The HEA Cafe

When I volunteered to blog on the 11^th of each month at the HEA Café, it didn’t dawn on me—at that time—that my first blog would be on 9/11. For those of us in North America and in many other countries on this planet, it’s a somber day of reflection and remembrance of the innocents and heroes who lost their lives.

So let’s talk about heroes because this is, after all, the HEA Café.  

Heroes come in all shapes, sizes, genders, race, religions, philosophies and—when you write science fiction romance as I do—species. The firefighters, EMTS and law enforcement officers who took the stairs of the Twin Towers in New York City that day, the military personnel who rushed into the burning Pentagon offices and the flight crew and passengers on the hijacked jets were of no one belief, no one race. And not a one of them, I’m sure, woke up that morning thinking this was the day to play the hero. Their parts were unscripted. There were no first drafts, no cut-and-paste edits to smooth over the rough parts. And the plot was clearly not written by a romance author because the happy endings were few.

But they were heroes, and at times I think it’s the heroism, more than the tragedy, that continues keeps our interest about that day and the days afterwards. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

For years, the romance novel industry has written about police, firefighter and military heroes—both male and female.  We’ve written about their fears, their failings, their rewards, their loves. We’ve chronicled emergency room doctors and nurses, and civilian and military flight crews. The books of Suzanne Brockmann, Linda Howard, Lindsay McKenna, Cindy Dees and others brought us in to the lives of “trained” heroes. Unsuspecting heroes are found books by authors too numerous to list.

And more romance authors than you might be aware of not only write about heroes but are military veterans themselves. The impressive list (along with some terrific Then and Now photos) can be found on the RomVets site: http://www.romvets.com/   This doesn’t include authors, like Lynda Sandoval and Candace Sams,  who’ve worked in law enforcement, or fire and rescue (if someone knows of a site for that, please let me know).

The unexpected challenge of the moment that creates the hero is something that drives many bestsellers. We saw it in real life, on television on September 11, 2001 and if anything, you’d think such stark reality—and with a real lack of happy endings—would have put a serious dent in the desire to be part of the hero business. But military and law enforcement applications rose after 9/11.

I think that says a lot about the human spirit.

I think it also shows the reason why we authors crave happy endings for our heroes. We write about men and women who are pushed beyond their limits, and we want them to succeed. More than succeed, we want them to be rewarded. So we pen happy endings for our heroes. They may be down and dinged-up a bit but they rise, and hope and love rises with them. In a world where happy endings are never a guarantee, we can at least offer a positive outcome in the pages of a book. This police officer, this EMT, this military chaplain, this starship commander will succeed, find love and continue on making the world—or the galaxy—a little better place.

And the world being a better place is something that’s good for everyone.

So as we pass through another remembrance of 9/11 and get back to our regularly scheduled lives—and books—take a moment now and then to think about heroes. The ones we’ve lost. The ones we’ve read about. The ones that are still here. The ones that patrol our streets, staff our emergency rooms, pilot the jets overhead. The ones that run into burning buildings. The ones that stand on foreign soil.

I’ll keep putting them in my books if you’ll keep holding them in your hearts and prayers.  

Every time you hear on the news about people running away from a crazed gunman, remember that someone’s son or daughter in a police uniform is running toward that crazed gunman.

– from What Cops Would Like You To Know, author unknown, posted on various law enforcement sites on the Internet

Namaste, ~Linnea

Linnea Sinclair
www.linneasinclair.com
www.myspace.com/linneasinclair
RITA© Award Winning SF Romance
Bantam Spectra 2005:  FINDERS KEEPERS, GABRIEL’S GHOST, AN ACCIDENTAL GODDESS
2007: GAMES OF COMMAND, THE DOWN HOME ZOMBIE BLUES, SHADES OF DARK