I’m in love with love.
Ever since I was in fourth grade, and I realized I liked it when Anthony, the little Italian boy, shot elastics at my head and otherwise offered up his attentions, I have been focused on matters of the heart. I can’t actually help it. I’m a hopeless romantic who loves summer sunsets and happy endings.
Movies like “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “Pretty Woman” make me laugh and cry and nod my head knowingly. And there’s nothing I like better than getting together with girlfriends to sip wine and compare notes on dating, breaking up, marriage, communication with special others, emotional intimacy, self-esteem, sex and sometimes, when one particular friend is involved, even erotica.
So when I stumbled across an ad for romance bloggers on Craigslist recently because I’m searching for an additional income stream to pay off my daughter’s tuition loans without selling my house, I was intrigued. I’m writing this blog as a way of showing the leaders of www.eromancehelp.com why I’m someone they should take a close look at after they review the other 600 to 800 inquiries they expect to receive.
Here are 10 reasons why I should be one of the 20 writers they hire:
I have a varied love resume. I have been married and divorced and married and widowed, and I raised two children and five stepchildren with these two men. I married my second husband after I realized I had fallen in love with the carpenter who came to renovate my kitchen and that that wasn’t normal. After I married said carpenter, he died. And now, I am a 50-something single woman dating and still trying to figure out the love thing, which I know I better understand now but will probably never master.
I know how to tell a good story. I have been a journalist in western Massachusetts for over 30 years and have written for newspapers, tabloids, magazines and journals. I have written about weddings and funerals, solopreneurs and Fortune 500 companies, scientists and students, and I’ve told thousands of day-in-the-life stories, like the one about the women in Chicopee who pinch pierogis for a living. I also run a PR and communications business, Beetle Press of Easthampton, and I tell clients’ stories of success to help them raise awareness. I also teach them how to tell their own stories.
I’m an experienced blogger. I blog weekly on my business website, and I have been blogging sporadically on my own personal site for four years now, since my carpenter husband died. On the business site, I feature clients, community leaders and nonprofits that save and transform lives. My blog offers clients an extra layer of promotion while giving my own work some PR as well. On my personal site, I blog about the stuff of life that catches my attention, but I don’t have nearly enough time to devote to it because, you know, I don’t pay myself to do it.
I’m an experienced romance author. I wrote a memoir about the loss of my second husband, called Divine Renovations: A Carpenter, His Soul Mate and Their Story of Love and Loss, and I am close to completing a work of fiction that is also a love story. I have been told by readers that my work is compelling, raw, personal, hard to put down. (Read reviews.)
As a blogger for www.eromancehelp.com, I could combine my practical, professional knowledge with my passion and personal experience. I have a unique combination of skills that make me well-suited to write eromance. I would well handle assignments from the blog site’s editors or write about the things that tug at my own heart and mind, using the skills and experience that have positioned me in the Valley as the writer you want to turn to when you want to get heard.
I’m good at giving advice. When friends want to know what to do about the boyfriend who won’t come to the family Christmas dinner or the husband whose eyes are wandering, I am the one they call to ask, “What should I do?” Last week, a former college intern I supervised emailed to tell me her mother-in-law was dying. “You are the only one I knew who would understand. Please tell me what I should be doing,” she said.
I can hunt down and tell with authority any story and would excel at telling stories about love and romance and intimacy. I have been searching for and telling unusual stories for over 30 years. I got the idea for the piece on the pierogi pinchers from a classified ad, and I would make it my business to make my blogs rich, informative and fun. I would search far and wide for interesting romance topics and shine a light on them to educate, enlighten or maybe even to poke some fun.
I’m not afraid to ask questions. At a Yankee swap before Christmas in 2014, my daughter opened a festive package that contained a vibrator. She announced, “It’s a vibrator,” and I said, “No honey, that’s a cigar case.” I tried to open it to show her the cigar inside. She said, “Mom, that’s where the batteries go.” “Oh,” I said. By the end of the night, I knew all there was to know about vibrators because I’d asked a series of curious questions of the woman who put the item in the swap in the first place. I also got her to talk about a workshop she attended on erogenous zones. And I could write all about it.
I’m funny and tender and practical and whimsical. My blogs would not be ordinary. They would grab attention, make readers feel and think and come back for more. And I would make sure that when they came back, they found what they were looking for.
I’m in love with love. Maybe you’ve already heard me say that.
You’ve got my vote!
Definitely. What a wonderful resume!! You’ve also got my vote. I’ve been married and divorced and married and divorced and am walker dependent. I now conclude, happily, that I am not, nor never will be, wife material. It’s good to notice the areas that are NOT one’s forte as well as those that are. If any one wants a column on how to orchestrate and navigate through the third chapter of life, this 75- year-old is your gal.
Very nice Martha. You should start blogging!