Last weekend in Sydney one man was in the right place looking for romance, or was he? The man among 250 women was Daniel Scarparolo, who was attending the Romance Writers of Australia Conference. From Perth this young man is writing a romance novel – his first.
In a time when some publishers have gone to the wall or merged and sales are reputedly down, romance novels are flourishing. In USA sales of romance fiction were $1.37 billion in 2008. In England and Australia sales are also high. This is despite a gloomy economy. What is the big attraction?
Is it a case of people wanting escapism, and that their own lives are so dreary they want to escape them for a time by reading romance? Is it that they’re looking for that something they don’t have in their relationship or marriage?
People read for all sorts of reasons and there’s nothing wrong with reading purely for entertainment and to take you out of your own world for a time, whether that is by reading romance, science fiction, thrillers or some other genre.
But what about adding real romance to your day to day life? The reality is sometimes we are so busy just getting by, that we forget about romance in our marriage.
So why not this week take time to inject a little romance, with say maybe a candlelit dinner together without the kids. A walk on the beach at sunrise or sunset if you’re not a morning person can be romantic too. It just might need some rearranging of schedules to make it happen and have someone available to baby-sit children to make this happen. It may be hard yes, but not impossible and worth the effort.
Romance might mean going to a special show you both want to see. It might be cooking a special meal or leaving love notes in the bedroom for your spouse to find. A lot will depend on what is romance to you and your spouse.
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