Falling in love changed my life. So did falling out. Which then made falling back in again a totally different experience. I was wary now, having been burned. Now I work to keep the romance alive, making sure I don’t lose track of how lucky I am in the ordinary day to day survival of working, parenting and living.
Love is so much a part of who we are as people that it’s no surprise that it’s so large a part of fiction. Whether a novel is classified as romance or not, love is always there—in the plot, the backstory, in the hope for the future, or in its absence. Love motivates characters and informs their choices. We are creatures of the heart.
So, when I started writing books of my own, I knew romance had to be a part of it. But, I’m not a romance writer. While I love to read a good steamy sex scene in someone else’s books, I get all blushy and awkward trying to write one myself. But neither was I going to pretend that it wasn’t part of the lives of my characters. So, I had to find my way into writing about matters of the heart.
Especially for Linda Alvarez. At the beginning of Going Through the Change: A Menopausal Superhero Novel, Linda is a forty-eight year old grandmother. She’s been married to David her entire adult life, and they are still very much in love. He’s been her rock through all of life’s travails, including her most recent struggle: el cambio de vida, or menopause. The two have survived moving, job and money struggles, temporary separations, raising children, and aging, but their biggest challenge is yet to come.
Linda’s changes are perhaps the most dramatic of any of the women in the book. I don’t want to spoil it for you (because I’m hoping you’ll read it!) but I am proud of my portrayal of a couple that has been together for many years and is faced with a new obstacle. Linda is a crowd favorite of the main characters. I like to think it is because of the warmth of her heart, and the loyalty of her love.
Writing Linda and David is where I got my mushy-gushy on. Like Jessica, another character, said about them: “Watching them, though, she wondered if her own marriage had that kind of strength. Comparing her marriage to theirs seemed like comparing a raspberry bush to an oak tree.”
So, here’s to the oak trees! May all our sapling loves eventually brush the sky!
Going through “the change” isn’t easy on any woman. Mood swings, hot flashes, hormonal imbalances, and itchy skin are par for the course. But for these four seemingly unrelated women, menopause brought changes none of them had ever anticipated—super-heroic changes.
Helen discovers a spark within that reignites her fire. Jessica finds that her mood is lighter, and so is her body. Patricia always had a tough hide, but now even bullets bounce off her. Linda doesn’t have trouble opening the pickle jar anymore…now that she’s a man.
When events throw the women together, they find out that they have more in common than they knew—one person has touched all their lives. The hunt for answers is on.
Sale
Going Through the Change is going through a change in price for a couple of days in early August. On August 5th and 6th you can get the Kindle edition for free on Amazon. Check it out at: http://bitly.com/face-the-change
Samantha Bryant
Samantha Bryant
Samantha Bryant is a middle school Spanish teacher by day and a mom and novelist by night. That makes her a superhero all the time. Her debut novel, Going Through the Change: A Menopausal Superhero Novel is now for sale by Curiosity Quills. You can find her online on her blog, Twitter, on Facebook, on Amazon, on Goodreads, on the Curiosity Quills page, or on Google+.
