"Somerset: A Time to Love", by Gratiana Lovelace (2017) (Completed)

Ch. 01: Trying to be more fun

"Somerset: A Time to Love": Wattpad Description/Prologue, July 1, 2017 

[Copyrighted by Gratiana Lovelace, 2017;  All rights reserved]

Life can be funny sometimes--strange, not humorous. Well, not strange, but perhaps unexpected. You go along in life thinking that you are perfectly happy--or at least content. And then, something happens or you meet someone--and everything changes. Hopefully, that change is for the better. And though we may not have sought love--or we stopped hoping for it--sometimes love has a way of finding us, when the time to love is right.

And does devoting oneself to a life of religious service to others, proscribe that a man cannot experience all of life's joys that having a wife and having a family can bring? Does god require total sacrifice of Earthly love as a measure of spiritual devotion? Must a man choose between his god and his love? Or is romantic love possible for anyone, if we open our eyes and hearts to it?

Ecclesiastes 3 :1-9 (KJV excerpts) [(2)]
"To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heavens:
A time to be born, and a time to die; ...

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;...

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;" ...

And yes, there is, a time to love.

Author's note, July 01, 2017: I began writing my original contemporary romance "Somerset: A Time to Love" in 2014, working on it off and on over the years. And now, I feel that it is this story's turn to be serialized and shared with you. In part, because I like to rotate between sharing my period historical fiction and my contemporary present day romances. So this story is in the contemporary romance category. I hope that you will enjoy it. Cheers! Gratiana Lovelace ;->

"Somerset: A Time to Love", Ch. 01: Trying to be more fun, July 01, 2017 Gratiana Lovelace

(An original story copyrighted by Gratiana Lovelace; All rights reserved) [(1) story cover, left]

Additional Disclaimer: The Wiki and other reference links that I cite contain general information merely to allude to a place, person, concept/theory/belief, history, or artifact, etc. This story is a work of fiction, and people and their thoughts and actions are figments of my imagination and should not be taken as real or as fact. And though the general backgrounds of the characters and the story's contextual setting involve mentions of the Christian religion-with an Anglican/Episcopal focus-this story is a romance, not a religious tract.

[And from time to time, I will illustrate my story with my dream cast of: Richard Armitage as Prof. Benedict Somerset, Jennifer Ehle as Laura Leicester, Loretta Devine as Connie Velasquez, and others as noted.]

"Somerset: A Time to Love", Ch. 1: Trying to be more fun

Benedict Somerset smiles ruefully while surveying his drab clothing options in his closet as he assesses what he should wear for his first Saturday morning--March 29th present day-- volunteer stint at the local Chicago Children's Group Home affiliated with the Chicago Seminary College (CSC) where he teaches theology and such to ministers in training for their graduate education at the Masters of Theology level.

It is really Benedict's five year old nephew Caleb's fault for Benedict's focus on trying to be more fun. At their Somerset family Christmas gathering in London last year--the first family Christmas that Benedict had attended in two years, since he has lived in the U.S. the past 24 years, since he began attending college and he stayed to live and work in the U.S. after graduation-his nephew Caleb mentioned none too casually nor delicately to him last Christmas, as forthright five year olds are generally wont to do, that his forty two year old Uncle Benedict needed to work on being more fun. This comment made Benedict laugh. But it also made him think.