A man who never gave up on romance - Mario Saincic's Writing Blog

My wife understands baby talk. Whether a groan, squeak, niggle, cry, scream or even just the flapping of arms, she knows exactly what our son needs. I don't. With me, it's a process of elimination: feed me, burp me, change me, smile at me, play with me or put my dummy back in my mouth. And very often it is all of the above, just not in that order. It is usually a case of feed me, burp me, feed me, smile at me, burp me, feed me some more, and finally, clean my bottom. When writing, I have a similar situation, and that because my characters are always based on people I have met at one stage or another. We have conversations, negotiations, and lay out a general list of actions to be taken. Most of the time they would say, " You want me to do what? " In real life, the average human being is driven by the primal instinct to survive. Whether creating a safety net for those within their bubble, working towards that promotion or mending bridges to achieve emotional p...

Five years ago, today, while scrolling through my social media followers, I once again paused on the profile of an angel. She was a German living in Paris. Exotic. An unreachable dream. I mean, a multi-published author, blonde, young and beautiful, with her bedroom window opening up to the Eiffel Tower. I looked down at my keyboard missing three keys and wondered: "What if?" What if I could meet her, by accident or in passing. Would I have the courage to say hello, and if so, would she even give me the time of day? Separated and living in a room in my brother's house, how could I ever stand a chance? Nevermind that being unemployed at the time meant not having the means to travel to Europe, I wouldn't even be able to buy her a cup of coffee if the miracle ever happened. I'd been researching date sites for a book idea (No, I didn't sign up for any, because again, I didn't have an income and was unable to get past viewing pictures) and I was shocked...

After my last post, I am happy to announce that I finally found my story, and it wasn't under the bed. With reference to the blog I mentioned previously, I continue along the lines that a writer's blog should have writery things, and if at all possible, writery things within your own genre. So I am going to try and explain my reason for writing romance. I did not wake up one day deciding to be a writer, followed by extensive market research on which genres sold well and brought authors the highest return for their hard work. You see, that was the last thing on my mind. Growing up and based on what I read, I was more of a fantasy and supernatural kind of guy with the likes of Tolkien, Koontz, King and Asimov filling my book shelf. I was also always interested in Arthur and the knights of the round table. Only after I decided to seriously put pen to paper was I drawn to the previously unmentioned world of romance. At the time the idea of my first book prodded me in the rib...

It's 2 AM and I'm awakened by the niggling sounds of my son. He seems to get congested with gross snotty stuff which, apparently, is normal for a baby only a few weeks old. Google says so. As per routine, my wife administers saline drops and starts clearing his nasal passage. There's a bit of crying and tons of soothing words, afterwhich he looks up and smiles, and then falls back to sleep. So, it's just past midnight, my wife and I are knackered, and my mind wanders to a blogpost I recently read. Trust me, any attempt at having sex at this moment will end up feeling like a warm glass of water instead of a delectable, steaming Irish coffee. The blog post mentioned refers to being specific about what you are trying to say. If you're writing a travelling blog, you can go bonkers and speak about pretty much any subject under the sun which relates to the place you are visiting. But as an author of fiction, you can't. I won't give a LBL (line-by-line) on ...