Shannon here: Jeanette Marie Mirich shares how her colorful real-life romance her fiction. Comment or answer the question in this post to enter the drawing for a paperback copy of her Romantic Suspense, The Courtship of Harry’s Wife. Deadline: June 1st, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Jeanette:
The Color of Love
Fifty-six years ago, a cheeky collage senior tried to pick up a girl working at the University library. Intrigued by her smile, he passed her a note with the question, ‘What is your name?’ When a voice in his head said, “You’re going to marry that girl,” he immediately dashed home to tell his roommate about his weird encounter, and forgot her name. Our romance began with a statement, which drew Rod to the ultimate love relationship, one with God.
Each of us bring our past into story. Perhaps the hero and heroine sitting before a crackling fire, her fingers wrapped around a cherry red mug, his arm around her shoulders stirs your passions. That is a picture of our Mount Hood honeymoon. We planned to ski and sip hot cocoa, but in the warmest December on record, the slopes were soggy and rain dripped, and we packed our bags to head to our new apartment.
When you close your eyes and think of romance, what bursts into your mind? Are rolling turquoise waves and a couple walking hand in hand your dream? My boyfriend of six weeks proposed on a rugged hilltop above the ice-blue Pacific. Waves, calm or treacherous have rocked our love story over the years. As they have others.
In life’s journey, there are dangerous precipices and shadowed valleys, times of rejoicing or of mourning when the bagpipes play Amazing Grace at your father’s funeral. In muted tones come scenes when the hero meets the woman. Rarely is it a Fourth of July fireworks moment. If a Hallmark presentation, their encounter often is a dark liquid spilled on someone’s white shirt.
When I write words of a ‘meeting’, I prefer the unexpected. A woman changing a flat tire, because her date doesn’t have a clue what to do with a lug wrench, tutors him on the fine art of tire replacement. Noticing a guy with an amused smirk watching, she hands the stranger the tire iron, challenging him to complete the task. Voila, the stranger can become the intriguing man about town, lawyer suing her company, or the boy who returned to his hometown after his failure at …you fill in the blank.
Distilling color into words to set a mood can entice the reader and cement the vision of a character or place. What if romance’s hue is more subtle. Azure, navy, and cobalt blue filled our early years with Air Force uniforms and blazing tropical skies. The color of Rod’s eyes, is fiord blue like his Finnish forefathers. The sparkle in them makes my heart flutter.
My romantic life is autumn-hued. We met in spring, were engaged in summer but his courting continued as burnt maple leaves skittered over lawns. Coming to his medical school in Portland or when Rod came down to my university, we stayed with parents, since being alone was a hazard for us. Hiking along the Columbia Gorge was an option. Muddy trails found us talking, dreaming and kissing under rain-sodden Douglas firs. The tick of rain on fir trees and the icy fingers of Columbia Gorge winds usher me back in time.
Married at Christmas, I chose colors of forest green and gold, a reminder of the trees bending in grace the autumn we planned our future. The harvest gold of the leaves that crunched under our hiking boots remains in our lives for golden yellow roses were my husband’s recent anniversary gift. A reminder of the past and a promise of a future filled with warm colors of hope, dreams and joy.
If it isn’t a color that evokes romance to you, is it a scent, perhaps a sound, the touch of a velvet dinner jacket, or the taste of a food memory? My heart beats faster when I hear my husband’s footsteps on the stairs. The taste of rich dark chocolate takes me back to Switzerland and a romantic overnight train trip to Vienna. Dust touching my cheek causes me to remember a camping trip in Kenya where we cuddled as hyenas cried. The clapping sound of palm fronds in wind takes me back to my husband’s grin when he came home safe from a medical evac mission during the Vietnam War.
How thankful I am that we are given senses so we can catch glimpses of creation’s fingerprints. Ultimately the color of love is painted by God as He, our Bridegroom, draws us to Himself.
Question for Readers: Where is the most exotic place you’ve been or would like to go? Why were you there or why would you like to go there?
About Jeanette Marie: Have bags, will travel, should be Jeanette-Marie’s life’s theme. She moved twenty-two times before settling in her first home. An Oregonian by birth, Jeanette has swum in the Ligurian Sea, collected shells and sea glass along the Indian Ocean, Straits of Malacca, Gulf of Mexico, and the Andaman Sea, to name a few locations. Her peripatetic lifestyle is courtesy of the U.S. Air Force and her husband’s medical training. While living in Thailand during the Vietnam War when her husband was a flight surgeon, serving on medi-vac missions into Nam, or working in Africa in Kenya, Ethiopia and Mali flexibility has been a recurring theme in her life. Learn more & connect:
Jeanette’s Website Jeanette’s Facebook Jeanette’s Goodreads
Jeanette’s Bookbub Jeanette’s Pinterest Jeanette’s Newsletter
About the book – The Courtship of Harry’s Wife:

Giveaway
I shouldn’t have made the promise when Harry was dying…but you know how it is. You want to please when the person you’ve always loved is hooked up to plastic tubing and looking peaky.
So begins the tale of Delilah Morgan and Judge Lyle Henderson’s courtship, aided by her just buried husband, who thought they should be together. The beautiful Delilah wants to mourn in private. With dead bodies emerging from swampy water and the police and FBI involved, Delilah becomes curious and sets out to clear Judge of murder. What she doesn’t want is her heart to become tangled up in romance when a murderer is after her and the judge.
The Courtship of Harry’s Wife, a suspense/romance novel set in Kentucky, book one of the D.B. Burns mystery series.
Can’t wait for the drawing? Worried you won’t win? Interested in Jeanette Marie’s other titles?
Get your copy/copies now!
The Courtship of Harry’s Wife Jeanette Marie’s Books
Come back May 24th for Shannon Taylor Vannatter!
Exotic place:
Tonga’s National Forest (Rainforest in Ketchikan, Alaska.
Hubby and I did their amazing 8 tower zip line through the forest canopy.
Tongass National Forest
Glad to have you, Jeanette Marie. I love visiting the ocean. Since we have Texas relatives, we usually visit the coast there. We’ve been to Galveston and Corpus Christi. I’d like to go to Surfside Beach, TX. I love collecting seashells and Surfside is supposed to have a lot of them.
New Zealand’s Mt Cook where the stars can be seen more clearly than most places in the world.
I have a winner! Jennifer won the drawing. I appreciate Jeanette-Marie for being my guest and everyone else for stopping by.