The Genre

Before I really begin, I've realized over the last several days that the way my Pages app on my iPad works (and lets face it, the way I use it) may not be producing completely accurate page counts for my progress ratio.  But if there's a page or so error anywhere, it still shows forward motion in a quantitative way, rather than a bunch of entries starting with "I'm still working on it."  Anyways, all that being said, and allowing any potential margin of error:

109/204

Let me tell you a bit about the genre I'm writing in, as well as some of how I got into writing for it.  The official title of this type of story is "inspiriational romance."  If that term leaves you still wondering about what the book could still be about, let me put it this way - Christian romance.  I don't like to admit it, but I get embarrassed often when I need to tell people the type of book it is.  I guess after so many years of living my faith in a secular world, I expect most people on the street to find my genre laughable, as if its just a bunch of dumb, naive stories.  While I won't go claiming that every work of this nature is intelligenty written and highly literary, I will go on record as saying that the inspirational romance genre can be a great avenue for readers like myself.

Christian romance, at least in the guidelines I'm writing for, is defined as "sweet" romances, where there is both a romantic and faith element present in the story.  Basically, its a romance where one or both of the leads have some sort of issue of faith that they work through in addition to the romance storyline.  The nice thing about these stories (or should I say, one of them) is that people like me can get what they want - the romantic, guy meets girl, couple overcomes obstacles to live happily-ever-after type of stories without any sex scenes that one might find objectionable.

I didn't always know about this subset of the romance genre, and I used to read other mainstream novels, which would often include me having to skip pages at particular sensitive parts, skimming for any dialogue.
"Nope, still doing it." *turns page* "Nope, still doing it." *turns page*

It's great to have a genre of romance where I can read a love story that doesn't have those objectionable parts, and has a Christian message.  This is the genre I hope to break in to.