Title: “Apples and Regret and Wasted Time”
Author: Cornelia Grey
Publisher: Storm Moon Press
Release Date: May 27th, 2011
 

Blurb: He lives in the shadows of the law. Now, wounded and stranded in the city after a job only he could do, he has no qualms about climbing through the window his old lover left open—or stealing his shampoo, at that. He has, however, not taken into account the possibility of being surprised in the shower.

Three years is a long time to go between visits, especially if you’ve left so much anger and hurt and desire unresolved. They try to negotiate a truce for one night—over Chinese takeaway leftovers and apples, and between the sheets.

 

 

Guest post by Cornelia Grey

Bittersweet endings: ‘it’s complicated’

Cornelia Grey

Bittersweet endings: love them or hate them, they never fail to stir up a reaction. As for me – both as a reader and as an author – if I had to Facebook my relationship with bittersweet endings, I’d pick ‘it’s complicated’.

I tell myself I don’t really like them, that what I want for the characters is a full-blown, shiny, unicorns-and-rainbows-dipped-in-glitter happy ending to put all happy endings to shame. They deserve it, after all: I’ve come to love the characters, I’ve followed them in their ups and downs and after all they’ve been through, they deserve peace and happiness. They do. And yet, as the ending approaches, I find myself eyeing them furtively as a little, guilty part of me considers that it would be… too easy. Now, when I’m a reader, all I can do is lay back, keep reading and be quiet. But when I’m the author… my characters better start worrying, ‘cause I see a bad moon a-rising in their near future.

The curious thing is that, as a reader, I usually don’t like unhappy endings. When you’re reading a story, sometimes you can tell when an unhappy ending is coming, right? All along there’s a heavy, nagging feeling in the pit of your stomach, and then you’re not disappointed, there it is, the unhappy ending, roundhouse kicking you in the guts. Maybe you hope there will be something after, that there will be some hope, some hint that things might change, that they’ll get better, that somehow it won’t be… definitive. When that doesn’t come, you’re left wallowing in a pool of powerlessness, heavy and numb. You can’t even bring yourself to imagine that things might change later, because there was no window left open for you to imagine your own developments.

My endings, although not happy, aren’t that sort of ending either. That’s mainly because they tend to be more of a ‘to be continued’, even if I might never actually get around to writing that continuation, than actual endings. They might not be happy, but they aren’t unhappy either. They are more of a… work-in-progress. Things may be uncertain right now. Things might even be flat-out crap…. For now. The situation is in transition, and whether it will turn out for better or worse, it all depends on what will happen next. On what choices the characters will make, what they’ll make of it. It’s never definitive.

To be honest, I don’t really believe in definitive endings, not even when they’re happy ones. After all, nothing short of the death of everyone involved can ever determine a definitive ending. So whatever situation my characters are left in, it’s not forever. It might be the last we hear of them, but we know that they will be carrying on with their life and that things are bound to change, because the situation is too unstable to last.

My stories tend to have two leading threads: an adventure, which is the main one, and then the romance. Often the stories end when the adventure ends, but the romance side of it, the characters’ relationship, is little more than just begun. A happy-for-now of sorts. What next? Will they stick together, or shake hands and go their separate ways? I never tell. Sometimes, I don’t even know.

Sometimes, I admit, I don’t even give them that much. The adventure takes precedence and the characters have to shove their relationship to the side. They have other priorities, so for the moment it’s the relationship that they have to put on hold. That’s life, after all: sometimes, you have to squash feelings down to take care of more practical matters. But even then, the characters are always left in transition. They may not be together at the moment, but I’m never saying that they won’t patch it up. They will be figuring out their own solutions, a way to pick up the pieces and move on and manage to glue themselves back together. They might be scarred or glued in different shapes, maybe missing some piece they didn’t manage to scoop up from the ground. Still, they will move on and build something.

There are some tropes of the romance genre which I’ll never be quite able to abide, I suspect. One of them is the centrality of the love story in the characters’ life. Of course, the love story is intense and heart-wrenching and all-consuming… but it might not necessarily be the main focus of the characters’ lives at the moment. I am a little bit of a conflict junkie, I’m afraid, so I always tend to put my characters in quite the pickles. Having to save whole chunks of populations from evil militiamen, for example, putting a stop to a war that threatens to crush half of a country, saving children from being sold by mercenaries… they tend to have serious crap going on. That’s the heart of the story. And they will end up tangled in a love story, that will never make their life easier and that will never be at the top of their priorities list.

Does that take something away from that particular relationship? I don’t think so. I think that a love story can clash with the surrounding world, can even be half-crushed by it. That doesn’t mean it’s too weak a love, it doesn’t mean it’s less important than a love story that instead manages to conquer everything. Sometimes, love stories don’t end as well as we would like to, leaving us with the nagging need to know what next?, leaving a bittersweet aftertaste in our mouths. This bitter edge – the pea under the pile of mattresses that keeps you on edge, keeps you awake and moving and alive –  is what makes romance all the more intriguing and appealing to my taste.

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About Cornelia Grey:

Cornelia Grey is a student halfway through her creative writing degree with a penchant for fine arts and the blues. Born and raised in the hills of Northern Italy, where she collected her share of poetry and narrative prizes, she is now based in London. Her days are full and hectic: she reads, goes to flea markets, galleries, and the theater, and of course spends most of her time writing. When she’s at home, she likes to curl up with a book and the classic cup of tea and leaves chestnuts in the garden for the squirrel that comes around from time to time.

Cornelia loves to hear from her readers and can be found at the following locations:

Blog: http://corneliagrey.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://en-gb.facebook.com/people/Cornelia-Grey/100001604880385
Twitter: http://twitter.com/corneliagrey

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