Guest Post by Nancy Famolari: Romance Novels as an antidote for Tough Times

My guest today is Nancy Famolari. She enjoys reading and writing romance novels and tells you why.

Romance Novels an Antidote for Tough Times

We live in tough economic times. Unemployment is upwards of nine percent. Taxes are high; prices are high. People worry about the future. You see it in the news every day, Yet, book sellers and publishers report that romance novels sell very well, perhaps better than in more affluent times. So, why are we reading romance novels?

Romance novels are cheerful. The characters face serious, or not so serious problems and come out winners. In the best romance novels, they give us examples of how to solve out own problems. The people are generally attractive. The men are handsome; the women, beautiful. In our daydreams, we’d like to be like them, or have them for friends

The settings are charming, often elegant. In times like these most of us want to get away from our dreary routine for awhile. Romance novels let you visit pleasant places: resorts, estates, and quaint villages. It’s a cheap vacation.

The characters have interesting careers. When we’re toiling at boring, uninteresting jobs, it’s fun to revel in the challenges faced by fashion designers, politicians, and business leaders. It might even give you a vision that leads to an exciting career.

My personal favorites are romantic thrillers. I love solving puzzles. True crime stories and detective fiction with their focus on serial killers and assassinations make you face the ugliness in the world rather than getting away from it all. It’s fun to read a cozy mystery, or romantic suspense novel and just disappear from all the ugliness for awhile.

Like to read romance? Perhaps you should write one. Several authors have written a book because they were bored or couldn’t find anything they wanted to read. Dorothy Dunnett, author of the Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo, complained to her husband that she couldn’t find any good books to read. He suggested she write one. It was the first Lymond book, The Game of Kings. Rita Mae Brown started writing Riding Shotgun when she was stuck at her Virginia farm in an ice storm with no power and no phone.

I write cozy mysteries: Murder in Montbleu and The Lake House. If you’d like a vacation in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania, come visit Police Chief Chess Devon and Inspector Bartlett Thomas in Montbleu. There’s always a scandal brewing.

Nancy Famolari’s Bio:

Nancy Famolari splits her time between her farm in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania and a smaller farm near Ocala, Florida. Her five horses are becoming seasoned travelers. The Endless Mountains is a lovely rural area with many small town datingfrom the early 1800’s. This beautiful region provides the background for all the novels in the Montbleu Murder series, including Murder in
Montbleu and The Lake House.