Happy Valentine's Day

A break from what's on the page today-sort of. ;)

When you're writing a story or book you know the message you want to get across or the "formula" you need to follow for the genre you're writing. Each genre has their own kind of code as to what the reader is to expect from a book in say a Sci-fi or a mystery or a romance.

Since it's Valentine's Day and I write romance I thought I'd talk about the expectations of a romance novel. The long standing ending for a romance is the HEA- Happily Ever After ending. Most of the time this happens at the end of a book. So the couple meet, fall in love, and commit to a lifetime together All this happens by the end of the book.

But lately I've found myself writing and wanting to read books where the love interests don't have it all figured out by the end of the first book. In fact it takes them several books to finally defeat the demons or reasons they believe they can't or don't want to commit by the end of the first book. I don't know if the reason behind this feeling is they need more time to get to know one another beyond the action of the first book or the fact I don't want to leave the characters after one book. Could I be the one with commitment issues? The characters become my friends and I don't want to see them leave so I give them more adventures together. Could be.

No matter what he genre do you prefer reading series with ongoing characters and their relationships or do you like to have the same world but different main characters in each book?

And Happy Valentine's Day! I hope your sweetie does something nice for you!