Sometimes I
have ideas for books in genres I don’t read. For example, I read fantasy, science
fiction, and all kinds of humor and comedy. I don’t read thrillers, but I have
a great idea for a romantic thriller with a little twist of science fiction. Except
for the science fiction part, I have no idea how to write it. I also don’t read
serious romance. Bridget Jones is
awesome, and so are the Georgia Nicolson books. But those are romantic
comedies. Serious romance? I generally find it laughable, and not in a good
way.
And yet I’ve
written a mostly serious YA romance. I even won third place in a national
contest with it. So how did that happen?
The idea for
Ride of Your Life came for me soon
after I heard about the Great
Adventure Haunted Castle fire that killed eight teenagers in an amusement
park in New Jersey on May 11th 1984, almost exactly 32 years ago. It was my way
of trying to give a pointless tragedy a happy ending. I knew from the start
that it was going to be the story of a love greater than death. But I didn’t
want it to be a typical romance. That was never a genre that appealed to me. And
it seemed wrong to write a book in a genre I didn’t enjoy reading. So what was
I to do? 
For a long
time, I did nothing. The story was one that stayed in my head and gave me
comfort when I needed it. It was a story where death was the beginning, not the
end. And sometimes that’s a story I need to hear.
Skip ahead
about 25 years. I had trouble deciding what to submit to the Smartwriters’
Write It Now contest for the YA category. I told the members of my critique
group, Fantasyweavers, that I had this idea for a story about two teenage
ghosts meeting and falling in love in an amusement park. I wrote out the first
page, and asked them what they thought. They liked it and encouraged me to
write the first chapters I needed to submit. So I did—and the first three
chapters of Ride of Your Life won
third prize.
I continued
working on it, and a few months later, I submitted it for a critique at a
conference. The agent I showed it to liked it, particularly how well I captured
a male perspective in the scenes that were shown from Josh’s point of view.
I told that
agent, “I have a hard time writing the romantic scenes.”
“Why?” he
asked.
“Because
romance in books always seems so clichéd. It’s not real. I mean, those kisses
in romance novels, no one kisses that way.”
And he told me something that I think about
to this day. He said, “If you don’t like writing something, don’t write it.”
At first I
thought, “Well, how am I going to write a love story without any of that
romantic stuff in it?” But then I realized that wasn’t what he was saying. What
he was saying was just because people have been writing romantic scenes one way
for decades that doesn’t mean I have to write it that way, too. If it feels
wrong to me‑‑if I don’t like writing it that way‑‑I shouldn’t. Instead I should
write what feels right to me.
That was so
freeing.
Instead of banging my head trying to write what I thought people
expected a romance novel to be, I could just write the story I had in mind. It
doesn’t matter if it fits someone else’s label. The only thing that matters is
that I’m honest to the story I’m trying to tell.
So that’s
why Ride of Your Life is probably
different from any love story you’ve ever read. I gave up trying to write a
romance novel and instead focused on telling the story of how two teenage
ghosts named Tracy and Josh met and fell in love in an amusement park. I liked
them. I liked their story. And I liked writing it.
I hope you
like reading it, too.
Oh, and if
you write romantic thrillers, contact me. Maybe we can write that great book
together. I can help with the science fiction twist.
are Gilbert Garfinkle--a.k.a. Gilbert the Fixer--and Amber. Gilbert is the ultimate, teenage geek; and Amber is the gorgeous, vampire girl who wants to turn him into her platonic BFF--literally forever. The story is written from Gilbert’s point of view.
