Love need not be forbidden! (Ted Saves the World Blog Tour)

Today's guest post is from Bryan Cohen, blogging about why romance doesn't have to be forbidden. Also see the details about his new book, and his Amazon giftcard giveaway. I know that several of my readers will appreciate the references to Friday Night Lights!

It seems like every story about the paranormal or otherwise is spinning a yarn about forbidden love. From Romeo and Juliet to Twilight there are endless tales of two people dating that shouldn't be together because it seems like the whole world is against them. It's almost like these stories are telling us that the hardest part of a relationship is getting together, when it couldn't be further from the truth.

In the television show "Friday Night Lights," the few who were fortunate enough to watch the five seasons of small-town Texas glory saw one of the most realistic relationships ever portrayed in fiction in the marriage of Coach Eric Taylor and Tami Taylor. While many who viewed commercials of the show thought it was "that football show," it was really the Eric & Tami Taylor show and it was absolutely brilliant. The members of a couple can fight and still love each other. They can compromise and they can raise a family through tough times and still survive.

There was no need to throw in any wild affairs in the plot, because you never would have believed they'd cheat on each other regardless. The one time that a drunken co-worker kisses Tami, the two of them laugh the encounter off and turn it into a joke. This is truly a couple that is the opposite of forbidden love.

I don't want to spoil too much about my book, Ted Saves the World, but I have also dispensed with the concept of forbidden love. The characters that have a thing for each other, don't really have anything standing in the way of their romance. As the series progresses, however, we don't have a forbidden love situation (since that's boring) but we have a moral conundrum: what if the girl you've always loved was taken over by an outside force? Would it be wrong to kiss her and be with her if she isn't the person you fell in love with?

It's supernatural and philosophical, but it isn't forbidden. I'll leave that kind of love story for the other authors.

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Giveaway:

Bryan Cohen is giving away four $25 Amazon gift cards, one for each week of his month long blog tour. To enter, simply comment with your e-mail address (feel free to substitute @ with (at) or other tricks to stop spammers from getting it). Bryan will draw the four names at the end of the tour, picking one entrant at random from each week’s set of blog posts. Entries will be counted through Monday, August 15th, 2011. Enter on as many sites as you want, follow the tour at Build Creative Writing Ideas. If Ted reaches the Top 100 on Amazon at any point during the tour, a fifth $25 card will be added to the giveaway.

Description of Ted Saves the World (Available for just $0.99):

A possessed cheerleader. A cursed gang of criminals. Mysterious telekinetic powers. An angry ex-girlfriend in gym class? One second, sophomore in high school Ted endures his first breakup in his favorite place in town. The next, a mysterious blue light turns him into a worldwide superhero sensation for taking down a posse of grisly murderers. As his views on YouTube increase and his friend Dhiraj tries to capitalize on the marketing potential, his dangers increase as well when a presumed-dead cheerleader begins taking a personal interest. Can Ted survive his first week as a superhero in the public eye? This novella is the first taste in a series of full-length novels about the adventures of Ted Finley and Erica LaPlante. The book is also available on Barnes & Noble and Smashwords for $0.99.

Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor and comedian from Dresher, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art and a minor in Creative Writing. He has written seven books including 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: Ideas for Blogs, Scripts, Stories and More. Contact Bryan through his Ted Saves the World blog, his Build Creative Writing Ideas site or Twitter.