It Was Love When...: Tales from the Beginning of Love [Paperback]

Robert Elder (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 1, 2011

He told me I was a penguin: "tiny, adorable, and loved by everyone."

TALES FROM THE BEGINNING OF LOVE

It may be after three days together, or after three months-it's that moment when it all falls together. From heartfelt declarations to all-knowing smiles, It Was Love When .. captures that moment when love is just beginning.

• I thought to myself, "I love him more than Spider-Man loves Mary Jane."
• I was looking through his iTunes when I realized that our playlists were nearly identical.
• Suddenly he turned off the lights and told me to look up at the ceiling. Glow-in-the-dark stars covered the entire ceiling, spelling out "I love you."

Both addictive and heartwarming, It Was Love When... is a freeze frame of that moment when you realize that you're truly,completely in love.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert K. Elder is the creator of ItWasOverWhen.com and ItWasLoveWhen.com. A journalist and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon.com, Elder was a staff writer at the Chicago Tribune from 2000-2009.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

introduction

It's that spark.

It Was Love When is an impossible kind of documentary work, in that I've set out to bottle lightning, to capture stories of the exact moment we realize we're in love.

I say realize because very often love sneaks up on us. We often don't realize we're "in love" until the right mix of chemistry, comfort, and passion finds us. Eventually, we call it love. Some of us can't help it. Others fight it. Very few of these stories are the fabled "love at first sight." Most often, I found while collecting stories for this book, love is a groundswell—an overwhelming of the heart, mind, body, and spirit.

Before I get too schmaltzy here, I want to point out that this project for me is essentially a work of journalism—a bit of story gathering and anthropology. Although love drives us, shapes our lives, and provides the foundation for 99 percent of all pop songs, we still understand relatively little about its nature.

What I love (to overuse the word) about working on this project is talking to couples. They share the same love even though they found themselves in love at different times, in different ways.

And, I have to say, I'm comforted by those stories in which relationships end, but the writers still recognize their experiences as love, as something that comforted and shaped them. Love that doesn't last is still love. Too often, I think, people discount romances that end as something less than love—which is a disservice to themselves and the people in their lives. The experience of falling in love helps make us who we are.

It Was Love When was inspired by my lovely wife, in part because of her reaction to the sister book in this series, It Was Over When: Tales of Romantic Dead Ends.

She hates it.

She thinks those stories are shallow, petty, and arbitrary. I disagree—nothing could be more human (and humorous and tragic) than the stutter-steps before we find love. There's nothing arbitrary about chemistry and finding the right match.

So, this book is for her—a closet romantic who claims not to be one.

If you read closely, you can even find our story in here.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca; Original edition (December 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140225671X
• ISBN-13: 978-1402256714
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,122,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert K. Elder is an editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, author and founder of Odd Hours Media, LLC.

Pulitzer-winner Studs Terkel calls Elder "a journalist in the noblest tradition" in his introduction to Elder's book, Last Words of the Executed. Dead Man Walking author Sister Helen Prejean called it, "a dangerous book." Last Words of the Executed received rave reviews in The Economist, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Review of Books, among many other outlets. The New Yorker called it, "...A harrowing portrait of our justice system."

Praise for his 2013 book, "The Best Film You've Never Seen" came from critic Roger Ebert, who said, "How necessary this book is! And how well judged and written! Some of the best films ever made, as Elder proves, are lamentably all but unknown."

Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips called Elder's 2011 book "The Film That Changed My Life": "A great and provocative read...it's addictive." Film critic Leonard Maltin also said, "You'll have a hard time putting this book down."

Elder's work has appeared in The New York Times, MSNBC.com, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Salon.com, The Oregonian and many other publications. For more than a decade, he served as a staff writer at the Chicago Tribune and from 2010 to 2012, he worked as a regional editor for the AOL Huffington Post Media Group's hyperlocal news initiative, Patch.com. In 2012, Elder served as the founding managing editor of DNAinfo Chicago before joining the Chicago Sun-Times in 2013.

Elder is also the founder of Odd Hours Media LLC, which specializes in crowdsourcing, social media and TV production. In late 2012, Elder and his agents at William Morris Endeavor signed a development deal with Towers Productions in Chicago to produce television based on an original idea from his body of work. The company also launched the user-generated sites ItWasOverWhen.com: Tales of Romantic Dead Ends and ItWasLoveWhen.com: Tales from the Beginning of Love. Both sites went viral very quickly, attracting more than 1 million hits within a few months. In late 2009, Sourcebooks signed the sites to a two-book deal.

Elder is also the editor of "John Woo: Interviews," the first authoritative chronicle of the filmmaker's life, legacy and career. He has also contributed to books on poker, comic books and film design. A former member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Elder has taught film classes at Facets Film School.

He teaches journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School and Columbia College.

A Montana native and graduate of the University of Oregon, Elder lives and writes in Chicagoland.

He has been known to carry a digital voice recorder.

His official website is: http://robelder.com