Girls That Roam Talks Real Love And Romance With Romance Novelist K’Anne Meinel
by Heather Cassell
Love doesn’t have a formula and neither do relationships, says best-selling lesbian romance novelist K’Anne Meinel.
Unfortunately, relationships and love aren’t a romantic comedy or a dramatic love story that are neatly wrapped up in a happily ever after ending in your favorite lesbian love movie flickering before you in real life, but may be a little closer to “Fried Green Tomatoes
Love and maintaining a relationship, no matter how long it lasts, is messy.
“I don’t want to set a formula. That’s one of the reasons why I do break the rules,” says K’Anne, about the characters and the plots in the 73 novels, novellas and short stories she’s written within the past dozen years.
K’Anne’s current bestselling novella, “Sapphic Surfer
Constantly behind the keyboard dreaming up characters and stories, K’Anne currently has at last count 165 books in various stages of completion on her laptop, she says.
And that’s when she isn’t juggling more than 20 authors as a busy publisher of Shadoe Publishing.
Her books mimic real life. Life is filled with the laugh out loud moments, fun and adventure, drama – real drama and heartbreak – love and even happily ever afters.
“The honeymoon stage can last for years and years and then you are hit with reality somebody gets sick, there’s a financial crisis whatever that’s reality,” says K’Anne, 49. Or in lesbian’s cases they hit the “4-year itch,” which she defines as queer women’s version of the straight couples’ 7-year itch, where queer women decide if they are in it for the long haul or packing up the U-Haul.
More often than not the U-Haul is getting packed up and there might be another girl involved.
“Unfortunately, our society is such that a lot of people give up on it. We have disposable relationships,” says K’Anne. “Then they don’t understand why they are alone.”
At this point, you might be wondering, “Really? You write best selling romances that have been translated into several different languages?”
K’Anne doesn’t sound like she’s very romantic, but she is. She’s romantic with a huge dose of reality. Perhaps because the Midwesterner from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, lived reality during her nearly five decades of life that have been filled with following the Hollywood-style straight ideal of being a wife with the perfect husband and kids and having a house with a white picket fence. That is until she realized she loved women, walked away from the marriage and the house; raised her two sons, who are now 28 and 26, with her mother’s help; and survived cancer after being given up to five months to live. That was 15 years and more ago.
“I’m a survivor of cancer, broken bones, abuse, and still I’m here to tell the tale,” she says. “A little bit of me and my life goes into almost every book. Life experiences, no matter how small, are important to make the stories sound real.”
Her novels often feature “strong, capable, gentle, and kind” characters that are relatable to her readers. Her heroines are “survivors” in their rarest forms – sometimes tough, battered and torn, but they always in some way win. Ultimately, it is the weathered characters’ spirits that readers’ fall in love with in her stories.
“I personally I like happily ever afters. I want that hope out there,” says K’Anne, who is still searching for the love of her life. “It might not be the happily ever after I thought that it was going to be,” but “no relationship is perfect and no relationship happened on a schedule.”
The only way to find a lasting relationship is to be yourself and to fall in love with your best friend.
“I really can’t fathom the idea whoever you are in a relationship with wouldn’t be your best friend,” says K’Anne. “It’s fun to be in love, but if it can stand the test of time and all those tribulations that are eventually going to come, that’s really pretty fantastic.”
Book your next romantic getaway with Girls That Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel in association with Travel Advisors of Los Gatos at 408-354-6531 or 415-517-7239 or at .
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