Welcome to the 2012 Torquere Press Charity Sip Blog Hop, to benefit the NOH8 Campaign.  Be sure to visit the other participating authors in the hope this weekend, Friday November 9th through Sunday November 11th.  Torquere will be giving away a grand prize of a $50.00 Gift Certificate to the Torquere Books!

You can click on the Charity Sip image to return to the Torquere Press Blog and the other hop participants.  Remember to give some love to the authors in the comments.  We love to know you’re out there!  We are grateful to your support and readership.  Together, we do make a difference.

Our theme this year is “Leather and Love – How Romance Helps Stamp Out Hate.”  When I started to write this post, the election hadn’t happened yet and the world seems different to me a few days later.  We received some sobering news about a death in the family and it’s rocked all of us.  I decided to share my thoughts, rather than write the upbeat post I originally planned, because I think it behooves us every-so-often to stop and remember what we are all one.  Hatred solves nothing.

Romance warms our hearts and sends our pulses racing.  It can cross borders and cultures, as in the classic romance between Romeo and Juliet.  Going back into antiquity, we have Helen of Troy, whose face launched a thousand ships and changed the face of the ancient world.  Can we really doubt the fundamental nature of romance when such things are its fruit?

I don’t have the words in me to express myself adequately in the wake of this week’s events.  I think I’ll leave it up to the great Bard himself, whose own words surpass my keyboard even on a good day.  What I do hope to leave you with, though, is the sure knowledge that love is the deepest power on earth and it can truly change the world.

Sonnet 81
by William Shakespeare

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read;
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
  You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
  Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

Welcome, my friends, and may you take joy with you today.

Check out “Taking a Chance“, part of the Charity Sips 2012 to benefit NOH8, available from Torquere Books.
Check out EMERALD FIRE, available from Torquere Books.
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