Friday, December 9, 2011

mistletoe harlequin / Mr Darcy: the ultimate centrefold

December. Snow. Christmas. Trees. Red. Green. Mistletoe. Harlequin? 

Christmas party season: this afternoon I got to wear my new black sequine-y shirt, drink wine with nuns and archivists and get lost on Mount Saint Vincent's campus. The walk to the Sisters of Charity building is up a hill with sparse trees on one side and cookie cutter Mount residences on the other. As I walked dusk approached and all the neighbourhood crows gathered on a few dead looking trees cawing to me and each other, a true murder of crows, a council of crows, beautiful, ominous, festive?

Sure why not. 

Tonight I get to work on writing a harlequin novel with new pal Jaime who has actually read romance novels and can follow the strict structure the genre requires.  I will leave on party clothes for romance writing brainstorming / wine drinking / cookie eating / egg nog dunking experience.

Past writing teacher thought I should write for Harlequin. She thought I had the imagination but could use a little structure, she assumed I was a romantic (true) and that I had read romance novels (false). Most girls have I suppose, the romance genre isn't limited to Harlequin. I love Jane Austen and her books deal primarily with love and relationships, sisters, parents, lovers. An old boyfriend actually duped Jane Austen a pornographer of the written word, Mr Darcey the ultimate centrefold; surely her writing was meant to entice fantasy of true love and the effortlessness of virgin sex. 

Our main character is named Finn and he's a construction worker from a broken home. Let's see where this goes...Darcy in a hard hat?