WHY A LOVE STORY IS NOT JUST A HAPPY ENDING

My niece asked me recently: Why is there always a love story in your books?

And it’s true: there almost always is.

So why do it?

For a gratuitous sex scene?

Because people like romance?

So the main character can have a love interest, like a medal given out at the end for beating the bad guys or overcoming the odds?

Those of you who have read my books know that that’s not quite my style.

I believe love stories can change lives. I even know a love story like that.

It happened to my best mate. Rather than embarrass him and use his real name, let’s call him Errol.

Now on the surface of he is one of the least romantic blokes I know.

He smokes, he drinks, and has turned the bad habit into an art form.

Yet the story of his life is one of the greatest love stories I know.

In his younger days Errol was a bit of a bad boy. He was forever getting into fist fights and he had a harem that made Suleiman the Great look like a chronic underachiever.

A long term relationship was a second date.

Eventually Errol got married but it didn’t last. No one ever thought it would.

Errol also had a knack for driving people away. He had an edge, especially after a drink or two.

In fact we didn’t see each other for 15 years. The next time I saw him was when he appeared out of the blue at my wife’s funeral, the very day I needed him most.

I recognised him straight away, of course. Yet somehow he was also radically different.

Everything I used to love about him remained - but without the hard edges. The womaniser and the bruiser was gone. Here was a man at peace with himself and the world.

I was astonished to discover that he’d been happily married for years. Of course, some people would say he met a good woman and she reformed him, but it didn’t quite happen like that.

photo: 武铁辆玻

His wife had been married three times before so she’d had her ups and downs too. And as Errol told it later, after a year or two they had hit the skids big time.

They almost split, just as everyone expected them to. But just at the moment when everything was about to fall apart, they both gave ground.
Rather than battle each other, they turned to face their own demons.

Errol still smokes and drinks. And bad habits! Don’t start me.

But he has become this cuddly teddy bear of a man who tells anyone who will listen how he is the luckiest man in the world. It’s like Charlie Sheen turning into Tom Hanks.

They are the happiest and most devoted couple I know.

(He’s now a marriage counsellor. The best there is, because he actually walks the walk.)

Love doesn’t change us by some miracle; it rather gives us the motivation to change, to overcome our fatal flaw. And we all have one.

Of course it doesn’t always come out that way. Human history is littered with unhappy endings and many times our demons prove too strong.

But that’s why we write stories about when love works; because it requires uncommon heroism to overcome those fears that hold us back.

So when love wins out it means more than just the triumphant twang of the bed springs.

At its best, it can change us in profound ways and forever.

And great stories are about just that - people changing, through great courage.

And THAT is why there’s always a love story in my novels.

This is one such love story.

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