Romancing the Stone

I feel like I should open a can of tuna fish for my cat.

Not that I have a cat, but it just seems appropriate, considering that, like Joan Wilder, the heroine in one of my favorite movies, Romancing the Stone, I've been sitting here this evening doing a final check of my novel The Matchmakers, and crying like a baby.

In the beginning of Romancing the Stone [as I'm sure all my fellow romance writers out there know, because hey, you've all seen it!] Joan is finishing her latest novel and she's bawling like crazy. Her apartment is covered with sticky notes that say, "Buy tissues!" "Buy toilet paper!", "Buy cat food!" She uses one of the notes to blow her nose when she finishes her final, heart wrenching scene, and celebrates her achievement by opening a can of tuna for her cat.

You've got to love Joan Wilder. She feels her writing. She's so in the moment that she can barely see the page as she types her final lines.

I know just how she feels. I wrote The Matchmakers quite a few months ago, and it's been making the rounds and today I got a request for a full from an agent! So I'm going over it one more time, scanning for those last minute typos, fixing a comma here and there and finding that I still consider this one of my most emotional stories! As the words blurred on the screen, I had to laugh through my tears at the climactic scene - what a nut I am.

My husband things I need medication. After all, I wrote the darn thing. How on earth could it make me cry to read it? But it does.

It's a strange thing to say, but I hope it makes other people cry, too. If I can invoke this kind of emotion in someone else [I'm a sap and I know it] then maybe this is a really good book. Don't get me wrong, this is a happy story, it's a feel-good book, because heaven knows we need more feel-good books in this world, but I hope I've crafted something that has those moments when a reader tears up, even just a little, and feels what my characters are feeling.

It goes out in the mail tomorrow. Wish me luck and send me some cyber-tissues. I'm all out.