Takeover Tuesday with Karin Beery

Happy Tuesday!

Thank you so much for stopping by today, reader friends! Karin Beery is taking over and talking about Modern-day Marriage of Conveniences. I’m so excited! MOC tropes are one of my favorites. Grab a cup of tea or coffee and chat with her!

Two Must-Haves for a Modern-Day Marriage of Convenience Romance

I love marriage of convenience romance novels—a widow in the Old West who needs the protection and security of a

husband; a widower in colonial times who need a wife to help raise his six children; a misunderstanding of circumstances that forces two people to the altar.

I’ll read ’em all.

My love of marriage of convenience (MOC) stories is what inspired the plot of Practically Married. I wanted to write an MOC story, but I didn’t want to do the research needed to make a historical novel realistic (seeing as most MOC stories are historical romance). That left me with a big question:

What would it take for two people in contemporary America to decide to get married for convenience instead of love?

Not an easy question to answer! Especially because I didn’t want to rely on some of the already-done MOC conflicts, like needing a spouse to claim an inheritance or children who need another parent. In order to make it work I figured I’d need two key elements:

Something forcing them together.
Something keeping them together.

In today’s society, most of the historical MOC motivators don’t work—there are plenty of private and publicly funded agencies that can help with food, clothes, and even child care if someone’s spouse dies. Not to mention the wonder of social media and Go Fund Me, where it’s possible to raise thousands of dollars in a matter of days.

To make it believable, I talked to an attorney and asked him if it would be possible for someone to accidentally will away his property. I figured a legal dispute over property could force two people together, especially if they couldn’t afford to buy anything else. He told me about … well, you’ll have to read the story to find out.

That left me with #2. What could possibly keep two people together? In historical romances, divorce often wasn’t an option, so any type of marriage—forced or otherwise—was a lifetime commitment. But what about 21^st century America?

I didn’t have to look farther than the mirror for that answer. With more than a decade of marriage behind me, I know first hand that the only reason I’m still married is because I refused to walk away from the commitment I’d made. My Christian faith fuels my dedication to my marriage. Practically Married isn’t Christian fiction, so you won’t read about that in the book, but the inspiration is there. The result (in my opinion) is a believable, albeit unconventional, force that keeps Ashley and Russ together.

What do you enjoy about marriage of convenience novels? What’s your favorite one?

About the Author

Karin Beery grew up in a rural Michigan town, where she wrote her first novel in high school. Today, she writes contemporary stories with a healthy dose of romance. When she’s not writing fiction, she’s reading, editing, or teaching it. In her free time, she enjoys watching University of Michigan football and action-adventure movies with her husband and fur babies.

About the Book

Ashley moves to a new town to marry her fiancé. Instead, she buries him.

Ashley Johnson moves to northern Michigan to finally meet her fiancé face-to-face, but she arrives in time to go to his funeral. With no home back in Ohio, she decides to stay in what would have been their house, except his cousin Russ lives there too, and Russ has never heard of Ashley. To complicate matters, her fiancé accidentally willed her the family farmhouse. Eager to please everyone and desperate to disappoint no one, she proposes a marriage of convenience that could solve her and Russ’s problems, if they can get past her aunt, his sisters, and an ex-girlfriend.

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