The At-home Mother's Life: It Was A

Nobody's Strong Enough To Be A Parent. We Just Do It, Blindly, Going Forward On Faith And Love And Hope. That's All It Is...being Afraid...and Going On.

She Still Felt Shell-shocked By All Of It, Numb. Beneath The Numbness, Though, Was A Raw And Terrible Anger That Was Unlike Anything She'd Felt Before. She Had So Little Experience With Genuine Anger That It Scared Her. She Actually Worried That If She Started Screaming, She'd Never Stop.

He Was Afraid That The Secrets She'd Kept Would Always Be Here, Inside Him, An Ugly Malignant Thing Lodged Near Enough To His Heart To Upset Its Rhythm, And Though It Could Be Removed, Cut Out, There Would Always Be Scars; Bits And Pieces Of It Would Remain In His Blood, Making It Wrong Somehow, So That If He Accidentally Sliced His Skin Open, His Blood Would--for One Heartbeat--flow As Black As India Ink Before It Remembered That It Should Be Red.

I Guess No One Stays Friends For More Than Thirty Years Without Broken Hearts Along The Way.

A Romance Novel Focuses Exclusively On Two People Falling In Love. It Can't Be About A Woman Caring For Her Aging Mother Or Something Like That. It Can Have That Element, But It Has To Be Primarily About The Male-female Relationship.