July 20, 2022
Last Thursday, David and I
celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary.
It really doesn’t seem possible
that so many years have passed—and it also bends belief that, among all of our
then close friends who married just before and just after us, we alone remain together.
To celebrate the landmark our
girls, Jennifer, and Sonja hosted a lunch for us on Saturday. There were
twenty-nine of us, spread out, and we were the only party in that part of the restaurant.
It was a very nice afternoon, seeing some folks I hadn’t seen in years. Jennifer
created an under three-minute video with pictures she found in our family “archives”,
which was such a sweet thing for her to have done. And watching that video, I smiled
and had tears—and realized that my daughter today looks like me in my thirties.
That poor woman!
Now, you all know that I write
romance. I’ve often commented, and I stand by the statement that being a writer
isn’t what I do, it’s who I am. My first attempt at writing appeared in the
form of a television episode for my favorite TV series—Voyage to the Bottom of
the Sea. That series that came out in 1964, when I was 10, and inspired a
couple of firsts for me: the first time I sat down to write something; and the
first of only a couple of times I sent a fan letter. In response to the latter,
I received back a package with a letter, and some signed photos (of Richard
Basehart and David Hedison, be still my little adolescent heart) and some pictures
of the submarine, “Seaview”.
The only thing that stayed
with me from that time in my life was the writing. I honestly had no idea at
the time why I felt this great, pressing need to create stories and write them
down. It wasn’t until much later I discovered that my dad had been a writer.
Only a few examples of his work, poems and a couple of short stories—all written
before the death of his own father when he turned 17—have survived his
transition from student into a young man who had to quit school to support his
mother.
When our own father died in
1963, there were many who thought my mother should have given a similar fate to
my brother who was 18 at the time, and a senior in high school. My mother
refused. She said that her husband would never have condoned such a thing. So
my brother stayed in high school, and then went on to Teacher’s College, in
those days a one year program. Then he spent the next several summers getting
first his B.A. and then his Master’s degree in education. That decision of my
mother’s resulted in my brother living a very good life as an adult.
But I digress.
I think there was a part of me
that needed to write as a form of world-building. That was truest during my
darkest years as a young adult, trying to cope with small children and a
husband who was an alcoholic. Fortunately, after our eleventh anniversary,
David came to the point of understanding he had a problem and did something
about it. He has been sober ever since—39 years sober—and that one fact is the main
reason we’re still together.
Why I have tended, as I’ve
gotten older, to write romance is the same reason I never read or watch horror
and am careful about what I do read and watch: I’m a sucker for a happy ending.
When I was just a bit younger,
I used to joke that if I wanted tense drama and tragedy, tears and weeping and
wailing, why, I would just write an autobiography. Looking back, I understand
that while given as a dark-comedic line, and while not as well explained as I might
have liked, there’s a strong thread of truth there.
Life is hard. Shit happens.
And the best way to cope with both of those hard facts is to adopt as uplifting
a mood and attitude as possible. Romance does that. It showcases the best we
can be. In my stories the good guys
always win.
I know I present my heroes and
heroines engaged in lovey-dovey relationships; but I never represent romance—real
romance—as being all rainbows and unicorns. Relationships take work, whether
they’re between a husband and wife, parents and kids, or friends. But it is
work that is very rewarding and, I believe, work we were created to do.
Life isn’t, as that old familiar
ditty would have it, “but a dream.” Well, unless you mean a nightmare which for
some, it can be. But life is what we have while we’re here. It’s the only game
in town, and if we want it to mean something, and if we want to survive it with
our sanity in tact…. well, that really is a decision, isn’t it? In fact, I
would say, it is the decision.
I’ve spent the last 17 years
of my life using what I’d learned during the first 51 to write stories that, as
one reader told me more than once, “hug the reader’s heart”.
Life really is what you make
it, and I am determined to make mine, and my readers’, as fulfilling as
possible.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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