PW: Fanning the Flames of Love

Stella Cameron | Muriel Jensen | Madeline Baker
Christina Dodd | Eileen Goudge |Sherryl Woods |Mary Balogh
Dorothy Garlock | Brenda Joyce | Suzanne Brockman
Linda Lael Miller

Stella Cameron
D s the Dog Need a New Dentist?
Stella Cameron eavesdrops. Not intentionally, mind you, she just can't help herself. Take the evening Cameron and her husband were having a late dinner at a Seattle restaurant. The couple seated at an adjoining table were engaged in a very spirited argument and without realizing what she was doing, Cameron had gradually turned her chair around until "it was a threesome. My husband was mortified."
Thankfully, inspiration for her romantic suspense novels also comes to Cameron in more conventional ways. She credits a "personal pioneer spirit" with "getting me ready to go where I haven't been before. There are new experiences ahead and I love trying new things. The challenge of another story to be told excites me--it gives me a great feeling of freedom and power." Not surprisingly, Cameron also sees her stories as puzzles--each book being a new puzzle to be unraveled and solved. "I can't imagine wanting to do the same jigsaw over and over--the challenge would be gone and I'd want a new picture each time. Each new story is like that for me, a new three-dimensional picture with sound, action and something big at stake."

Cameron, who has written 54 books in the last 15 years, is also adventurous in her preparations for a new novel. She never writes outlines, preferring instead to write five to eight pages of what she describes as "blurbs." Similar to what you might find on a book jacket, they reflect her "enthusiasm for the concept." While she admits to knowing the why, where, when and how for the beginning of each new book, Cameron is always uncertain where the plot or the characters will eventually take her. "When I begin, I don't know 'who did it,' so it unfolds for me as it will for my readers. Then, perhaps half way through, I'll get a flash--he did it!--then at three-quarters of the way, I'll think maybe she did it."

For Cameron, every new story begins with her characters--characters who first appear to her as "mind pictures. Characters make the story and everything springs from those walking, talking, mental images, including my plots and background." When it comes to character development, Cameron credits "on-paper motivation work" with getting things going. "I want to know why a character d s what he d s. It's a continual 'why' and 'what if' throughout the whole process. People delight and drive me--I'm fascinated by what's possible between human beings."

The current subject of Cameron's fascination is NYPD homicide detective Aiden Flynn, the hero of her upcoming Glass Houses (Kensington, Aug.). Flynn, who first appeared as a secondary character in Key West, made such an impression that when she finished the novel, she knew that her next book would be about Flynn. "I wanted to really get to know Aiden--and I had to find out why his dog has titanium teeth."
--Lucinda Dyer

Comments from the Editor: "Stella works incredibly hard to tell new stories with characters who relate to the world in different ways every time she embarks on a book," says Kensington editorial director Kate Duffy. "She always looks for ways to challenge herself, her characters, and the readers." Duffy is also grateful for the enviable nature of their collaboration. "Stella accepts my comments as discussion points, not criticism. I'm allowed to say things like 'but isn't that somewhat similar to what character XYZ did in Book A?'--something that with other authors has been like tipt ing through a minefield."

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Muriel Jensen
Journalism Spurred Her Writing
Muriel Jensen may have more than 30 Harlequins under her belt, including Superromances, American Romances and Historicals, but she still remembers the day she made her first sale--March 9, 1983. "In Astoria, Ore.," she says, explaining how she came to write a romance in one winter while managing a bookstore, "we have the second largest rainfall in the U.S. I was working at Utzinger's, and I started writing between customers." There were enough gaps due to the downpours that she was able to complete Winter's Bounty,which was published a year later in 1984.
Today, Jensen writes at home and completes five or six books a year. "I do pretty steadily 10 pages a day, six days a week. My husband is an artist, so he understands," she remarks. "I wanted to be a writer all my life, but I didn't know about romance. I had read Hemingway and Michener, and I didn't think I could write like that."

Instead, like many novelists, she turned to journalism to try her writing wings. It didn't work out, primarily because her husband was a newspaper reporter at the time, and it seemed as if there was room for only one journalist in the family. Still, says Jensen, "one good thing about the newspaper training is you're conditioned to say it as well as you can the first time through." Although she d s rework her material and take comments from her editors, she finds that she has relatively few substantive changes to make.

Journalism also gave her a sense of perspective on what makes something news. "Usually," says Jensen, "my books start with something that's caught my attention, a profession or something I've overheard that creates a conflict. The characters are a composite of people I know and pieces of me." As all the elements come together, she's able to get them onto paper quickly: "When I've really tapped into the flow, I feel someone's popped a cassette into my head, and I just take it down."

Jensen looks to popular culture and what's on the minds of friends and family for story ideas. "I go to a lot of movies, I read a lot of romance writers, and I usually meet a friend every day and natter a lot. I'm learning new things all the time." She counts Jane Austen, as well as contemporary writers such as Amanda Quick (aka Jayne Ann Krentz), Nora Roberts and Judith Arnold, among her favorites, and watches movies like Hope Floats, Runaway Bride and Shakespeare in Love over and over again. Occasionally her husband rebels with what she jokingly refers to as "beer and Bronson night."

The author of more than 70 books and novellas, Jensen's most recent Harlequin titles include Four Reasons for Fatherhood (Feb.); Dad and the Drama Queen (Feb.-May), the first eHarlequin.com round robin book, in which the author completes the first and last chapter and readers fill in the rest; and Home to You (Mar.), a p-book that was available exclusively to eHarlequin members.
--Judith Rosen

Comments from the Editor:Jensen's relationship with Harlequin associate editor Angela Catalano more closely resembles that of "two friends working together for the same goal," says Catalano. "She's very prolific and very organized. At this point, we just trust her." Catalano characterizes the system that the two have developed to go over story concepts as "very, very informal. She'll fax me or e-mail me some very brief ideas, and I'll comment on them right away so we don't waste any time."

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Madeline Baker
Discover the Story As It Unfolds
"I don't plot and I don't outline," says Madeline Baker. "I don't have any idea what's going to happen, and I think that's why it stays fresh, because I discover the story as I go along."
A 15-year veteran of romance publishing who also writes under the name Amanda Ashley (a nom de plume inspired by her two granddaughters), Baker has penned some 30 novels for Leisure Books, including half a dozen under the Love Spell imprint, and two for Signet. Like most writers in this genre, Baker has her own Web sites (one for each of her "personalities"): www.whittierca.com/mbaker and www.angelfire.com/ga/apachefire/index.

She admits that this approach to writing can be "frustrating at times," particularly when she backs herself into a corner, plot-wise. "Alicia Condon, my editor at Leisure, isn't crazy about it either," she confesses with a laugh. "Sometimes I'll call and say 'Gee, I have no idea where I'm going with this,' and she tells me, 'Well, if you'd plot your books out you'd have no problem!' "

Still, the system works for her, as d s switching sub-genres. "I've always loved cowboys and Indians," she says, explaining that "as Madeline, my books are all set in the American West, usually between 1865 and 1880"--an era she revisits in her forthcoming Unforgettable--"but I can get burned out on that, and Amanda sneaks in when I run out of ideas for a historical."

Conceived after she wrote a vampire short story for a Topaz Man collection ("it kind of whet my appetite," she quips), her alter-ego has since penned several full-length vampire romances, along with several futuristic fantasies: The Captive for Love Spell and, as Baker, Warrior's Lady and Beneath the Midnight Moon for Signet. "Those were the most fun to write, because I could just do whatever I wanted," she says--though they caused a bit of consternation from readers who saw the Baker name and expected a historical western. "I got letters about that!" she says.

She has also dabbled in time travel, which happened quite by accident once, when she was "desperate for an idea" and her son, Bill, suggested the story of a modern-day Native American who travels back in time to his grandfather's era, an idea that became A Whisper in the Wind.

Baker generally writes two novels a year, often working on both at the same time--"my vampire book on Saturdays and my historical through the week." This back-and-forth process is another way she keeps from getting stale, she observes, adding that she's also careful not to write when she's feeling low on inspiration. "If I'm not in the mood to write, I don't write," she says. "Nobody's paying me to sit there from nine to five, and if I'm not in the mood, I'll go do something else."
--Heather Vogel Frederick

Comments from the Editor:"I think that the publisher's role is to support the author's creativity and not to say, 'You know, the last 20 books that you did sold great, we don't want to see anything but that from you,'" says Alicia Condon, editorial director of Leisure Books. "It's an editor's responsibility to be open to the new ideas that a writer comes up with. For example, Madeline has done time travel, her s who are aliens, her s who are vampires, and when she has explored offbeat things in order to keep her writing fresh, we have supported her." Packaging is also vital, says Condon: "We review the packaging with each new book, because we like to keep on the cutting edge of new trends," she notes.

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She Could Write a Book How-to from an author in the know (Alpha Books). The more you write, the more you learn about writing," remarks Julie Beard, author of six full-length romances from Berkley; the latest, My Fair Lord (June), has a Georgian setting. "I've learned that the most important aspect is the characters you create. If characters are real and vibrant, they seem fresh--even if the plots may seem the same." One of the most important things a writer of romance fiction can do, advises Beard, is: "Read, read, read. If you haven't read a number of romances in the last three to five years, you don't know what a romance is. Romances that are lighthearted are popular, but there's nothing you can't do today. You can have a Civil War vampire romance or a time-travel romance in the year 2020. That's the reason the market keeps expanding. Boundaries keep getting knocked down." Beard found a gratifying venue in which to pass along her advice to romance writers--or to those who want to be. Under the Macmillan USA imprint Alpha Books, she released The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Your Romance Published this spring. "I was qualified to write that," she says wryly. "I began writing 15 or 20 years ago and have been published for seven. So I've had my share of rejections, but now I do a book a year." She adds that to be successful, a writer must provide not only a fresh read, but a fast-paced one as well. "People want to get to the story right away. They want more dialogue than narrative. If you don't get readers involved quickly, they'll put the book down and turn on the TV. The heroine also has to reflect the strength of today's woman. When you're writing a historical romance, you don't want to be anachronistic or too politically correct, but you do need a strong heroine. It's a very tough market because there are so many talented writers. You need to have something new and different. Every editor at every conference I attend says: 'What I want is to find a fresh new voice.' You can't phone in something like that. If you don't love the romance genre, you won't make it. A romance novel succeeds only when it touches the emotions." Others, of course, have written how-to books like Beard's. Writers Digest Books has done well with You Can Write a Romance by Rita Clay Estrada and Rita Gallagher. This August 1999 release has sold very well, according to editorial director Jack Heffron. "Romance is such a popular genre in and of itself," he says. "It's also one that's more open to first-time writers. The people who buy books like ours by the Ritas are primarily women, although certainly not all. They've been reading romance novels for years. They finally want to start one of their own and are looking for advice from big names." Rita Clay Estrada certainly fills that bill. She is a founding member of the Romance Writers of America, served as its first president, has published more than two dozen romances and has had the prestigious Rita Award (given out by RWA) named after her. Rita G. is Rita C.E.'s mother, who, Heffron notes, is very good at articulating fundamental principles. "We get responses all the time from readers of our books," he adds. "When I'm at a writer's conference, I'm inevitably stopped by someone who says, 'I read your book, and it helped me with publishing my own. There's no substitute for hard work, reading and understanding the genre, but a book like You Can Write a Romance provides advice that can save someone a lot of trial and error." --Robert Dahlin

Christina Dodd
Creative Spins on Familiar Plots
Christina Dodd started her working life as an engineering draftswoman and considers the math background she needed for that career to be one of her biggest assets when she took up her present one, writing historical romances. "I see through to the logic of a book," she says. "When I read, I try to figure what it is that works, what gives a story its universality."
What she's concluded is that female readers never tire of stories about women who start at the bottom and make it to the top. "Jane Eyre starts from nothing, works hard, d s all the right things and wins everything," she says. Similarly, the heroines of Dodd's Victorian trilogy--Rules of Surrender came out in March, Rules of Engagement follows in October and Rules of Attraction is due next March--scrape together enough money to start a governess placement agency and end up making a success of it. In the process they meet men and embark on romances. Dodd says each of her characters is like a guest at a party. "Every one sounds different and has a different story. Every one carries their past with them, and their goals." That men and women are usually in "direct collision," as she puts it, definitely helps keep things lively.

The author of 15 historical romances--including medieval, Shakespearean, Regency, Victorian and one contemporary--Dodd finds inspiration in movies, novels and real-life stories. Her first book, the award-winning Candle in the Window, a medieval, came from an old episode of Bonanza. "Often I'll see something and think, that was a great story but they didn't do it right." she says. "So I take it and twist it around and make it my own. If they did it right, I try to figure out what they did." Move Heaven on Earth was based on a newspaper article that appeared one Memorial Day about how the nurses in Vietnam lived through a trauma as severe as those of the men who actually fought. "I transformed it to the Napoleonic wars, but a story's a story." The Greatest Lover in All England was inspired by the tricky sex role reversals in the movie Victor, Victoria, in which a woman pretending to be a man pretended to be a woman. "It was so clever, and I wondered, how can I use that." Rules of Attraction is Jane Eyre "with a huge twist"; Rules of Surrender derived its basic story from Anna and the King; and Rules of Engagement is a retelling of Little Orphan Annie. "I usually have to tell my editor which story I'm using," Dodd says. "And I've never had a reader pick up on it."

Beyond the plot mechanics, Dodd sees an even greater source for her unjaded approach. "You've got two different genders," she says, "each speaking English. But as long as you're looking at these different genders trying to talk together and communicate, you'll have plenty of material. It's always interesting, funny and very basic."

From a sales standpoint, she says, you never know if a series has played itself out, but the current one is still going strong and she is plotting now for another three books in the series. "I'll stop writing them when I lose my enthusiasm," she says.
--Suzanne Mantell

Comments from the Editor:Executive editor Carrie Feron helps her writers by acting as a cheerleader for them and, to keep readers interested, changing their packaging every three or four books. "We work hard on titles," she says. "We started Christina off overly sexy and now are going more evocative and mysterious. A Well-Pleasured Lady really attracted attention. We encouraged her with the governess series. It's an enduring, classic theme that we thought was a really rich place. People scratch their heads and say, 'Why didn't I think of that?' "

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Eileen Goudge
Lead a Romantic Life
Grabbing onto her readers when they were at a tender age, Eileen Goudge began honing her skills with romances directed specifically at the teen market, writing nearly three dozen of them. "I was one of the first authors on the Sweet Valley High series," she says, referring to the popular library of titles that Bantam launched in 1984. "But I've now published seven adult novels with Viking." The first was Garden of Lies in 1989 and the latest, The Second Silence, was released last month. In May, Signet reprinted her sixth, One Last Dance.
"I don't fall strictly into the romance category," says Goudge. "I write women's fiction with a romantic storyline." Asked how she manages to keep the romantic emotions aloft in her novels, she says with a smile in her voice, "It's a cliché to say it, but I lead a romantic life. I believe in not sinking into the swamp of complacency."

Goudge's buoyancy, so evident in her conversation, carries over into her books because, as she readily admits, the heroines she creates all possess a part of her. "I always get my ideas from my life experiences," she explains. "For me, the characters are real. That's why they have a freshness. Also, I don't write five books a year. I do just one, and that lets me flesh out the characters. The family issues I write about are family issues I've dealt with. How else could they come to life?"

Also keeping Goudge rapt in her work are the mail and Web site responses she receives from her readers. "People write and say, 'This really happened to me.' I got a letter from a woman who said, 'It's 2:28 in the morning. I just finished your book, and the tears are pouring down my cheeks.' Every time I read a message like that, it fuels me. I'm inspired by the letters sent by people who were inspired by my books."

Acknowledging the affection of her fans, Goudge recently self-published a 58-page paperback cookbook entitled Something Warm from the Oven. Designed by Catherine Jacobes, a former assistant who now has her own graphic company called The Book Kitchen, the cookbook collects more than three dozen recipes, including a Seedless Grape Chiffon Pie that, Goudge says, has prompted marriage proposals from those who've eaten it. "My hobby is baking," she explains. "In One Last Dance, the heroine has a tearoom in a Victorian house where she prepares retro dishes, and readers wrote me to ask where to get the recipes."

Enlivened by her fans, Goudge says, "There's nothing forced in what I do. Writing for me is like a Ouija board. Something happens and it just pours out. My muse is in the driver's seat. I don't have a lot to say about it. People sometimes ask me to write about this or that, but I can't. I can only write out of my own experience. That's what maintains the emotional timbre of my novels, and if you love what you do, it stays fresh."
--Robert Dahlin

Comments from the Editor:"Eileen has become much more confident as she has continued to write. That keeps her fresh," says Viking senior editor Molly Stern. "What I've been able to do is help her streamline the books. She comes up with the first perspectives, the first characters, and then I try to help clarify emotional motives for each character. I guess I'm sort of a sounding board, a reality check, but she always puts a new twist and a new edge on her characters. For example, she's moved to more suspense elements in The Second Silence. But, as always, she has to be immersed in the imaginative universe before I can get involved."

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Roberts' Rules of Romance The latest from a super-prolific author (Jove). Within the romance genre, Nora Roberts is virtually sui generis. Berkley's reprint of River's End debuted at the top spot on PW's May 15 mass market bestseller list, and on the June 15 roster, Roberts novels claimed the second, third and fourth slots. From her first romance, Irish Thoroughbred (Silhouette, 1981), to her latest, Tears of the Moon (out this month from Jove), Roberts has scarcely paused in her prodigious output. When asked how many novels she has published over the past 19 years, she responds, "Ummmm. Over 130. I'm a little vague on the exact number." With such unbridled vigor at work, Nora Roberts is perhaps the best writer of romances to ask bluntly: How do you keep your books fresh? "I don't have gambits or tricks or little bits of business," she declares. "For me, each book is the first book. I've never written this one yet, with these particular people in this particular situation on this particular canvas. So it's all new for me every time. There are so many different types of people in the world, and creating characters as people, mixing those people together, builds a different dynamic, a different conflict each time. There are 88 keys on a piano. Think of the music made from them." What about devising new and interesting plots? "Character is plot," she states. "At least in my books, which are character-driven, the people create the action. What happens is no more important than who it happens to. I often use unusual professions simply because I find them interesting to research. It also g s to character. The motivation for what someone d s for a living is every bit as essential, often more for me, than the profession itself." Roberts asserts that research is fundamental. "It's just part of the job," she notes. "I do all my own research--settings, professions and so on because the process gives me other springboards for plot angles. I can't put readers inside a marine archeologist's head and heart unless I know just what a marine archeologist d s and thinks. I can't put them into a small town in South Carolina unless I know what a small town in South Carolina looks like, sounds like, feels like." Above all, she reiterates, the sure-fire element in a successful romance is the introduction of "interesting, fully realized characters who involve the reader. Pacing, a good, solid narrative, a compelling conflict are all vital, but without flesh and blood characters, the writer--and the reader--care about, you've got nothing but words on a page." Nor is it sufficient merely to conjure up fascinating individuals. "Within each book, the characters, for me, must grow and change," says Roberts, "just as the relationships between them must grow and flex and change." Where, then, do her characters come from? "I rarely know for sure," she admits. "Primarily my storylines and the people in them are straight out of my head. Now and then something I see or hear or read may be the springboard." The inspiration d s not, however, emerge from her own experiences. "I just don't lead that exciting a life," she says. Roberts has been able to write in a variety of subgenres, which includes the J.D. Robb romantic suspense/police procedurals set in the near future, and of course, her byline is a familiar one under a number of imprints. "I imagine my basic style or voice remains pretty similar throughout," she says, "but what I write for Silhouette is in a different lane of the highway than the trilogies I do for Jove, and they differ from the hardcover romantic suspense I do for Putnam, and from the In Death books I do for Berkley. It's challenging and endlessly fascinating for me to start the drive down one of those lanes." Roberts treasures the romance genre because of its fluidity and its ability to absorb elements from all other areas of fiction. She also relishes the act of creating it, to which she brings a mighty dose of vitality. "For that high level of energy--well, I could use more vitamins," she jokes. "But the fact is, I'm a writing junkie. I just love the work. Once I'm into a story, it drives me as much as I drive it. A lot of the energy in the work comes, I'd think, from my own need to know what happens next. I don't outline, so each day I wonder just what's going to happen. Hopefully this translates to the reader wanting to turn the page in the finished book to find out, too." --Robert Dahlin

Sherryl Woods
Meets Readers in Her Bookstore
Sherryl Woods d sn't have to travel far to meet her fans. After spending the early morning hours writing, she turns off her computer and heads to her five-year-old Potomac River Sunrise bookstore in the resort community of Colonial Beach, Va.
The bookstore, which is open only during the summer months, shares a small house with an antiques shop and carries a little bit of everything, including, of course, romance. "I love being able to talk to readers," comments Woods when questioned about what she enjoys most about running a bookstore. Fans visit from around the country, and when one calls to order Woods's own books, she says, "I always have to pick my point when I tell them that they're talking to me."

Woods, who grew up in Arlington, Va., enjoys the warmth and sense of community of small towns. For her, Colonial Beach, where she summered as a child, and Key Biscayne, Fla., where she winters, offer "a comfort zone. We crave that sense of connectedness that we think existed in times past."

In her work, Woods tries to re-create that same cocoon-like feeling that a small town can confer. Both of her books for Mira--After Tex (Sept. 1999) and its sequel, Angel Mine (Aug.), take place in Whispering Wind, Wyo., yet they deal with issues that are of just as much concern to city folks. Seagull Point, Va., a town patterned after Colonial Beach, served as the setting for her 1998 novel Amazing Gracie and will provide the backdrop for her new Mira trilogy, due next year.

Despite similarities in their settings, Woods works hard to make each book different. "I really do try not to ever do the same book twice," she says--a tall order for a woman who has written 70 romance and mystery novels, the latter under the pen name Amanda Roberts. She puts her decade-long journalism career (she was a news reporter and television critic) to good use to keep her stories vital. "In the years when I went out looking for news characters, you had to make them fresh and unique. I do the same thing in my books." In terms of dialogue, she notes that "the journalistic eye, which is always looking for the heart of a story, serves me well."

The journalistic instinct, or on occasion downright nosiness, continues to provide leads. For Woods, inspiration can come from something as seemingly mundane as two raised voices. The night before she spoke with PW, she notes, "I happened to overhear a huge argument about money. It was the second time I've heard the same argument, and the seed was planted."

Woods also writes for Silhouette, including three new releases in her And Baby Makes Three: The Delacourts of Texasseries--Dylan and the Baby Doctor (Apr.), The Pint-Sized Secret (July) and Marrying at Delacourt (Oct.). One of her novellas was included in Harlequin by Request 3's Love, Honor, and Cherish (May).
--Judith Rosen

Comments from the Editor:Associate senior editor Amy Moore-Benson, who has worked on all of Woods's Mira books since 1998, calls her "the kind of author you want to clone. She's an extremely good writer who knows what the readers have come to expect. She's also a consummate pro who delivers on time and who takes revision work very well. Everybody has a different working style; Sherry's benefited from her journalism. Her strength is in wonderful, warm romances set in quirky towns with characters you really grow to know and love."

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Mary Balogh
Two Men in Her Life
Poised to make her hardcover debut with More Than a Mistress (Delacorte, Sept.), Mary Balogh muses on some of the challenges facing a prolific writer.
"Some writers have a formula and write basically the same book over and over again, but I'm very determined not to do the same thing twice," she says in a lilting voice that carries a hint of her native Wales despite more than 30 years spent in Saskatchewan. "It's hard in a way, especially when you've written so many. Sometimes I get into a story and all of a sudden feel, uh-oh, I've done this before, so I have to change it."

More Than a Mistress, a Regency romance sure to please her many fans, is Balogh's second title for Bantam Dell (following One Night for Love). She has written 55 novels in all, including a number of Regency romances and other historicals for Signet and four for Berkley set during the Georgian era. (All are identified on her Web site, www.marybalogh.com.)

An English teacher in Canada for 20 years, Balogh published her first book, A Masked Deception, in 1985. A devoted Jane Austen fan, she also cites legendary romance novelist Georgette Heyer as the impetus for her writing career. "I discovered her quite late in life--I was in my 30s, I think--and then found others set in the Regency era and thought maybe I should write one," she recalls.

Her novels, all historicals, are set in a range of time periods, from the Georgian and Victorian eras to the Crimean War, but it's the Regency period that tugs most at her heart. "My feeling toward the Regency is hard to put into words," she says. "It's more than nostalgia, it's an aching, a yearning for it. I must have lived there in a previous life!"

Another factor that helps keep her work fresh, says Balogh, is the fact that her stories are character-driven. "I like to delve deep into my characters' motivations and pasts, and as soon as you focus on character, each book has to be new, because no two people are the same," she explains. "I've had several Regency rakes as her s, but because I dig deep, none of those rakes are the same and inevitably the books go in different directions."

Balogh admits to having two favorite her s among the many she's created. One, the leading man in The Notorious Rake, "took me by surprise--he's one of those characters whose depths I didn't suspect when I started writing his book. He's very witty, and his wit seemed his own rather than mine." The other, she says, is the protagonist of Heartless. In keeping with the fashions of the times, she notes, he "wears gorgeous clothes and makeup and carries a fan--oh, and high-heeled sh s--and I loved the contrast between the sort of effeminate appearance and the dangerous man underneath."
--Heather Vogel Frederick

Comments from the Editor:When asked about her role in helping to keep an author's work fresh, Bantam Dell editor Kara Cesare replies, "With Mary, it's very easy for me. She is such a unique and talented storyteller and has such a wonderful imagination that she never comes up with anything that's stale or repetitious!" In general, however, she cites a key ingredient in the editor's role as "being very aware of what other authors are writing." That way, she says, if a story is submitted that sounds familiar or is ground covered recently by another author, "you can suggest ways to tweak it--perhaps by making something new or fresh in the plot--without losing the flavor that their readers come back for."

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Dorothy Garlock
Not Depressed by the Depression
Since launching her writing career 20 years ago, Dorothy Garlock has had 42 books published, 30 of them with Warner. Love and Cherish, her first book (published by Zebra), was set in 1776; After the Parade, her latest, is set in the years immediately after WWII. Three books--With Heart, With Song and With Hope--take place in the depths of the Depression.
"People ask me why I'm writing about those dark times, but I didn't think they were dark," Garlock tells PW. "I was always interested in the Depression era. I was born during that time, and I heard my parents talk about it." With two books appearing each year, she's recently begun exploring a new family in a new era, in a saga that begins in 1922 and will carry through to the Depression. Bantam's April 2001 publication of the first in the series, The Edge of Town, will mark Garlock's hardcover debut.

The first thing Garlock d s when starting a new book is look for the time period, "then find a locale. Then I find out what conflicts I'll have so the reader will turn the page. Then I turn to characters--their ages and the situation they're in. I start with the first scene, then the second. Then I have a chapter and I can see where the story is going. I don't write glitzy, but about everyday people readers will recognize. My characters are a composite of everyone I know or read about in newspapers or see in movies. I think, Why didn't they develop that character? I have an active imagination."

Garlock credits her longtime editor, Fredda Isaacson, for her success. "If there's any freshness, Fredda is responsible. She'll say, 'Two books back, you had someone who beat their wife.' So I'll do something else. If I couldn't work with Fredda, I'd just quit."

A self-described history buff, Garlock enjoys using judicious amounts of historical details to set the tone for her readers. "They don't want a history lesson, but they like some sense of the time period." More Than Memory, a contemporary due in February, is set in Clear Lake, Iowa, where Garlock has lived for most of her adult life--and where Buddy Holly gave his last concert before his fatal plane crash. "He's not in the book as a character," says the author, "but his concert figures into the story. At the end, the hero and heroine go to dance and hear he's dead." In one historical, Ribbon in the Sky, the hero wanders through a cemetery looking for the woman he loves, whom he thinks is dead. Garlock confesses, "I put all the names of Warner people on headstones when he was looking for her," she says. It's grave details like this that energize Garlock and her work.
--Suzanne Mantell

Comments from the Editor:"The Depression setting, which was spurned earlier as a gray, drab time, has turned out to be a fresh opportunity," says Fredda Isaacson, who is retired from active Bantam duty but still serves as Garlock's editor. "Readers liked With Hope, and now other writers are doing Depression books. This time, Dorothy's turning to the 1920s, another neglected era but one that is full of possibilities, with a new view and lots of stories that have never been explored. It's remarkable that after so many books someone is willing to venture into a new venue." In-house editor Maggie Crawford comments on Garlock's first hardcover appearance: "Our job is to let readers know she's grown beyond frontier romance. Her writing has expanded and she's exploring relationships."

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Brenda Joyce
Like Developing Polaroids
Coming up with new characters is never a problem for bestselling author Brenda Joyce. "As I'm finishing up a project, I'll get a hazy image of a character. It's like a Polaroid snapshot--you get a fuzzy picture in your head that later blooms. I call that the incubation period, while these characters are slowly coming to life." She tells PW that The Third Heiress, her debut hardcover (due out in paperback next month from St. Martin's), is "a perfect example. It came to me in pieces. I got an idea for Jill--she's on a quest. What is she looking for? And it just hit me: a missing American heiress from 90 years ago. And there was the story."
Joyce has an immediate source for inspiration: herself. "Everything I write about comes from my life, dramatized. For example, in The Third Heiress, I am Kate Gallagher and I am Jill Gallagher--Kate is Brenda before a certain event in my life and Jill is Brenda after that traumatic event. I don't realize it when I'm writing it at the time--I realize it after."

The prolific author (20 novels since 1988) finds it easy to keep up a steady pace. "I'm a type-A personality who's extremely driven and extremely competitive and ambitious and naturally intense. I write with the same intensity. It's just a blessing that I can sit down and get swept away into my story and 15 pages can pour out--first-draft pages."

Joyce has a specific method, she says, that keeps moving her writing forward. "I'm always keeping my eyes way ahead. I use a visual map. If I'm on chapter one, my eye is on the big plot twist that spins you into the book's conflict. It's like being in a horse race. You're out of the gate and in the back of the field. You're always looking at the front runners. I call it speed working--keeping focused 50 or 100 or 200 pages ahead, some major point you want to get to as fast as you can."

To keep her work fresh, Joyce places high demands on herself, not only in her writing but in her life. "I'm highly competitive with myself. When I write, I'm very aware that it's me against me. One of the reasons I left the historical romance genre was because it was going to start getting repetitive."

As for the future, Joyce is confident that she'll never run out of material for her novels. "It's hard to explain, but I really feel my stuff is channeled. It feels like I get these ideas out of the blue. I'm not worried that I'll ever run out of ideas. This is what I'm supposed to do. I'm a mass market gal and proud of it."

--Hilary S. Kayle

Comments from the Editor:Jennifer Enderlin, SMP's executive editor and associate publisher for the paperback division, has a specific method for keeping Joyce's prolific output unique: "Brenda and I really brainstorm the concept. We make sure that in the verbalization of the story, before she even writes page one, it's really interesting and fresh to us. Every time you read a Brenda Joyce novel, you're going to enter a really glamorous world where a woman has to use all her will and wit to confront a situation she's never encountered before, and finds love in the process. It's not about being so fresh--that it's a completely different book every time--it's about keeping it the same but different every time. If you could boil down the success of an author into one phrase, it's 'the same but different.' "

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Enlisting a New Army of Readers Author suggests a Force-full marketing campaign Writers of romances are a busy lot, and so are romance publishers, who have long been energetic in their pursuit of new readers. Creative marketing ploys flourish in the field, and Arabesque Books has embarked on a twin-pronged effort that demonstrates a striking flair for the unusual. "I'd determined that there were two vertical markets I wanted to reach," says Linda Gill Cater, Arabesque publisher--"college students and military women or other people associated with military bases." The notion of approaching military bases was suggested by Linda Hudson-Smith, author of Ice Under Fire, which Arabesque published in January. Married to a career Air Force meteorologist who is now retired, Hudson-Smith had seen firsthand the loneliness that accompanied service assignments separating husbands and wives. So, she proposed, why not tour military installations to promote romances that would appeal to spouses and to active military women? "Away from our families, we often felt homesick," Hudson-Smith has said. "Although many of us worked and had busy lives, we loved to read. Reading romance is a form of escape into wonderland, especially for those whose loved ones are involved in dangerous missions and high-risk career fields." Cater leapt at the idea for an Arabesque Armed Forces Book Tour 2000, and it worked. Sell-throughs of books have been as high as 68%. "We had signings at the base exchanges at lunch and dinner times," says Cater. "We also had signings at local bookstores. We always received great support from base newspapers and radio stations." Hudson-Smith visited a half-dozen bases and naval stations in Washington State in February, and was joined by fellow writer Francis Ray at three bases in Texas in March. The tour winds up this month with Hudson-Smith, Angela Winters, Candace Poarch and Dianne Mayhew touring Annapolis Naval Base, Ft. Meade Army Base, Ft. Belvoir Army Base and Andrews Air Force Base, all in the D.C./Maryland/Virginia area. "The RWA meeting is in Washington this year," says Cater, "so it seemed perfect to finish by covering several bases in our own home town." Taking aim at the other vertical market Cater had targeted, Arabesque established a First Time Writer's Contest, to take place this fall. "I saw all those young black women on college campuses," Cater remarks, "and I thought, if I can just get them at 18 or 19 or 20, I'd have them hooked for life on romances. In addition, so many people have stories inside them that they'd love to get out." The contest is open to unpublished female authors, 18 to 25 years of age, who enter original works "of contemporary multicultural romance featuring African-American characters." The length must be between 30,000 and 35,000 words. "The winner will have her work included in an anthology we will publish," says Cater. "And she'll be flown to New York to meet with publishing professionals." Submissions must be made by October 10, so those interested should boot up their computers and get started. --Robert Dahlin

Suzanne Brockman
Gets the SEAL of Approval
In her office outside Boston, Suzanne Brockman has a filing cabinet she calls her "idea file." It's stuffed with thoughts on plots and characters, snatches of conversations, ideas written on napkins--"It's really a chaotic black hole of ideas, one big messy file. But I rarely go into it, it's more of a security blanket. I like to keep ideas in my head and let them 'cook' for a while."
When it comes to the ingredients she'll need for her mental stews, Brockman shops in some unlikely places. She thrilled with the possibilities presented by a recent purchase of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook (who knows when a character might be trapped underwater in a flooded car?) and is a devoted reader of the obituaries in Variety. "Sometimes it's just a line in an obit that can spark an idea--like one about a costume designer who had made SS uniforms for OSS spies. Imagine the story behind that one sentence."

Asking Brockman how she keeps her stories fresh is "like asking someone how you breathe. It just happens. I start developing a story or some characters--asking myself 'what if' questions--and I'll just automatically know when I hit on an idea that's going to catch fire. It just clicks. It's funny, there's a physiological response to finding or creating an idea that's going to be worthy of a book's worth of creativity. My heart beats a little harder, I get a zero-gravity feeling in my stomach. It's a lot like falling in love!"

When it comes to keeping the plots of her novels lively and new, it all begins with character for Brockman--"I think the solution to keeping books fresh lies in writing stories that are character driven. In real life, I've never met two people who are alike. And the same applies to my fictional characters." While Brockman has published 30 books in the last eight years, 11 of them feature a Navy SEAL as the main character--including her latest, Unsung Hero (Ballantine/Ivy, June). So how do you keep 11 her s with the same, very unusual job from becoming repetitious? Never a problem for Brockman. "I write pages of backstory. And no two of these guys are the same--just as in real life, they each have their individual childhood experiences, their own set of personal beliefs and values that make them unique."

Brockman is modestly confident she'll never run out of stories to tell--she already has the storylines for her next three books. "Stories are always there, always around me. The best ideas are the ones that stick in your head, that you can't shake loose or forget--even if you want to. Those are the ideas that I fall in love with. Then, it's my job to take those ideas and characters and write a book that my readers will fall in love with, too."
--Lucinda Dyer

Comments from the Editor:Ballantine senior editor Shauna Summers describes Suzanne Brockman as "almost a woman's Tom Clancy--her work is trendsetting." To make certain that trend continues, Summers and Brockman "have lots of conversation at the proposal stage about different directions and turns that a story or character might take, making sure that the book is on track and not covering previous territory" One direction that sets apart both Unsung Hero and its upcoming sequel, Defiant Hero, are subplots that flash back to WWII. "This is new for Suzanne," says Summers. "Contemporaries usually don't go back 40 years. That gives the readers a more complex feel--it's very exciting."

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Linda Lael Miller
A Vivid Childhood Imagination
"The problem for me with ideas is not how to get them--they just seem to come. The problem is having time to process and refine them all. I just hope to live long enough to write everything I have ideas for," says Pocket Books stalwart Linda Lael Miller. Over the past 17 years, she's written 50 novels. This year alone, Miller has six books coming out, with several more to be published in 2001, including a hardcover.
She has a simple explanation for why she's so prolific: "When I started out, I was a young divorced mother with no child support, so I was motivated. In those days, you really had to produce a lot of books just to make a living. Many of us formed that habit in the early days and when we graduated to where we were getting more money, we were still writing fast."

Miller finds creative stimulation in everyday things. "I will go to a place, see a person or even see a movie, and it serves as a catalyst. I usually start with a concept or situation, and then I build on it from there. With my Springwater books, the first thing that came to my mind was that I wanted to write a series about a stagecoach station, the people who staffed it and the people who came and went. That's where I started, and then I built the stories from there."

Miller comes to each book with a fresh approach. "The emo-tion you bring to it when you actually tackle a project is always different. There's an excitement; you really get into the flow. Each one is new to me when I get to that mental place."

What she d s outside of writing, Miller says, has a tremendous impact on her work. "Just keeping your life and your interests new and different--taking up things, taking classes, taking trips--keeps your work fresh. I do artwork. I'm the worst artist in the world and I always have paint all over me, but I love it. Art teaches you to see differently. Now, when I look at a tree, I see there are 95 million different colors of green. I also have two dogs, and I play with them a lot. I think those two things have had a profound effect on my writing."

With such a copious output, it's no surprise that creating stories has long been an intrinsic part of Miller's life. "When I was a child, I lived in a small town and was very imaginative. I guess I was lonely, because I would make up these scenarios in my mind. Usually I was married to one of the Beatles, or something really silly like that, and I could carry that on in my mind for days, and still function and get good grades in school. But I'd be living in this fantasy. I guess I either needed medication or I was creative--probably both! I developed that ability and that's where it comes from."
--Hilary S. Kayle

Comments from the Editor:Pocket Books editorial director for women's fiction Linda Marrow shares a rare history with Miller: "Her first novel was my first novel, so we go way back. I find popular storytellers and commercial writers sometimes repeat themselves on purpose to form some sort of pattern of work. I have to ask, why did something seem merely redundant, rather than the next note in the symphony? Linda deals with the same geographical and historical territory over and over again, yet it always seems very fresh, which is kind of astonishing. We scour her material at the outline stage first, perhaps more than we might if she wasn't writing so many books. We can head her off at the pass if we know that something repetitious is cropping up."

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