Vicki Batman: When I Fell in Love

When I Fell in Love
 
NO!not with Handsome. I'll save that story for another day. This is about when I fell in lovewith romance books.
Around age fourteen, I was totally bored. School was out. Didn't have anything special going on. I'd read everything I'd wanted to read.
My mom noticed and asked what was up. When I told her, she said, "Go read something." "But what?" I whined. She fastened on me a long stare and then reached for a small paperback on the shelf where she stashed her handbag. "Try this."
   This turned out to be a romance by Emilie Loring. Bantam Books had reissued them and my aunt shared them with my mom. Most took place from the forties to the fifties. They tended to be sweet (no sex) and focused on honor and integrity. The couple met and overcame whatever the villain had planned.
Here's Emilie's bio from Wikipedia and odds and ends from Amazon:
Emilie Loring was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1864 to George M. Baker and Emily Frances (Boles) Baker. Her father was a playwright and publisher and her mother was a homemaker. Loring married Victor J. Loring, who was a lawyer. She began writing in 1914 at the age of 50 and continued until her death after a long illness in 1951. At the time of her death, Loring had sold more than a million copies of her first thirty books.
Her work features several repeating motifs. Among them are a girl who is twenty-three with red hair, a dark-haired lawyer or aspiring politician for a hero, a secondary character predisposed toward speaking in quotations, a fan back chair, a Mandarin coat, a Chinese lacquer screen (room divider), New England as a setting or character trait (“New England granite”), and a black-and-white spotted dog. Her earlier books, published from 1922 to 1937, were originally published in hardcover.
I read voraciously. And since, these books hold a special place in my heart. Throughout the years, I'd buy paperback ones. Then a few years ago, I told Handsome I'd like hardbacks. I have almost all in hardback now, thanks to him. (Isn't he swell?)
So confess (lol), what age and what book turned you on to romance? (And to those who leave a comment with their email address, we'll have two drawings for two sets of three of her books.)
 
 
Vicki Batman regularly imbibes a diet Coke and writes funny stuff most days. Find her at: http://vickibatman.blogspot.com Or at: http://plottingprincesses.blogspot.com. Find her work at: Amazon, MuseItUp Publishing, B&N, Smashwords.