A tribute to the Greatest Generation on this 4th of July

Happy 4th everyone!


I love the 4th of July. It's one day of the year when just about everyone sits down and takes a deep breath. It's flags and parades and ice cream bars and late night sparklers and sitting with a thousand other people to watch fireworks. It's staying up late on a warm night, running around, laughing at loud noises, and playing frisbee in a parking lot at midnight.


The fourth of July is pretty much everything that is right with this country, brought to you by a band of land owning rebels more than 200 years ago.


Had they known how crazed this country would become, I wonder if those revolutionaries would have bothered. I wonder, would Thomas Jefferson have reworded the phrase, "life liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" had he known that this sentence would lead to generations of entitlement seeking loafers who worked harder at not working than at living a free, honest life.


I don't know. We have managed to mess up a perfectly good revolution, haven't we?


But I'm not here to get on a soapbox...instead, I have a writing challenge for you:
You may have noticed that most of these patriotic based national holidays involve a lot of war movies on TV. Maybe there's a lack of revolutionary films out there, but I've noted this past week that I'm seeing a lot of World War II movies. There are TONS of World War II movies. I'll even venture a guess that there are more World War II movies than any other war, except possibly the Civil War.


Here's my point: World War II was a great, amazing span of time in our country's history, and film makers got that. War films, romantic war films, what have you, abound on the topic.
So why, why WHY are there so few, if any, World War II romance novels?


Uh, oh. I've just opened a HUGE can of worms.


Now, bear in mind, I'm new to the world of organized Romance Writers. But I have been to two conferences in the last two years where this topic has come up for discussion. This year was interesting because sharp words were actually exchanged between authors, agents, and editors. I asked a writer friend, why is this topic such a hot bed of dissension amongst romance authors?


"Well," she told me, "no one knows where to put World War II romances. They aren't contemporary, and they aren't historical, since so many people who lived in that era are still alive. They simply don't know how to classify them."


During the missel fire that was this discussion, an agent shot back this salvo: "Where are the manuscripts? No one is writing a World War II romance. I'd read one if I got one."


This was met with a general murmur of disbelief. (writers and agents are, by definition, not adversaries, but sometimes agents are the gatekeepers of a writer's dream, and there is a certain level of frustration a writer reaches knowing that her dream is so dependent on someone else.


Now first of all, I've done some checking, and The Wild Rose Press has published a couple of World War II romances. So if you're looking for one to read head on over to the American Rose section of www.thewildrosepress. Check those out.


Second of all, I think we should, on this day of celebration, take the challenge. So my challenge to you, my friends, is to come up with the World War II romance that will change the hearts and minds of agents and editors around the world!


Is there a more fitting tribute to our country's "greatest generation?"

Now, go forth, grill meat, watch fireworks, and WRITE!