God – The Original Forever Kind of Guy

My contemporary romance novel, A Forever Kind of Guy, came out this month and in preparation for its release I started thinking about a lot of things.
Marketing, first of all, which I don’t begin to understand and its importance is something I balk at. Not to insult all the marketing experts out there, but bear with me.
Of late, there’s been a lot of buzz about Twitter. You’ve got to be on Twitter, you need to tweet X number of times per day, use hashtags and @ signs, let your followers know you’re there and you’re interested. Have conversations. Etc.
I tried to join an online workshop to learn more about Twitter, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it. There are many online marketing shoulds for an author like me. Have a Facebook fan page. Blog about things readers are interested in. Etc.
Of course, I want my own personal marketing tools like bookmarks and such. Sometimes the list of what I should do seems endless and I’m reminded I’m only one person. A rather humble person, at that, and marketing oneself doesn’t come naturally to those of us who aren’t comfortable tooting our own horn. Really, my biggest problem is trying to think of something even remotely interesting to post even once a day. If I can’t be clever or entertaining, what’s the point?
I began to think, is this all really necessary? It seems like too much. When I feel overwhelmed, I hand things over to God. “Here you go, God. You take care of this. I’m not going to worry about it any more.” Immediately the response I heard was, “Don’t worry. I’ve got this. I’m in control.”
I heave a huge sigh of relief.
He must know I could literally bust my behind doing everything marketing experts tell me to do. I could drive myself crazy trying to keep up with it all, get my name out there, post my status six times a day and Tweet ten, and it’s entirely possible it will make little or no difference in my sales. There are a million other authors climbing on the same bandwagon doing exactly the same thing. At some point, don’t we cancel each other out?
When my first two books came out I decided if only ten people read one of them, then those were the ten who were meant to read it. There was a message there just for them, or they needed that escape. Whatever reason my book ended up in their hands, I was fine with it.
Caroline Myss says something about doing whatever you were put on earth to do, create whatever you were inspired to create, then let it go out into the universe and the universe will respond. Your part is done. This may explain why so many authors try different marketing ploys and can’t quantify the results. You can put forth a lot of effort for questionable results. The only thing that is under my control is writing the best book I’m capable of writing.
While the hero of A Forever Kind of Guy is an earthly forever kind of guy, I kept thinking about God being the original forever kind of guy.
I imbue my heroes with all the qualities I admire in a man, but upon further examination, they are God’s qualities as well. Patience. Kindness. Loyalty. Understanding. He doesn’t give up. He protects and fights for the ones he loves. He offers comfort in difficult times. He makes a promise to be there forever and he never wavers. I like creating a hero who is always one step ahead of the heroine. Imagine how many steps ahead of us God is.
All of this led me to the title of this blog. (Even if nothing I’ve written here makes sense to anyone but me…it doesn’t matter. God gets it.)
On my books’ acknowledgments page I always thank God because without him, where would I be? Maybe people wonder how a romance writer can profess to have a relationship with God. After all, those characters I write (sshhh) have sex before they’re married. Horrors!
Whether or not an author chooses to address it, pre-marital sex has been a staple of American society for many years. I doubt God is shocked. He understands the emotional component of a sexual relationship, which is what romance novels like mine are based on. It’s why the characters are in an exclusive relationship and why they head for marriage at the end of the book. The journey they shared through the story becomes the glue that bonds them together. Their search for someone to belong to is over.
Sadly, many of us search endlessly for a forever kind of guy while overlooking the fact that He’s always been here.
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