Dear Steph, Get bent. Love, MK

I read romance novels when I'm upset. Dramatic historical novels with crinolines and horses and dukes and more plot twists than an episode of Desperate Housewives. 

Before I was packed up and sent home to California with "crazy" practically stamped on my forehead, I was speed reading through the Regency era. Don't misunderstand; I have little respect for the romance novel genre. The books are silly and formulaic at best. They're anything but original, and sort of insult the intelligence of the women to whom they're marketed. I don't read them for the literary value... I kind of loathe them, really.

Its just that nothing brings out the crocodile tears in me faster than some lucky bitch in a corset getting her happily-ever-after.

I hate crying.

Totally fucked, right? 

I don't really have an explanation for it. Maybe it's because I don't believe in happily ever after. Or because I was scolded for crying as a child, teen, adult. Maybe I'm just plain twisted... or maybe I just need to get a fucking life. I have no idea.

Anyway, here I am reading some crap about an orphaned vicar's daughter and her horse groom lover who is secretly an earl, and bawling my damned eyes out. I'll be up all night crying for the mistreated girl who has no idea that the servant she's going to run away (from her evil uncle) with is going to make her a pregnant millionaire any minute. I don't even know if I feel sorry for her because of the evil uncle or jealous of the handsome man. 

I've always been afraid of becoming the kind of woman who has a drink and a couple of pills in the evening to deal with the burden of living: her white girl, first world problems. It seems that as long as Stephanie Laurens her ilk are around, I don't have much to worry about in that arena.