StuckInBooks welcomes author Krista Holle for the first ever author guest post.
The World’s Foremost Expert on Romance
By Krista Holle
Now that I have your attention, I feel obligated to be brutally honest. I’m not romantic at all. Yes, I’m a romance author, but here are a few ugly truths that will be most appalling to the likes of Nora Roberts and Diana Gabaldon. My first confession is this: I like wearing flannel pajamas. Comfie living doesn’t get any better than this baggy classic. Who needs to be sexy when you can be comfortably swabbed in huge volumes of soft flannel?
My next offence is that I’m not a snuggler. This is a class 1 felony to my husband, Mike, but the fact is, there will be no spooning or head to chest contact while I’m trying to sleep. Frankly, the elbow against abdomen contact interferes with my zzzzzz’s. If God didn’t want us to sleep a third of our lives away, he wouldn’t have given us eyelids. It’s my duty to give my creator a full one-third.
The last thing I’ll admit to is, my shocking lack of consideration. There has never been a sweet note placed in my husband’s lunchbox. There’s a simple reason for this. For the nearly twenty years that we’ve been married, I’ve never once made Mike a lunch for him to take to work. Not once. Honestly, he can do it himself. Neither have I prepared a single candlelit dinner. If four rowdy girls with a penchant for destruction don’t interfere with a romantic dinner, the fire hazard of an open flame will. It’s a fact that every historic building over a hundred years old has survived at least one fire. There’s no point in pushing my luck.
Now you may be asking yourself where I get the nerve to go around audaciously posing as a romance author. I don’t know where my nerve comes from, but I can tell you this, my inspiration comes from my very patient husband, Mike. He is the one who is romantic.
Since Mike has an overabundance of testosterone coursing through his veins, he would never admit this less than rugged fact. Still, the evidence continues to pile up. We had just started dating when Mike enthusiastically rented Somewhere in Time with Jane Seymour. It’s a romantic fantasy about two lovebirds that get separated by hundreds of years. This should have been my first inkling. For our first anniversary, he had us grilling steaks on a secluded area of beach. After twenty years, he continues to lavish me with compliments and would foolishly have me believe I’m the most gorgeous creature who’s ever walked the face of the earth. Still, the solid proof I’d like to share with you, happened only this year.
Over the years, I may have mentioned once or twice that Lady Slippers are my favorite flower. They are rare orchids, delicate little puffs of folded pink “slippers” that appear like magic on the forest floor. They smell like heaven. Mike got it into his head that my life wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t have my very own Lady Slippers blooming annually in the back yard.
For no special reason, other than it was a Friday or a Monday, Mike ordered ten Lady Slipper plugs. He was told that they were very difficult to grow and assured that at least two-thirds of the plugs would die. He was instructed that for any chance of survival, the plugs had to be planted in soil that was exactly the right depth, the right pH, with the perfect amount of shade. It was a recipe for death. A short time later, the plugs arrived unimpressively in the mail as scrawny little tendrils of wrinkled hair—corpse hair. I was shocked to learn that Mike spent $150.00 for the withered brown hairs. I unenthusiastically placed the “plugs” on the counter, frankly burdened with the chore of planting the ominous little deathlings just right. After two days, Mike planted them for me. After nine months of careful watering and weeding, a couple of tiny little leaves appeared like little rays of hope, but when the summer sun appeared, they shriveled and died. What remains forefront in my mind about this whole incident are not the flowers I almost had, but the thoughtfulness of my husband. He wanted nothing more than to make me happy, and this meant receiving Lady Slippers.
To this day, he continues to lavish me with small gifts for no particular reason, delivers me food when he is sick in bed, and defends me against four offspring that behave as wild hyenas on a water buffalo (I’m the buffalo). Perhaps tiny brown hairs do not sound romantic to you, but to me they epitomize the meaning of romance. I’ll never have delicate pink Lady Slippers magically appearing in my backyard, but the little plugs have taken root and blossomed in an unexpected place—my heart.
Towards the end of the year, I’ll be releasing on Amazon an e-book titled The Lure of Shapinsay. It involves a sexy romance between a fiery Scottish woman and a very naughty selkie. If you don’t know what a selkie is or would like to read the “back flap”, please check out my blog at, http://kristaholle.blogspot.com. I’m also on Twitter and would love to talk to you.
9 month of watering and weeding sounds romantic enough for any guy. But twenty years down the marriage and after four kids...I can say there is something in you that he needs more than packed lunches. Maybe it's even better that you are not romantic, you have a rare gift to create romance around yourself in life. And most likely in books.
ReplyDeleteLovely ode to Mike. It sounds like he's the ying to your yang or vice-versa. Twenty years of marriage and the love and affection is still growing strong. Such a lovely rarity these days.
ReplyDeleteHugs and Mocha,
Stesha