Alejandro

No, I'm not talking Lady Gaga.

Before that song came out, and I admit it, I rather like it, I had a dream about a man named Alejandro.  I'm sure it was inspired, in part, by Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake Series... I think I was just reading about the were-rats, when we really get to see them shine.. Rafael is all over Alejandro in a big sexy way.

It was a long dream, but the story was very foggy. The one question I woke up with was, how could my heroine, the woman's whose shoes I was literally wearing, be the mistress of an engaged man, and be okay with it?  Screw morality, logically, it's just not sound.  If he'll like to the woman he's going to marry, he sure as fuck will lie to the woman he's sleeping around with!  Yet someone there was so much peace in her.  She'd accepted her place, she just wanted to be near him...

I can't write that. I don't understand it.  But I can understand trying to be at peace with it.  I can understand 'taking what you can get'.  I can understand closing your heart off, being his friend, and fucking his brains out.  That I can do.  So that's what I think I'm going to write.

I've been looking for a conflict, for something more. Because a good romance always has to have something in the way of the couple. There has to be some kind of problem the two of them have to overcome.  Usually it's external, in the books I've read. Like a crazy stalker that wants to kill one of them, or a curse that will kill one of them if they fall in love, or one of them gets kidnapped.  Someone needs saving...there is violence to bring them together.  I don't have that here. If I wanted to add that...it would go somewhere dark, somewhere I don't think I want this to go. This, sadly, isn't about werewolves, or vampires, or demons.  Just about a man who needs to grow up, and a woman trying desperately not to fall in love with the man she wants him to be.

Though... see.. right there. I want this to be from HER point of view. Yet...she doesn't really have any issues of her own.  She isn't...interesting enough.. I think perhaps I need to give her general trust issues. Not just with the almost-married man.  That would explain why she did so well with him. She was never in danger of loving him. Only when she starts dating and playing with other people does she realise this.  It wasn't just him.  It was her.  She doesn't trust anyone.  So even after Alejandro sorts out his own shit he still has to overcome her wall of distrust.....

Is that enough for a romance novel????  I just... I don't know.  BAH!