My Favorite Romance: Kaylee Baldwin

Kaylee is one of the many people I know only online but wish I was best friends with in person. She's the author of Meg's Melody and knows her romance! She's also a ton of fun, as you'll see by her post.

 

It's hard to decide favorite romantic books and scenes! Sometimes I love the funny scene, sometimes the kiss scenes, and mostly the tender scenes (I cried during a Lifetime commercial a few months back-they were doing a series of movies on breast cancer all directed by various Hollywood stars. I ended up not watching any of them, but in the commercial, I believe the girl just had a double mastectemy and was feeling bad about her body, and the husband starts unzipping her hoodie, and it's all tender and sweet and possibly inappropriate for this audience, idk, but I'm getting teary-eyed just writing about it. I love stories when husbands/bf are tender and caring and committed) Anyway, I didn't write about those kinds of scenes for your blog, so I don't even know why I'm going on about it now. Maybe because I'm delirious with shock that no one's pulled on my arm (or screamed like they are dying, but really someone just stole the car they were playing with) in about an hour. Speaking of... checking on the kids.... and they are watching a movie.

 

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My favorite romantic scenes in books and movies is usually that moment when the characters really “connect” for the first time—like they’re both thinking: wow, there might be something here. It may not even be that romantic moment, but I love the zing of realization. I’m talking beyond attraction. Like connection at deeper level.

Ranee wanted to know about my favorite book, but I’m going with my favorite movie as an example (because it perfectly illustrates what I’m talking about and I’ll bet most of you have seen it!)

 While You Were Sleeping. I’ve watched this movie every winter since my husband gave it to me when we first got married. My favorite part is always the scene where Lucy (Sandra Bullock) and Jack are walking home after delivering the ugly couch to Peter’s apartment. While they were in the apartment, people parked too close to the back bumper of Jack’s truck and it could be stuck there all night. He decides to walk Lucy home, and on the way they really talk for the first time about more than just Peter. I could watch this scene over and over because I just love the way that they connect here. They talk about their dreams—something that both of them seem to have a hard figuring out how to accomplish. We realize that they’ve both been locked into lives that they hadn’t anticipated or even wanted and that these two would be really good together. They have chemistry. They have the spark.

When I write, I love those little moments of connect—that no matter what else is going on in the world, those two can have a moment that may shake what they previously believed of a person or show that there’s something more there we’re dying to have explored.

In Meg’s Melody, my favorite scene to write was what I call “The Dishwasher Scene.”  In this scene, Matt wants to pay Meg back for watching his daughter after the babysitter bails, so he decides to try and fix her dishwasher—something Meg  doesn’t believe he has the skill to accomplish. While he’s working, she notices how attractive he is (she’s noticed this before, but he was all “doctorly” during those times, this time it’s just plain Matt.) They begin talking while Matt finishes up what he’s doing, and Meg really opens up to Matt for the first time. She’s untrusting and closed off because of how things went down with her ex, and Matt is bringing out this open side to her that needs to come out for her to heal. Then they share an almost-kiss moment that really shakes them both up, seeing as how it would be completely inappropriate for them to be anything more than friends—and they’re both still hurting from losing their spouses. This scene changes everything.

While writing it, it just seemed to flow. It was the first time I really thought I might actually have a story to tell. I guess when Meg and Matt connected, I connected with them as well and became invested in where this story was going.

So for me, I love romantic scenes where we see the moment when the characters connect on a deeper level, and whether it’s convenient or not—or whether they want it or not—there is something there between them.