I have discovered there is one sort of romance novel I could write, if only to improve on the damned formula. I hate those stupid long-lost love romances. The ones where some duke and some vicar's daughter who were once in love, once engaged---until something terrifically dreadful occurred and one ditched the other---meet years later and fall in love...again. Or the ones where some soldier and some country squire's daughter are almost engaged until he or she abandons the other, only to end up together...again...at the end of the novel.

The characters are always impossible to like. What's to admire in some chap or some chick who abandons their supposed loved one? And even if I managed that, how can I be expected to respect the loved one when he or she blithely forgives all trespasses and with all willful blindness dashes once more into the erstwhile lover's arms? They probably deserve one another, true, but that's hardly comforting when I'm contemplating sporking my eyes out.

Just once---just *once*---I would like to read one of these scenarios where the girl and the guy realize they're actually not meant for one another. Where the story's kind of sad and poignant, the two of them growing beyond one another or realizing they're not really in love, while at the same time finding love with someone else, someone more *right*.

I could write that, yes? If I can manage to get over the negative associations I have with the storyline, that is.

I need to wash my mind out with soap.

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