Happiness is  what we seek in life. Other things – love, laughter, accomplishments, security – are about making us happy; love, most of all. So it follows that at the core of a romance book is the characters’ search for happiness.

In Burning Embers, Rafe and Coral fall in love, and of course their feelings of love are a source of happiness. But to secure a lifetime of happiness – a happy-ever-after – they have to first realise that being together is their definition of happiness, and then choose to have that happiness in their lives.

It sounds so simple: you want to be happy, and so you work out what makes you happy and then choose to be happy. But fear can get in the way. What if you inaccurately define happiness? What if your instincts are wrong? What if you open your heart and get hurt? And what if you choose a path that turns out differently to how you imagine?

By avoiding self-honesty about what makes you happy, and avoiding decisions that allow you that happiness, you play it safe. You keep control. As Robert Anthony put it: ‘Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.’  But actually, you may hurt yourself more by shying away from making a choice than you would by taking the plunge. So all the while that Coral holds back from Rafe, because she is frightened to trust him, and Rafe holds back from Coral, because he hates himself and so has no room to love another, each is miserable. Only by defining their love as what will make them happy, and choosing to allow that happiness, will they ever have the lives they want and deserve.

What Rafe, in particular, has failed to see is that he alone has the power to create his own happiness. As author Wayne Dyer pointed out, ‘Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.’ Rafe is punishing himself; blaming the past for his current inability to be happy. He needs to reach a point where he finds the conviction and the peace inside to choose a happy ending to his story. In the words of Holbrook Jackson: ‘Happiness is a form of courage.’