Guest Author Thursday & Giveaway: Inside the life & mind of romance author Stan Crowe

Last week I reviewed The Cinderella Project by Stan Crowe as part of the blog tour. I know LDSWBR blog readers are just as curious as I am about how Stan came to write contemporary romance, and I am so glad Stan agreed to write a guest post for Guest Author Thursday.

Publisher Breezy Reads has generously agreed to host an international giveaway for a copy of The Cinderella Project (physical copy – US only; electronic copy – US & International). Keep reading after Stan’s highly entertaining post to find out how to enter to win your own copy of The Cinderella Project.

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Inside The Life and Mind of Male Romance Author, Stan Crowe

There’s something to be said about being reared in a perpetual cloud of estrogen, lacking father or brothers in the house. My time growing up with just sisters helped me be less clueless about the opposite sex, and I was raised with a healthy respect for women in general. I also had a reasonable idea of what they hoped for in a man.

That still didn’t help my dating life. Ah, well.

Writing romance, specifically, started out as an accident for me. I entered a writing contest and found that it required writing a love story. I went ahead anyway. Even before that contest, however, relationships factored heavily into many of my earlier stories—even the science fiction and fantasy ones.

For me, genre is predominantly a setting for human drama. There are few things more potentially dramatic than romantic relationships. Romance can certainly trigger non-romantic conflicts (Why hello, Helen! How are the Trojans doing?), and provide a myriad of story hooks. So even when I’m not targeting romance as a plot I’m usually developing one as a subplot in a story. That’s almost proverbial, actually. How many good stories don’t feature some kind of love interests?

Being a male writing about love, emotions, et cetera has proven interesting. Not surprisingly, I’ve been the target of good-natured mockery from some male friends (one guy’s reaction, when he learned I had written “chick lit,” was particularly priceless). Others have been more supportive, though my dad didn’t have much to say; I hope he doesn’t think he spawned a pansy. Women have received the story much more eagerly—no surprise there.

Even in our post-women’s lib society, we still have some pretty clear gender expectations. Many of those make perfect sense, and are natural (e.g. women can have babies; men just get to help), while others (e.g. “real” men don’t wear pink) are more artificial. Suppressing certain emotions is one of those in the “other” category. It’s too easy to think of men in love as nothing other than hormonal animals trying to breed as frequently as possible. While it’s true that men do tend to think about sex much more readily than women, that doesn’t mean it’s all we think about, and it’s certainly not the biggest factor in mate selection. Well, not for most men.

I hope to bring an inside perspective on the fact that us guys also deal with complicated emotions during courtship, and even into marriage. “Does she actually love me?” “Can I really take care of her properly?” “What will her parents think of me?” “How will I know what she really wants?”

The life and mind of this male romance author isn’t much different from the life and mind of most male authors (though they probably had brothers). I just get to include more kissing in my books, and not feel ashamed of it.

My wife loves it. She lets me practice my lines on her.

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Thank you, Stan!

To enter the giveaway for a copy of The Cinderella Project, complete the Rafflecopter form below. The only required entry is to leave a thoughtful comment about Stan’s post below, though there are additional options if you want more entires into the giveaway. For your required entry to count, you must complete the Rafflecopter form and leave a thoughtful comment below.

Good luck!

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a Rafflecopter giveaway