My romance novel Finding Him Again centers on RaeAnne, a woman who returns to her small hometown, a rural farming community. While there, she ends up finding the greatest love of her life, someone who had been there all along while she was growing up but she hadn't noticed as much as she probably should have.
E.R. Fallon
RaeAnne and her hero, King, share a history that includes a traumatic experience they endured as children. Their bond was unbreakable but she'd never viewed him in a romantic way until she returned home.
My favorite romance novels to write, and read, are ones that are set in small towns and that feature beautiful, natural settings, and main and supporting characters who are people readers can relate to but who are still anything but ordinary. I spent most of my life in one of the biggest cities in the world but now I live in a small town.
I can tell you firsthand that large cities aren't the only places that can be exciting. RaeAnne grew up in a small rural town and then moved to the big city for her career, unlike me, who did the opposite. Small town life can be just as complex as life in the big city, and sometimes more fun-and scandalous.
Small towns might be tiny in size but what they lack in geographical area they make up for in opportunities a writer can explore. Setting a romance in a small town opens a myriad of concepts for a writer to utilize. A small town is often a place where everyone knows everything about everyone else, or thinks they do, and this makes for a lot of interesting scenarios and conflicts. Finding Him Again includes suspenseful, poignant, and sexy concepts. And humorous concepts, too, such as a scene where the father of the heroine, who is staying at her parents' house while visiting her hometown, catches her in bed with the hero.
A popular scenario is one where the main character returns to their hometown to discover second chances and also the scenario of friends to lovers. Both of these scenarios are featured in Finding Him Again, and like RaeAnne and King's story, the second chances scenarios are often romantic ones and are not without obstacles.
RaeAnne is a unique character in that she is also a single mother who is trying to balance her personal life with her family one. As she states in the book, she needs to find happiness for herself but she also needs to make sure her daughter is happy, too. Her life is more complex now than it was when she left her hometown.
In the case of my heroine RaeAnne and her hero King, their romance becomes a cause most of their community roots for, and takes place under the watchful eyes of the community. King isn't only handsome, he's kind and treats RaeAnne wonderfully, and most people around them can see that. But there are many difficulties along the way to their bliss, namely some in the town who don't want their romance to succeed and who also don't wish for their happiness in general.
Throughout the novel RaeAnne questions if it's too late for her to find true happiness. King proves it isn't too late. Because sometimes the love you've been searching for has been right in front of you your whole life. You just need to open your eyes a little more to find it.
