What I Like About You: Discovering The Wild Rose Press

I have been writing for a long time and though I have had some small success with local newspapers and e-zines and such, I still wanted to have a novel published. There are a lot of choices out there for authors today, from the traditional publishing houses to LuLu.com.

I am an e-book reader and my chosen method of reading is with the e-bookwise reader (which I highly recommend) and I first became aware of The Wild Rose Press through their website. I read a few of their short stories and a couple of their full length books and I liked them well enough to visit The Wild Rose Press site itself.

It's a beautiful site, and if you haven't visited it, you should. Beauty is not much without function. You will find the site easy to navigate and full of many things besides books. There is a forum, a chat room, reviews, links to author sites and articles for writers.

Not that the books wouldn't be enough. I'm very impressed by the variety and quality of choices they offer. Are you a fan of sweet romance? Try the Sweetheart Rose line. Looking for something to give you a spiritual lift? Go directly to the White Rose line. Maybe vampires, ghosts and werewolves are your thing. Then try the Black Rose paranormal line or the Faery Rose fantasy line. And for all you bad girls out there, try the hot and steamy Scarlet Rose line.

If none of these are for you, don't despair. You can find historical romance, western romance, romantic suspense and more at The Wild Rose Press.

But there is one thing you won't find there: Non-romance titles! This was an important point with me. I read in many different genres, but I think that too many small publishers try too hard to cover the limits of genre fiction from children's books to westerns to horror. This is very difficult for a small company to do well. The Wild Rose Press does romance and they do it well!

Don't let anyone tell you that romance books are not worthwhile. Okay, many of them are not great literature, but neither are most sci-fi books or mysteries or whatever. Very few books of any genre are going to be around in 100 years. That doesn't mean they don't have value.

I think the value in romance novels (besides being fun and a great temporary escape from reality) is that they deal with those things that are important to their readers. They reinforce our values and encourage us to pursue our dreams. Maybe not stellar dreams like world peace, but those dreams that I think are pretty universal such as a satisfying, committed relationship, home, family and meaningful work to name a few.

Let's face it, in this world encouragement of any kind is very valuable. When you find a place like the Wild Rose Press that can supply it, you should be happy. I'm happy.

So, I pulled up the file for my romance novel Until Summer's End and gave it another polishing and sent it off. Guess what? It was accepted. Now I'm not only a Wild Rose Press reader, I'm on my way to being a Wild Rose Press author, too.

Good thing I kept reading those romances. They're right. Dreams can come true.