Honesty and Romance

Almost a year ago, I drove up to Seattle to tape an interview for Project Paranormal. Though I rehearsed my Guardian spiel all the way up I-5, as soon as the camera turned on I became a blithering idiot. (True story. I’m sure you’ll see the evidence of it soon.)

And driving all the way down, I obsessed over my idiocy, and all of the things I said that were dumb — but most of all, over the one thing I forgot to say.

One of the interview questions was something like: What would be the most difficult superpower for a character to have? and I said, Having the ability to read lies and truth. Because it would be very, very difficult to go through life always knowing the truth about how people feel about you, or how they genuinely thought, because we all have ugly thoughts, we all have ugly feelings — and most of us try not to inflict them on other people. But what if you always knew, anyway? I think that it’d be so painful, you’d have to erect impenetrable emotional shields just to get through the day.

And even though I was babbling on, I forgot to add this: But I also think that’s what romance is all about. It’s about finding that someone who you can be absolutely honest with, about finding that person who will accept everything about you, and who doesn’t need to lie, because they’ve taken both the good and the bad, and they love you for both. It’s about being honest, and about trusting that they won’t hurt you, even though they have the power to do so.

So when the interview finally came out, I was going to say all of this on my blog — a clarification of sorts. But today, Ilona Andrews said the same thing over at Odd Shots, only she said it better (and coming from an amazing writer … okay, I teared up. She blindsided me, and the shields weren’t up. Damn her.)

And I have to say, that is exactly what I’m striving for with every single romance I write. Honesty, acceptance, trust…which are often much, much harder to come by than love.