Family.
I've built a life and my writing career around family.
This Hometown Hearts Wedding trilogy deals with families. Friends who become families. Families who are made through adoption. Families who are born...Family. Watching people come together, fall apart, adapt... It's a fascinating process. Every story comes at it from a new direction.
We've talked before about how my real life impacts my writing. In March's book, Something Blue, I deal with dementia in an older loved one. It's a reality I know about. My grandmother slowly lost her battle with dementia over years. Then we adopted a neighbor who also battled that kind of loss. It's an awful process. And you might be thinking, Holly, that's too grim to read about. But that's not all there is. My grandmother always knew me and my kids. We visited every day. Even after she couldn't remember our names, she knew she was ours and we were hers. The connection was still there. She knew she was loved and she wasn't alone.
We saw the same thing with our neighbor. The Minions owned her entire nursing home. We walked over regularly. The two littles would dress up in their superhero capes and ride their scooters (you can't ride a bike in a cape). Not only did she know we were hers and she was ours, the entire nursing home knew the Minions. They high-fived their way through the halls. Some days they were Batman and Robin, sometimes they were Superman and the Green Lantern... What I loved the most is how gentle they were with everyone. They didn't worry if our neighbor didn't know their names. They filled her in on their day and chatted away and she loved it.
We missed those visits last year.
Someone once questioned why we visited if a patient didn't know us. I think that even when memories have gone, when someone is lost in their own mind, they recognize love. They feel it. It's a bright light in a dark place. So we visited. My kids and the Minions learned lessons on patience, empathy and love. And our loved ones learned no matter what they were never alone.
Those are the things I tried to put in Something Blue. Connection. Empathy. Love. I know I write romances and writing about love is obviously a part of that, but I really try to write about broader loves. About family. About all the ways they come together and all the ways they stand together.
I've built a life around family and I've built a career around it.
I am so lucky in both! And Valentine's Day seems like the perfect day to talk about that kind of love.
I hope you'll check out the entire Hometown Hearts series and Something Blue!
Holly
Preorder Something Perfect Available 5/21
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