reading books. They’re eating through their stash of corona snacks and probably doing sit ups and push ups and going for a jog or walk if their respective government still allows outdoor exercise. But there’s other sorts of exercise. Types I’ve written about.
Let’s think about this for a moment. Millions . . . no billions (India just went on full lockdown) of people worldwide are bored, at home and locked up with their partners. As a romance author, I may have a particularly active imagination in this category, but really. If people are spending time ‘exercising’ in the bedroom, we need to think about what that short term gain can develop into in the long term.
The last thing we need approximately seven to nine months from now is a worldwide baby boom.
We don’t know what the world will look like in seven to nine months from now. Vaccines could take a year to a year and a half to develop. There could be a second, or even third wave of corona outbreaks.
Let’s just say that 10 percent of the world population who is over 16 conceives a child in the coming month. That would be hundreds of millions of new babies being born into an uncertain time on a planet that is already extremely overpopulated.
It would overload medical facilities around the world and expose these precious future newborns to a virus that has proven to be deadly and highly contagious.
Long story short. Have fun. Make love. Use a condom.
Enjoy yourselves, but please, be safe, be diligent; especially in the bedroom. Want to share this message with others? Here’s a little Instragram-sized poster I made just for this purpose.
When I finished my workout this morning at Fit4Lady, I joined a few other post-workout women at the large table for a cup of coffee. On the table was a sign up sheet. I glanced at it, discovering it wasn’t a sign-up sheet after all, but a question: What made you smile today? The grammatical incorrectness of the gym name always makes me smile, but I couldn’t very well write that down without pissing off a whole lot of Dutch lady. The two girls at the table playing brain-teaser games while waiting for their mom to finish her workout had already made me smile, so I wrote that down. I was only the second to answer the question, but the day was still young.
Now that I’m home and preparing to start my work day as a writer, this question comes back to me in present form. What makes me smile? My puppy playing in the sunshine, my child, the gift of health, that first mug of coffee. These are all givens. But 2019 also puts a smile on my face. How can the concept of a year make you smile? In this case, it’s because of the label I have put on 2019. It is my gift year.
My gap year might have a deadline, but I’ve made a commitment to myself and to all the projects I undertake this year. I will not force you. I will let you develop at your own pace. Yet I promise to give you the attention and love and time that you deserve. It is up to you if you choose to be born.
This got me thinking about my reading choices. Quite a few of the novels lining my shelves are of the Starbucks variety; novels already proven by the industry, published by one of the big five publishing houses (Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, Harper Collins, Penguin Random House) or an imprint of the big five.
Apparently, one episode of Somebody Feed Phil takes place in one of my favorite cities: Venice. As you may have gathered from my second novel 
If romance novels were animals, then Robert Gottlieb takes on the role of vivisectionist in this cruel and witty review, using his pen (okay, keyboard and fingers) to slash and dissect the romance genre. And it’s a blood bath, folks. Yes, he’s intelligent. And funny. No. I’m not writing grammatically correct sentences. But Gottlieb has pissed me off.
Yet there was one point in his romance roundup with which I fully agree: Nora Roberts is the Queen of Romance. It doesn’t seem to matter if it was written in the 80s, 90s or any time within the 21st century, I have enjoyed almost every Nora Roberts novel I’ve read (her romantic suspense ones can be a bit too brutal).
