How nice …

The Touch of a Woman is the story of a woman facing the aftermath of a mass shooting. How nice she’s able to overcome her loss and find love again.

Anyone But You pits environmental activists against Big Oil and the politicians in their pockets. How nice when the polluters and their cronies are marched off in handcuffs.

In Rhapsody, a woman is haunted by memories of sexual abuse. How nice she finds a partner who sees past the scars to give her the compassion and love she needs.

It isn’t only romance readers who crave the Happy Ever After. The news beats us up daily with the realities of violence, powerlessness and emotional trauma. Reading lets us escape to a place where characters we care about make righteous choices, rise above their shortcomings and save the day. Where in a blistering scene the villain gets what’s coming to him. Where love always wins.

One need only scan the recent headlines — a mass shooting at an abortion clinic, environmental protestors rounded up ahead of the Paris climate summit, another black teenager shot on sight — to despair of the world we live in. Books have the power to change the way people think and behave. Like Gene Roddenberry with Star Trek, we create the kind of world we want to live in.

How nice to dream.

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• What authors want for Christmas — REVIEWS!  If you’ve read one of my books recently, I’d love it if you’d post a few words about it somewhere.
• My book calendar being what it is, I have a convergence of events this month: A new book out (Touch of a Woman), a manuscript off my desk and on to the editor (Trial by Fury), and a new one underway (tentatively called Only the Summer).
• The GCLS is in the middle of its Fall Fundraiser, which is a challenge grant. A handful of people put up big donations — in this case, totaling $10,000 — and are asking other donors to band together and match that amount. I’m one of the challengers this year, so if you have a few bucks to spare for GCLS, please go help us double our gift. You can always count on the writers of GCLS to bring the “How nice” endings.
• Still trying to sell my house in California so we can make the move back to Miami. In the meantime, Jenny and I are hunkering down for the winter here in the NC mountains. I’m not a fan of cold weather, but I have to admit that first dusting of snow was not awful.
• Coming up at the end of the month, my Top 10 of 2015 blog. Lots of moments to choose from — I love my job!