Guest Post and Giveaway: Rising Shadows (World in Shadows) by Bridget Blackwood

Published: February 1st, 2014
Cover Artist: The Killion Group

Description:

Rachel Ryan wakes up with no knowledge of where she is or how she got there. Thrown into a world she thought only existed in myths, she finds more questions than answers.

Shape shifters, faeries, and vampires hide in plain sight among humans. There’s a war quietly brewing in the shadows. Rachel stands between mankind and those creatures that live in the darkness.

Enhanced with power she doesn’t understand, she’ll tip the scales, but who is the real enemy?

GUEST POST

Why Happily Ever After? 

When I was around eleven years old, my aunt told me I’d like the movie Steel Magnolias. Yes, it’s a good movie with strong women and families coming together in the wake of tragedy, but I was devastated and horrified that someone would willingly put themselves through this heartbreak. That experience shaped me to seek happily ever after endings. I could handle tragedy and heartbreak if at the end I see things turned around. I invest myself in the characters, I don’t want to imagine myself losing my children or my true love. I adore reading romance novels because I’m almost always guaranteed to get my preferred ending. As you might have guessed, I don’t read much Nicholas Sparks and no I won’t be reading The Fault is in Our Stars no matter how good people say it is. We’ll call it my loss and leave it at that. 

For a book to have a happily ever after ending, the curtain must fall at a time when all the ‘good’ main characters are safe and free of any unpleasantness. How does that work with sequels? Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone had a happy ending, but readers of the series know that Harry and the gang went on to face considerable pain, both emotional and physical. I bet you’ve read several books where you could pinpoint the spot they could have been happily ever after if they’d just ended in that spot. *cough cough, Divergent, cough* 

My series, World in Shadows, features a cast of characters that are part of the same community. They appear in each other’s books, even after their core story has been told. Rachel and Bastien, the main protagonists in Rising Shadows (World in Shadows #1), overcome trials to achieve a happy ending. As the world I’m crafting gets harsher, the couple is bound to face some trouble peripherally in later books. How do I maintain their happily ever after? If I destroy it, does it make their book less appealing to readers because they know it doesn’t last? Well, you can rest easy. I won’t be negating my happilys after the fact. To me, as long as Rachel and Bastien meet adversity together, I’ve held up my end of the bargain. I keep my couples intact because I’m a hopeless romantic and I believe reading is an escape from the real world where so many couples don’t make it in the long haul. What my muse has brought together, let no future book put asunder. 

I’ve heard the argument about endings needing to be more like the real world, happy endings create unrealistic expectations, blah blah blah. I won’t say it isn’t necessary to some genres or stories, but don’t disregard the happy ending as useless. Happily ever after gives us hope that we can find a lasting happiness in our own lives. Maybe this isn’t the most realistic expectation, but I suppose that’s the difference between pessimists and optimists. Allow books a positive ending and maybe readers will want to see it reflected in their world. If negative feelings in create negative feelings out, then positive in creates positive out, but that’s a whole different debate. 

Why happily ever after? Because it inspires hope and leaves the reader at peace, they can move on to other books satisfied that the characters they shared so much with are going to be okay.

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About the author:

Bridget Blackwood is a hopeless romantic and a fan of happily ever after. She grew up in East Texas where she met and married her high school sweetheart. Together they moved to Southern Illinois, it's been home for over a decade now. Bridget began telling stories at an early age, she writes in self-defense because the characters in her head are loud and bossy. A social butterfly by nature, Bridget loves to talk and laugh. When she isn't writing she enjoys watching horror movies, playing video games, and not cooking.

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