Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Guest Post By Nicole Collet

Welcome to the blog debut author Nicole Collet!


RED: A Love Story

RED: A Love Story is about the forbidden love between a teacher and his student, and how they fall in love only to be torn apart and embark on a journey of self-discovery. When the two meet again, they need to deal with a far more complex situation than the obstacles they had faced in the beginning of their relationship.

Human nature fascinates me, especially the challenges posed in romantic relationships. What makes two people fall in love? What makes them stay in love or fall out of love?

Biologically, love follows a cycle. It starts with passion and a chain of chemical reactions that goes as far as evaluating our partner’s immune system through the sense of smell in order to decide if he or she is a good match for reproduction.

Everything happens in a flash, without us even realizing what’s going on in our busy primitive brain. When an offspring is born, our body produces special hormones to ensure that we stay with our partner to raise the child. Once a partner is no longer needed for that, the biological tendency of love is to end.

That’s it, then?

We’re talking about our body. What happens to our mind?

During the infatuation period, it obsesses with the object of our desire. We lose our appetite, we can’t concentrate, we barely sleep. There’s a good reason why passion doesn’t last too long: we couldn’t physically survive it. What ensues is a period of tranquil bliss, and with it comes routine.

The problem is our mind is geared to seek novelty. We need constant stimulation. Once the blissful blindness of passion is over, we may gradually get bored with our partner, and that’s the death sentence to love. Avoiding it requires effort and constant care.

Now let’s move up one more level: what happens to the spirit?

There resides the great enigma of love. It is the encounter of two souls teaching each other lessons that need to be learned by each individual. In a spiritual level, souls seek one another for mutual growth. If there are no longer lessons to be learned from a given partner, our soul will look for another one. The same happens, by the way, with every person that comes into our life.

That’s love in a nutshell. But there is so much more to it. According to French philosopher AndrĂ© Comte-Sponville, love is the greatest virtue of all because it is the deepest. Love is a mystery, and I like to explore it in my writing. That’s why I write romance.

RED: A Love Story is an unusual romance novel with references to philosophy, psychology, literature and music. It became a personal scrapbook with the little treasures that made a difference in my life, and I want to share them with readers.

I’ll end this post with a quote from RED: “Serendipity bears a grain of magic cleverness. Sometimes it comes disguised as a dwarf carrying a pebble, whereas in fact it is a giant silently moving a mountain to change the landscape.”

Go with the flow and let serendipity surprise you in love and life.  :)


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About the author: Nicole Collet is a Brazilian-born writer and translator with degrees in journalism and cultural management.  She has edited and translated works from authors as diverse as Ken Follet, Nora Roberts and Machiavelli.  Nicole’s writing explores why people fall in love and what it takes for them to stay in love.  Her plots invite readers to think outside the box, merging story with psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, music, and literature.



Links:
- Homepage with book trailer, quotes and sample chapters from REDhttp://nicolecollet.com


2 comments:

  1. Thank you so much, O.D., for having me on your blog and creating such a beautiful page for my humble words... :)

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