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At least, that’s what it felt like to me.

Maybe I’m just speaking for myself. But I had a very hard time thinking of love and romance over the past two years when COVID tried to kill romance. This particularly sucks because I was halfway through my series, at the very end of finishing two books (was thinking maybe three). I’d written this piece on Happily Every After & Why We Write Romance where I said, all confident, “…When everyone is down, love is up.” And then I dropped off the face of the earth. Figuratively, of course. With my writing.

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COVID tried to kill romance by making us so scared for our lives, we barely dared to breathe for fear of the repercussions.

It’s hard to think about romance when you’re petrified, let alone write about it. Romance seems frivolous in troubling times.

I know what you’re thinking.

Ava, you’re a romance writer, you should know better!

And you’d be right. Romance is most important in difficult times when we’re our most real. An example is this piece by Christina Care. Love doesn’t die when challenges arise. We owe it to ourselves to dig deeper when it feels like we have nothing to give, because by doing it when it’s hard we show those we love just how much we love. Despite all.

I let my readers down and I regret that. But life is nothing if not a lifetime of lessons until we’re done. We’re all human. Even those of us who espouse love and happiness can sometimes feel overwhelmed. I’ve been down but, hopefully, I haven’t completely lost all of those who were in romance’s corner. I applaud you believers who never lost faith. Yes, COVID tried to kill romance. No, it didn’t succeed.

I’ll be on here unless and until Medium kicks me off.

But if you, also, believe in love, romance, and second chances, stay with me.