Hi All,

This whole Hi All Podcast series, done for Toastmasters, has been about my struggle to read from childhood on into adulthood.

Comic Books got me through school. Rarely was there a class assigned book that I enjoyed. Only after getting out of the structure of education did I find things on my own that I enjoyed to completion.

First came fantasy, and then science fiction, and then a love for mystery stories.

What I found however was that no matter the genre I had to enjoy the characters and their relationships to like the book. For me a fantasy couldn’t just be about the dragons, a science fiction story shouldn’t just be about spaceships, and mystery isn’t all about deductive reasoning.

I would stumble upon a genre that fit what I really needed in a book with interesting characters and relationships. That genre: Romance.

I hadn’t gone seeking out love stories, but the love stories were there.

The first ones I read were Fantasy Romance or Paranormal Romance, both of which coming out of genres I already loved, the witch, the wizard, the dragon, the ghost. But here it wasn’t about slaying the dragon but falling in love with it, or the ghost that falls in love with you, and hopefully isn’t dead at the end.

I then discovered the Meet-Cute, of how the character discover each other. The accidental meetings, the enemies to lovers, and so forth.

In the two novels I’ve written: REVENGE OF THE MASKED GHOST; the adventure and mystery are important, but for me it is overshadowed by the hero and his wife’s love for each other.

In CLOCKWORK GENIE it was about how a police detective falls for one of his suspects, but it was also about a down on his luck man during the depression that finds magic, more and how the Genie falls in love with him.

On one Romance Podcast that I had the privilege to be a guest on I tried to explain that every story was a romance. As long as there are two or more people in the tale, it was about their relationship, their friendship, and what might or might not grow out of that. Of course, that was before I learned that there very strict rules to what defines a Romance Story.

Over the last several years, I have read more Romance than any other genre, but usually there had to be an element of other genres in it.

Such as:

The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes by Leonard Goldberg – Obviously a Mystery tale, and definitely Romance.

Angeleika Frankenstein Makes Her Match by Sally Thorne – a Science Fiction/Romance tale with a clear nod to the first Science Fiction story.

Then came a book, a series, that just drew me in. With my love of comic books and comic conventions, how could I not want to read a romance that took place at a scifi-con.

Ashley Poston’s ONCE UPON A CON series of novels: each of the stories begin with the framework of a Fairy Tale. The first took Cinderella and turned into Geekerella. Followed up by The Princess and the Fangirl, and Bookish and the Beast.

Geekerella made me an instant fan of Poston and followed her not only in the rest of the con world, and the fact that she also wrote comic books. How could I not by happy.

Right now I have just begin reading The Someday Garden, the fifth and final book of her current series. These books aren’t really a series like ONCE UPON A CON, but they do take place in the same world if only tangentially. People know each other, but only like bumping into a friend at the mall, but it still makes it fun. The first book was The Dead Romantics, there’s that ghost I told you about, followed by The Seven Year Slip, A Novel Love Story, and Sounds Like Love. Each of the stories has an element of fantasy throughout them, but it is the characters that I follow, whether they have their Happy Ever After or not, they are absolutely wonderful characters with great relationships.

Last year, about eight months ago, I had a temp job at Disney Consumer Products, and I got visited several departments. On the walks of one were pinned up the cover art for soon to be released books. Many of them were children’s books, but also a lot of other types. Some based on the Marvel superheroes, and then there were the Star Wars books. In the middle of those was a Star Wars novel with a couple staring into each other’s eyes, its title EYES LIKE STARS and it is written by Ashley Poston. It has just come out, and as soon as I finish reading The Someday Garden, I will be picking this book up as well.

Because of Poston’s work, I have discovered other romance authors, and as I said above, I have been reading far more than I ever have before.

I have fallen in love with the genre of Romance, and it has given me a far greater desire to read than anything else.

In the Next episode of this podcast series, I will introduce you to an even greater love, as I’ll have a special guest.

Thank you all for seeing me through this experience.