Today's Special - - Virginia Kantra

It's always a great day when Virginia Kantra comes to visit.   Not only does she write some of my favorite contemporary romance characters but she's also a genuinely lovely person whose smile lights up any room.  Her current Dare Island series, set on an island off the North Carolina coast, evokes a sense of warmth, emotional complexity and strong family unity that has me enjoying each visit while already anticipating the next.  The pages of a Virginia Kantra book always offer a happy place for me to linger. Please welcome Virginia as she blogs about finding your happy place.  

Finding Your Happy Place – Virginia Kantra

Last week when I changed my profile pic on Facebook, the talented Judith Arnold http://www.juditharnold.com/ commented, "You look relaxed and happy – not like a writer at all."

I laughed, but there is this notion that writers are depressed or angry alcoholics drifting around the house in their bathrobes. (In contrast to the stereotype of romance writers as pink silk-clad matrons with a lap dog, rather than a lap top, a boa, and—these days--a pair of handcuffs.)  In truth, of course, writers have to deal with the same stresses that all women face--messy houses and messy lives, broken nails and broken promises, worries about our parents, our children, and our world.

That's why we love romance. In our stories, the heroine always triumphs.  Good wins. Love conquers all.

But it can be hard to write about hope and faith and courage and happy endings when your own life is not following the storyline you set out for it. Friend and mentor Suzanne Brockmann http://www.suzannebrockmann.com/ and I were talking about this a couple of years ago when I intoned, "We must find the Happy Place."

See that beach behind me in the photo? That's my happy place. I’ve been in love with the North Carolina coast

since my husband took me there on vacation years and years ago. His dad was stationed at Camp Lejeune, like Meg's dad in Carolina Girl. We went there with our kids, and we still sneak away every chance we get.

That's the setting for the Dare Island stories, and one of the joys of writing this series is the feeling of coming home. My first stories (the MacNeill brothers' books, now available for Kindle and Nook) were family-centered romance also set in North Carolina. These are stories about the ways we help each other through tough times, neighbor to neighbor, families pulling together.

Writing about the Fletchers of Dare Island evokes that same sense of joy and escape, warmth and memories for me.

Because the real search for the "happy place" is about more than setting. It's our longing for a place to belong. For roots. For family. And for love.

Excerpt:

Raleigh-Durham Airport the Tuesday before Thanksgiving was crowded with comings and goings, the usual business travelers almost lost in a sea of students with backpacks and ear buds, soldiers with duffles, young families with strollers. Mothers kissing daughters, fathers hugging sons, old friends and young lovers going into each other’s arms, reconnecting with relief and joy.

All going somewhere, Meg thought. Not in control of every step of the journey, but hopeful about their destinations.

Like her.

She wheeled her bag into the terminal, determined to hit Starbucks before she hit the road.

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And there he was, in almost the same place. Part of the landscape of her heart, her signpost home.

Sam.

--from Carolina Girl

What's your happy place?

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