Match-maker, Match-maker, Make Me a Match

...find me a find, catch me a catch! Remember that song from Fiddler on the Roof? I thought of it the other night because Hubby and I rented the movie Emma, which is based on the novel by Jane Austen and charts the misadventures of a well-intentioned, albeit misguided, rich young woman's match-making attempts that go horribly wrong at almost every turn. Though not a huge fan, I like an Austen story now and again, and, quite honestly, we were running out of decent movies to rent. Some of them are real stinkers, if you know what I mean, and we're down to the dollar racks. We watched it, or rather, I watched it while he dozed through it, and it got me to thinking about match-making. About my match-making attempts actually, and, well, yours.

Oh, what, you don't think YOU are a match-maker?

Ha HA, dear comrades in writing, guess again. We're all match-makers, if you think about it, and in more ways than one, too. We're in the business of making matches in literary heaven, and sometimes hell (at least in my latest release lol). What are your match-making stories? Come on! I know you have a few. There's a story behind every couple, or non-couple if the match doesn't work. I once heard that the original pairings planned on Friends did not include Chandler and Monica, but Monica and Joey. Apparently, Troy and Gabriella weren't supposed to end up together in High School Musical either, but with other characters.

Writers are truly a vital link the love/lust connection, especially in erotic romance and romance, where our job is to find our hero/heroine a perfect mate. I think that it's much harder than it sounds sometimes. For example, I confess that one of my greatest regrets is that I probably will never be able to create a match for Vektor Schloss, one of my favorite bad girls who makes her appearance in Disappear. Who would I match her up with? I mean, she's a cannibal, and that could make for some really awkward dinner dates (Wait, you can't eat the wai--oh, no! Now who's gonna serve my dinner?).

However, on the bright side, I helped Lilly and Beau from A Stranger's Desire get it together even though they met under most unusual circumstances--their first, um, date happened in a closet in a funeral parlor. Also, I made sure Professor Rumani Gladstone got enough quality time with hunky cowboy Randy Stide to overcome her fear of relationships (with a little passionate tango and rumba thrown in for good measure), and in my Dragon Song series, each heroine--Sahwen, Merigone, and Emerson--finds the man of her dreams...he just happens to be a dragon shifter with a secret. In my newest release, which will be out in January, a logical police detective finds her true mate in the guise of a demon she thinks is a hallucination from a head injury. They have some obstacles to overcome before the HEA takes place, but, hey, who said it would be easy?

In real life, I'm no Emma. I would never even attempt to try to match people up, but I've had a few well-meaning Emma types, including my own mother, try to help me find true love. None of their attempts worked, to say the least. As a matter of fact, a few ended in disaster (details in my tell-all memoir). I had a friend who once considered hiring a professional match-maker because her own attempts had failed for years. However, just before she put the call in to the woman, she met the man who is now her husband, and they are blissfully happy. So, are we ruining our characters' chances at happiness by introducing them? I say no. After all, who will if we don't?

So, what about it? Anyone have any interesting match-making stories to share, either from their books or real life? Please do tell!

And happy match-making!