When Romance is Not the Focus by Susan Sands

I hope everyone is staying warm in your neck of the woods! The forecast in Georgia for the coming

week is finally looking quite nice and I'm excited to explore my new neighborhood on foot with my pup on his leash. Thus far, it's either been raining or too frigid to venture out beyond the mailboxes.

Great news! I've finished the book I'd been working on for a solid year! I realize most authors whip them out in a few months and are on to the next exciting story, but this has been an especially challenging one for me. It's not a romance. There's a little romance in it, and hopefully my heroine will find her HEA with the man of her dreams down the road, but that isn't the focus of this one. 

My young lady's challenges with memory loss and finding her way home to the family she's forgotten, along with regaining her identity trump finding true love in this one. At least the focus of those issues are bigger than the romantic relationship she finds later in the book.

I wasn't certain I could not write romance as the central storyline, as it's so ingrained in me as an author. But this will fall along the lines of true general fiction or women's fiction with Southern flavor. It has some genre elements, but isn't genre fiction.

Figuring out what I was writing was so important to how I wrote it. The story is with my agent now and I'm looking forward to getting her feedback. Fingers crossed!

Enjoy your week, everyone!!

Susan