Tree climbing for beginners

Helen Dudley is a writer, daughter of a photographer, and granddaughter of an artist. She is a creative woman, raised by creative women. When her husband came to her with the news he was cheating and leaving her for his new love, she flipped the script and got out the door before he could get the first piece of clothing in his suitcase.

Crush

A 4-part adult romance

The Sorry Trilogy

Sorry, So Sorry, & Apologetic

Not the Marrying Kind

Joyia Marie – Who am I?

I started writing when I was six years old and my first-grade teacher stuck a fat pencil into my equally fat fist and said, “Write me a story…”

I’ve written ever since.

As a lifelong reader of romances (started with Harlequin romances when I was twelve), it was natural my writing would lean towards stories of love. However, my stories seem to start, unlike most authors, with ‘what if they don’t’ instead of ‘what if?’.

The standard romance tropes don’t usually work for me. Such as boy cheats, begs girlfriend for forgiveness, she gives it with more or less effort on his part, and they live happily ever after. My question is, what if she didn’t? What if no matter what he said, their friends said, or anybody said, she stuck to her guns and didn’t forgive him?

Or, a husband gets a girlfriend, tells his wife he’s leaving her and the kids, he leaves, she struggles and finds a newfound strength and perhaps a new love, and she lives happily ever after. My question is what if she left first? Left him with the kids and his girlfriend? What happens then?

My couples do get there, but they may have to go around the mulberry bush before that happens.

Again, thank you for reading.

Joyia