Forever for Christmas - (A "Love Lights" Short Story)

My name is Ana B. Ronning and I live in North Texas with my husband of twenty four years, Garrett, and our beautiful teenage daughter. I’m a stay at home mom at present, will be an empty nester in a couple of years and I plan to remain at home until retirement catches me.

I grew up in a small southern Texas town where people didn’t lock their doors at night in fear. My sister and I could be found either on our bikes, in a tree or just running barefoot through our huge back yard. We were rarely indoors and our mother would stand on the back porch and call to us when it was dinner time. We could hear her from blocks away when she’d call us, and come roaring into the yard on our bikes, usually racing to see who could get there first.

Most of my life, I really never liked to read. I was the athletic type and loved to play all kinds of sports. Reading was just plain boring to me most of my life. So, you can imagine my surprise when I found something that sparked a fire in me that I never knew existed.

I suppose I was stuck in a rut, not knowing what direction my life needed to go. I didn’t feel I was contributing enough. My daughter was growing up and didn’t need me anymore, for one. I wanted to feel that I was equally contributing to my family and to society. And, I most certainly wanted to make my amazing husband as proud of my accomplishments as I have been of his. Garrett has always been there for me, supported anything I wanted to do and he’s always had my back, no matter what.

I was searching for something to make me feel more adequate. I felt there was something missing…something important I was supposed to be doing.

As luck would have it, Garrett dragged me to a half price bookstore one day looking for something in particular for him. I was browsing through the Romance Novels as I waited for him, not intending on buying one. I noticed one that book that stood out among the others. It looked quite appealing, so I took it home and started reading it. By the end of the next day, I was finished with it. I loved it so much I asked Garrett to take me back to get the other two books I learned were in the series. They were read in three days.

This was sometime in Autumn of 2011, when I found my love for Romance Novels. I read just about everything this particular author wrote then found other authors I really liked. Garrett encouraged me to write a book of my own, so I wrote my first 19th Century Romance Novel in January of 2012 and finished it in April of 2012. I had never enjoyed something so much in my life, well, almost nothing else. I found what I wanted to do, my passion, and it only took me forty-three years to find it.

I finished the novel and went on to read more Romance novels, but more modern than 19th century. I fell in love with modern romance even more and started working on the “Love Lights” series. This was my true passion for writing romance. I enjoyed writing these three books and I do hope that you enjoy reading them. I will eventually publish my first, 19th century novel, in addition to a sequel to it, in the future, but for now, I have more writings that I am currently working on.

I truly loved writing this series and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Ana B. Ronning