Heather Lowell
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Even after Heather Lowell finally slowed down long enough to write the romance novel she always wanted to write, there was still something nagging her. While concentrating on her debut book, When the Storm Breaks (HarperTorch, Aug.), she was also keenly aware that romance novelists had ignored people like her—a modern, 33-year-old, independent woman.
Lowell knew that her novel, which involves a serial killer, would never fit in either of the two camps of romance writers she had identified. The "brittle, kind of cynical Sex and the City fiction" was too hard for her, she tells PW. And yet traditional romance writers—like her mother, Elizabeth Lowell, for example—weren't exactly modernizing the interplay between male and female. Or they weren't accommodating modernity at all: none of the romances she read, Lowell points out, "were set in offices that had e-mail."
So Lowell took it upon herself to rectify the injustice—and to carve out a niche—by crafting a romantic suspense novel that has "a more modern take on romance" but doesn't have "that hard, brittle edge." From page one, When the Storm Breaks announces itself as a romance for readers of the author's own generation.
Lowell has crafted a heroine whose verve mirrors her creator's. Lowell attended Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, obtained a master's in international relations, has worked for the U.N. and speaks five languages. But she didn't tell her mother she was writing a romance novel. Unhappy at the technology company where she had been working, Lowell was suddenly offered the opportunity to write all day: she was laid off. "And I thought, 'Well, okay, you've got a severance package and you know you don't want to ever go back and work in the corporate world again.' " Six months and one barbaric knee surgery later, she showed her mother the completed manuscript and then "kind of hid out in my house for three days." But Mom not only approved, she sent the work to her friend Jayne Ann Krentz, who supplied a glowing blurb. "The book was definitely a product of my determination to never have to work in a cubicle again," Lowell says.
According to Avon executive editor Carrie Feron, Lowell definitely has the goods to back up her bravado. She says the house would have acquired When the Storm Breaks even if it weren't written by Elizabeth Lowell's daughter. "It has terrific pacing, which often takes a while to hone, and her voice was fresh," Feron says. "I have published her mother for nine years, and I always think it's very flattering when someone trusts you with their children's work. We were really lucky to have first crack at this book."
Feron notes that Avon will be advertising When the Storm Breaks on radio and in Marie Claire, which offers a young demographic of readers. Lowell is finishing her second novel before When the Storm Breaks hits the stores. Then, not unlike one of her feisty heroines, she wants to set off for Asia in September "just for kicks."
Beverly Barton
Alabama Melodrama
John Scognamiglio, editorial director at Kensington, became a fan of Beverly Barton's romantic suspense stories when he read a partial manuscript submitted by her agent and saw how capable she was of handling complex plots and subplots—skills she honed as a category romance writer for Harlequin's Silhouette line. He urged her to go as far as she could in the genre—encouragement that resulted in After Dark (Zebra, 2000) and continued with the Cherokee Pointe trilogy set in Tennessee's Smoky Mountains—The Fifth Victim (Apr. 2003), The Last to Die (Jan. 2004) and the tentatively titled As Good As Dead (Oct. 2004). "She's a great storyteller," Scognamiglio says. "Her books are sexy and suspenseful. They keep you on the edge of your seat. " With each new title, he says, her numbers are growing. Now in the #2 position on the house list, the goal is to move her up to the lead in whatever month her books are published.
A sixth-generation Alabamian, Barton says she's had stories in her head for as long as she can remember. "I wrote my first book when I was nine. I wrote all through junior high, high school and college." She started writing romance as a hobby in the mid-'80s. "I met a published Alabama author who told me about the Romance Writers of America. I joined, went to conferences and set a goal of getting a book published within two years. And I came in just under the wire." She's now published 48 books. "Three more are written," she says, noting that she's at work on book 52. "It's a lot of hard work. But I love what I do. I love the freedom when writing mainstream books. There are no rules, no regulations. You reach down inside yourself and tap things you didn't know were there. You are more limited in category romance, though it's a great place to learn craft."
She describes her voice as "very Southern, dramatic, even melodramatic. I haven't done a good job unless I evoke some emotion from my readers." About her foray into romantic suspense she notes, "Each book goes further into suspense, even into the thriller element. I wasn't sure I could go that deeply into the psyche of a killer, without getting so dark. It affected me emotionally but didn't pull me into some deep dark place. It's a surprise finding out you can do it. I do love the stories with happy endings for Silhouette. But I will continue for Kensington. Now that I know I can do it, I'll follow the challenge." And Scognamiglio is certain she's up to it: "Each book gets better and better. I don't hold her back."
Suzanne Brockmann
The 10-Year Plan
For the past 10 years, Suzanne Brockmann has followed in the footsteps of authors such as Nora Roberts and Sandra Brown, both of whom started out writing category romances. Now, with her hardcover debut, Gone Too Far, due out this July, Brockmann is ready to take the comparison one step further.
"We're very excited about the number of hardcovers we're sending out for this book," Ballantine editorial director Linda Marrow says of the 70,000-copy first printing. "[Brockmann's] fans were dying to have this book, so it seemed like the perfect time to put her in hardcover." The highly anticipated debut ties up a relationship that has spanned all five of Brockmann's popular SEAL Team 16 romantic suspense novels. It also follows close on the heels of the author's previous paperback, Into the Night (2002), which reached #8 on the New York Times bestseller list.
It's no coincidence that Brockmann's career has mirrored that of the genre's big-name authors. Before writing her first book, she did what she calls "role-modeling. I took the authors who had careers that I wanted and tried to break in the way they did," she explains.
Though Brockmann wrote category romances for Harlequin Silhouette and Bantam Loveswept in the early to mid '90s, she knew that she needed a hook if she wanted to make a name for herself. It wasn't long before she found one. "A friend of mine read an article about hell week [Navy SEAL training] in Newsweek magazine," she recalls. "He called me up and said, 'Run to the library'—these were the days before the Internet—and I remember sitting in the library reading this article and getting goosebumps."
In 1996, she published her first Navy SEAL romance, Prince Joe, and it climbed to #104 on USA Today's bestseller list, an amazing feat for a category romance. Four years later, Brockmann joined Ballantine and published her first single-title SEAL intrigue, The Unsung Hero.
"I've recently become her biggest fan," Marrow says, citing Brockmann's heroic characters and high-energy story lines as the qualities that set her books apart from other romances. According to Marrow, Ballantine has invested a "tremendous amount of creative energy" in the packaging of Brockmann's novels. "We got away from romantic packaging and gave her more of a thriller/romantic suspense look," Marrow says. They've also devoted significant resources to touting Gone Too Far, which will be supported by media appearances and a 13-city author tour.
With 39 books and numerous accolades including a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award and two RITAs under her belt, Brockmann has achieved more in 10 years than most writers do in a lifetime—not bad for someone who started writing romances so that she could "break into" the field of screenwriting. Still, Brockmann has plans to accomplish much more. "I have a 10-year goal," she tells PW. "By the time I turn 50, I'm going to either be in production or have finished producing an independent movie." Her fans needn't worry that she'll abandon her writing, however. Not only is Brockmann already working on her next hardcover, Flash Point, which will launch a new series focusing on a covert operations group called SOS Incorporated, but, she says, "I intend to keep writing novels until I cease to exist."
Tara Taylor Quinn
Wants It All
While many romance writers hop from publisher to publisher, Tara Taylor Quinn is the writer's equivalent of a one-man woman. She has published more than 30 novels, and there are more than four million copies of her books in print worldwide, but she's not interested in working with any house but Harlequin.
"I'm committed to the company," she says. "I like their business sense, and they've been very good to me." Quinn read her first Harlequin title at 14 after picking it up in a grocery store, and continued to plow through a book a day in high school. "I kept saying, 'I'm going to do this someday,' " she recalls. She certainly got off to a flying start: her first book, Yesterday's Secrets (Harlequin Superromance, 1993), received two Reviewers' Choice nominations and was a finalist for a RITA award. (All four of her 2002 titles are RITA nominees as well.)
Even when sticking with the same house, however, a writer can go new places; this month marks Quinn's debut with Harlequin's contemporary Mira imprint with Where the Road Ends.
Harlequin executive editor Paula Eykelhof sees Quinn's expansion as part of a natural growth. "She has had real success within series, specifically with Superromance," says Eykelhof. "She did have one other single title within a smaller Harlequin program, but this is her debut single-title mainstream book."
"This whole big book thing took me by surprise and I know it took them by surprise," reports Quinn. "With this book, we can all see what I can do."
But neither Quinn nor Eykelhof equates success with moving away from series books. Quinn plans to continue writing both single titles and series books; according to Eykelhof, "Our goal is to build her in single title and to continue her series career as well. This is a mutually advantageous situation."
One of the skills that has served Quinn best in writing series books has been her ability to explore edgier subjects while remaining within the format. "She is willing to try a riskier editorial, and it's always handled in a way that readers are able to connect with," says Eykelhof, citing Her Secret, His Child (Harlequin Superromance, 1999), whose heroine is a former prostitute, and White Picket Fences (Harlequin Superromance, 2000), in which the hero's marriage ends because his wife realizes she is a lesbian.
In a bid to draw Quinn's faithful series audience to her Mira debut, an excerpt from Where the Road Ends appeared in Born in the Valley, her June Harlequin Superromance. Eykelhof expects Quinn's direct tone and a mystery-tinged story line to draw a wide range of readers, and Quinn herself is certainly not lacking in ambition: "I want it all," she says. "The higher I can climb, the more people I'm going to reach. I want absolutely everything the universe is going to let me do." She is currently under contract for four more entries in the Superromance series and three more titles for Mira.
Mary Balogh
On Time, and Often Early
Mary Balogh is as beloved by her publisher as her fans for turning out exceptional romances amazingly quickly. Her first novel, A Masked Deception, was published in 1985 and garnered its author a nod from Romantic Times for best new Regency writer. Balogh, who has published 59 novels and 29 anthologized novellas since then, is known as a complete professional—she personally answers each of her fan letters, her manuscripts are always on time (if not early) to her publisher and she has a knack for using the conventions of the romance genre to her own advantage, stamping her own character-driven imprint on them. "She's always seemed to have the goods," says Wendy McCurdy, her editor at Dell.
A steadily increasing number of romance readers agree. One week before PW spoke with Balogh, she jumped onto the New York Times paperback bestseller list for Slightly Scandalous, the third installment in her six-part Slightly series, which chronicles the exploits of the aristocratic Bedwyn family. After Balogh introduced that clan's six uppity siblings as antagonists to the heroine of 2002's A Summer to Remember, she felt compelled to devote an entire novel to each one of them. "I realized that this was a very strong, powerful family that had a lot going beneath the surface," says the author. "I felt this curiosity that I often feel with characters to get to know them myself."
Balogh was contracted to write six novels in two years and, to increase her visibility, Dell published her in its "Get Connected" program, so that readers could purchase one installment of the Bedwyn saga right after another.
Six books in two years is a hectic pace, but it suits someone making up for lost time. Settling upon the title of "authoress," Balogh and her sister, Moira, had resolved as children in post-war Wales that they would both become writers, and both ended up financing the decision by becoming high school English teachers. When Balogh completed a manuscript in 1983, she picked up a book from her favorite publisher of Regencies, shipped off the manuscript to the address she saw inside, and got a reply: the Mississauga address was a distribution center. But someone there liked what she had read and mailed it to New York City, and Balogh soon had a two-book contract in her hands. Balogh says that one of the keys to her success is something that "may sound silly: I don't read romance any longer. I'm not sucked into trends; I just insist on writing my own books."
The first thing readers notice about Balogh, McCurdy says, is that she is a notably intelligent author. "You can tell that she really feels the characters—you feel the sense of humor, the humanity" And speaking of beating deadlines—because Balogh turned in the next two titles in the series (Slightly Tempted, Slightly Sinful) early, Dell decided to move up the publications of those titles to January and April even though the spring 2004 lineup had already been finalized.
JoAnn Ross
The Old Hard-Soft Issue
JoAnn Ross is one prolific novelist. She's written so many romances that she's lost count of the exact number (more than 80). She's published series and single-title books, and she's even published two hardcovers. "JoAnn is the classic story of overnight success after you've been plugging away for many years," says Pocket senior editor Micki Nuding.
In April 2002 Pocket published Ross's Blue Bayou, the first entry in her Callahan brothers trilogy. In October of this year, Ross will launch a second trilogy, this one about the Stewart sisters, with Out of the Mist. "With the new trilogy we've moved her to a lead position," says Nuding. It's no wonder: from Blue Bayou to Magnolia Moon (Mar.), the third title in the Callahan trilogy, the print runs for Ross's books increased by 50%.
Ross put in many years writing category titles for a host of different publishers, an experience she credits with teaching her a strong work ethic. Out of the Mist is her ninth book with Pocket, though, and she feels she's found a home. "I hope to be 90 years old and still writing for Pocket," the author says. "Not only do they do what they've promised—they even do more than they've promised."
The admiration is mutual. "JoAnn has very much a Nora Roberts sort of appeal," says Nuding. "She writes these wonderful linked family stories with very richly drawn characters."
Does that mean if sales of Ross's second trilogy are strong enough, Pocket will attempt to shift Ross across the border to women's fiction and begin publishing her in hardcover? "There's no magic number for taking someone into hardcover," says Nuding. "It's a combination of various factors: strong sales, strong sell-through, the editorial content of a particular book and also what's going on in the market."
Ross herself is nonchalant about a possible shift to hardcover. She tasted the experience with two St. Martin's titles, Secret Sins (1990) and Private Pleasures (1992), both of which were excerpted in Cosmopolitan and she chose to return to writing series books. It's her respect for the category, Ross posits, that's responsible for her success, not any particular format or type of book. She says, "I've never considered the category 'less.' Hardcover would be fine if that's what Pocket wants. I just look at the stories I want to tell."
With this latest story, says Nuding, "We're expecting and hoping to see JoAnn's sales take a big jump yet again." Out of the Mist has a mystery element that Nuding believes will attract many new readers. Print advertising in USA Today, a national radio campaign and a new, more foil-heavy cover look for the trilogy are sure to help.
Leanne Banks
Into the Mainstream
Virginia-based author Leanne Banks, who writes contemporary romantic comedy, published her first title (Never a Bride) in 1991. Since then, she has twice been nominated for the Romance Writers of America RITA award, and she won the 2001 Georgia Romance Writer's Maggie Award for Excellence. Her books have been recognized by the Award of Excellence Contest and the National Readers' Choice Awards.
This year alone, Banks will have five books on the market—Some Girls Do, her first mainstream single-title romance (May), and a sequel, When She's Bad (Nov.), from Warner Forever; The Playboy & Plain Jane (Jan.) and Princess in His Bed (June) from Harlequin's Silhouette Desire; and Lone Star Country Club: Home for the Holidays (Nov.), a Christmas anthology from Harlequin Silhouette. "I don't usually have so many out, " Banks says, "but I work very hard. I don't consider myself a brilliant writer, but someone who tries hard and has a willingness to learn." All along her goal was to become a career category series writer. "I was in it for the long haul. I have loved romance novels since I first read Cinderella. I had lost a pregnancy. I had two kids, neither from smooth pregnancies. I knew I couldn't be a mom forever. I set myself a goal of writing and selling a book within two years. I was incredibly naive but I did it."
One of Banks's keys to success has been a series of self-affirmations, to help her maintain a positive attitude. "I'm not an overly confident person," she says. Another is the publicity she does on each book's behalf. "I use the List of 20, a brainstorming tool. You find possibilities. It's something I use in my life. I did 20 fun ways to promote my book, for instance." Not keen on bookstore appearances, Banks says she loves to do "phantom" signings. "That's where you go in and sign stock and say hi to the bookseller and leave. There's no pressure for anyone. I will give candy to the bookseller as a thank you. I just want them to carry as many books as they think they can sell."
Senior editor Karen Kosztolnyik, who worked with Banks at Silhouette and brought her over to Warner for the new Forever line, singles her out as a dynamo when it comes to self-promotion. "The area is so competitive—anything an author can do to stand out is important. Leanne really understands that. She got a quote for her book from Janet Evanovich. She blew me away with her marketing ideas when she came over to Warner. She made up T-shirts, chocolate bars. She sent them to us for our account managers. At a Romantic Times convention in Reno, she gave away T-shirts, margarita jellybeans in margarita cups, key chains, a booklet of hilarious quotes from the mother in Some Girls Do. She wrapped everything up in a nice little package in cellophane."
Some Girls Do, the first in a series about three sisters, was put out in aggressive numbers, Kosztolnyik says, "especially for someone without a mainstream history." Kosztolnyik compares Banks to Jennifer Crusie, saying their books share the same fun, sassy, sexy, light-hearted approach. "Crusie also started as category romance," she notes. "We're definitely planning on building Leanne," Kosztolnyik adds. "She's a dynamic bundle of creative energy."
Jasmine Cresswell
"Coming Home" to Suspense
Back in 1999, long before the numbers 9/11 had etched themselves into the national consciousness, Jasmine Cresswell submitted a proposal to her editor at Mira for a novel called The Conspiracy. The book, which was released shortly before September 11, involves a hostage situation at an American school in India, and in it Cresswell mentions a terrorist conspiracy led by a man named Osama bin Laden.
"This was at a time when 99% of Americans had never heard of him," explains executive editor Marsha Zinberg, noting that she is "in awe" not only of Cresswell's complex plots, but also of her "political savvy" and ability to weave world events into her writing.
Much of Cresswell's appeal, says Zinberg, is her heroines, women who are often trying to live ordinary lives, and who are thrust into extraordinary circumstances and rise to the challenge. It's impossible not to root for these smart, sophisticated women, Zinberg adds—women as smart and sophisticated as Cresswell herself.
A native of Wales, Cresswell took a degree in modern languages and went to work as a junior political officer at the Foreign Office in London. After being transferred to Brazil, she met her husband and their marriage ultimately propelled her into a writing career. "Malcolm was getting promoted internationally at an incredible rate, and I was trailing along," recalls Cresswell, who took several additional degrees in history and philosophy before deciding to try her hand at writing. "Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead."
That was 20 years ago, and Cresswell has gone on to write more than 50 titles in series romance fiction, including historicals, contemporaries, Regencies and intrigue, for such publishers as Britain's Robert Hale, Berkley, New American Library and Harlequin.
It was in the mid-'80s that she first wrote for Harlequin Intrigue, a move she calls "like coming home." A fan of such classic romantic suspense novelists as Helen MacInnes and Mary Stewart, Cresswell says "it was wonderful to finally find a place I could write the sort of books I had really wanted to write since the beginning of my career."
To what does Cresswell attribute her success? Three things, she says, in addition to luck, which "definitely plays a part." The first is creating books that people want to read—"you can't maintain a long-term career unless you're producing stories that entertain readers." Second is good editors ("I've been really fortunate in that regard") and third, "I think you have to have a publishing house that offers you some support. In the current marketplace, it doesn't matter how wonderful your book is or how superbly it's edited, unless the marketing department gets behind you and the sales force is allowed to offer occasional incentives, you simply aren't going to get the shelf space that allows readers to discover you."
Additionally, Cresswell cites the need for a good agent. Four years ago, she moved from Maureen Rogers at Curtis Brown to Dominick Abel. "He's very well known in the mystery field," she explains, "and I just thought it would be interesting and helpful to have somebody whose approach to my writing and stories had a different slant."
Barbara Bretton
Appreciates Publishers' Support
When Barbara Bretton heard her publisher, Berkley Mass Market, had pegged her as one of its rising stars, she was very appreciative, but not without some perspective. "This star of mine," she tells PW, "has been rising for 20 years. It's been a very slow climb. But, when I first started my first editor asked me where I wanted to be in five years, and I said to still be writing and selling. So, as far as that goes, I'm very pleased."
Bretton has written more than 40 novels, the last nine for Berkley; there are some 10 million copies of her books in print. Her editor, Cindy Hwang, says now was the right time to push Bretton to the next level. "We've been very careful with Barbara about building her steadily rather than pushing her out too soon. We thought Shore Lights [May 2003] was the perfect book to break her out with; we moved her into the A position." She adds that, although Bretton generally has one new book a year, "to make a big push and keep up the momentum, we're publishing Girls of Summer in November."
"That kind of vote of confidence does wonders for a writer's occasionally shaky self-confidence," says Bretton. "With a publisher's support anything is possible. There's only so much an author can do by themselves."
Hwang notes that, in the hopes of attracting both romance and women's fiction readers, Berkley has given Bretton's new novels a consistent look, with more landscapes and no typical "romance clinches." The publisher has also given the novels step-back covers, the first time they've done so for Bretton.
"We want people to realize these books are bigger," says Hwang. "We mounted an extensive campaign to increase the sell-through. We advertised, posted material online and mailed chapters to our readers with notes telling them when the book was coming out. We wanted the numbers to grow and we knew the potential was there."
While Bretton's regular fans will enjoy the new novels, Hwang says Shore Lights and Girls of Summer will appeal to an even larger audience. "They're much more than romance. There are more characters, more plot twists," says Hwang. "What Barbara delivers beautifully is wonderful characters in believable scenarios. These are people you want to root for. But there's still enough romance there to keep her core romance audience happy."
Bretton admits to having high hopes for her Girls: "I'd like to creep onto the New York Times Extended Bestseller List. I want to expand my number of readers and explore more family issues." As far as her publisher is concerned, says Hwang, "We're not going to rest on our laurels or take Barbara for granted. We're going to keep pushing her more and more."
Catherine Anderson
Raising the Bar
Catherine Anderson began publishing in 1986, writing first for the Harlequin Intrigue series, then moving on to historical romances. Her seventh historical, Annie's Song (Avon, 1996), was her first book with editor Ellen Edwards, who she then followed to NAL (Edwards is executive editor). Despite her recent success—her April title, Only by Your Touch, hit both the New York Times extended list and the USA Today list—Anderson admits she continues to set the bar higher. "When I began writing years and years ago my idea of success was just to become published, even if no one paid me, just so someone would read my work," she says. "But there seems to be a transitional process for writers—each time you reach a goal, you've got a new one. You can become obsessive about the bestseller lists; if you hit the top 15 you want to hit #1."
That said, both Anderson and Edwards have their fingers crossed that Anderson's next effort, Blue Skies (Dec.), will crack the top 15 on the Times list. To that end, Edwards notes, an array of publicity is under way. "We're using the standbys: getting the books out there and prominently displayed, a little bit of advertising in USA Today, shelf talkers and an active Web site. Those are all traditional things, but for Catherine they're really working."
The performance of her April novel is promising. "Even in this difficult climate," Edwards reports, "Only by Your Touch has sold through with extraordinary success at all the chains." Anderson believes it will happen too. "I'm nudging at that list," she says, "although not quickly enough to suit me, of course."
NAL has developed a specific cover look for Anderson that shies away from the conventions of romance art. Edwards explains, "Her previous books had a real romance-y look, with more curlicues in the lettering and romance-sounding titles, and they had beautiful landscapes, sometimes with a couple, sometimes not. Now we're going with photographs rather than illustrations, simpler type and simpler titles that may sound a little more mainstream."
Anderson has created something of a subspecialty in writing about characters with physical handicaps. Blue Skies features a heroine with lattice dystrophy who has just regained her sight. The author explains that those suffering from this disorder can be operated on to restore sight, but the effects last only for 20—25 years, so they must decide when sight will be most crucial to them.
"There is love out there for everyone," she says. "I've done a book about a young woman who was a paraplegic, too. There are people who don't have perfect bodies, and they read romances and they're very excited when they read one about someone who has a condition similar to their own, but my able-bodied readers love them as well. We all have imperfections."
And why is this author, with 23 novels to her credit, considered a "rising star" by her publisher? Says Edwards, "She's a rising star partly because she came to NAL and we positioned her in a bigger way than she was being published before. We positioned her higher on our list. She got more distribution, more support to get the books out there, and it turned out that the market was ready for that."
Susan Grant
Charting Her Own Course
On the airways of life, there are passengers and there are pilots, and Susan Grant is a pilot, both literally and figuratively. "I'm not afraid to take risks in my day job," she says, and it's obvious that she approaches her writing with the same bravado.
In a mere three years, Grant has carved out a niche for herself with her Star series, which (so far) consists of three futuristic aviation romances focusing on a galactic royal family. She attributes her success to her willingness to self-promote (she sent her debut, Once a Pirate, to PW and scored a positive review); her capable heroines ("You can have a strong woman but it doesn't mean she has to swear and spit in a can. She can be tough but in a way that us ordinary women are"); and her determination to write what she knows. "I'm not writing to a trend," she says. "In a way, the trend has come around to me." This became apparent after her second book, The Star King (2001), garnered two PEARL awards and a RITA nomination.
Despite Grant's achievements, the futuristic romance field is still small, and getting readers to take a chance on her stories remains her publisher Dorchester's greatest challenge. The solution, editor Chris Keesler believes, lies in the packaging: "To some degree, we've tried to downplay the science fiction element, but it's a balancing act. We want it to be there and recognizable for the readers who are looking for it, but at the same time, we want it to be accessible to a broader range." Dorchester has therefore opted to give Grant's books a classic romance look (i.e., covers that feature well-muscled and unmistakably human men and cover copy that's virtually free of references to alien spaceships).
Another way that Dorchester has tried to increase Grant's exposure is by aligning her with writers like Christine Feehan. The Only One, an anthology featuring Feehan, Susan Squires and Grant, hit bookshelves this past May and reached #12 on the New York Times bestseller list.
Being a bestseller was never one of Grant's childhood dreams. The commercial airline pilot longed to be an astronaut and even attended the Air Force academy, but when she reached her 30s, she says, "the urge to create burst out." So she started writing and bringing chapters of her book to work. "The flight attendants would cluster on the jetway saying, 'Do you have chapter seven?' " she recalls. "That was my first indication that I might be able to do this."
In 1999, Keesler bought Once a Pirate off of RWA's contest circuit, and with the help of positive reviews and strong word of mouth, Grant's career began to take wing.
Currently, Grant is working on a six-book series titled The Adventures of Banzai Maguire, which features a USAF pilot who becomes frozen in time. Grant will write the first and last books in the series and help select the authors who will write the remaining four. The books will be released between April and September 2004.
Maureen Child
A Sucker for Happy Endings
When Maureen Child first started writing, a little over a decade ago, she admits, "I was actually looking for a job I could do and stay home with my kids. I just got lucky; this job turned into a great career."
An avid reader herself, Child was drawn to the romance genre because she's a fan. "This may sound corny, but I like the fact that the good guys always win—I like a happy ending," she explains. "For sad endings, I can read the newspaper."
Her first book, which she ruefully calls "a great book with a terrible title" (Run Wild My Heart), was sold to Berkley in 1990, and Child's career quickly took off. She went on to pen some 25 books for Berkley, and also wrote for Avon and Harper. She has written under various pseudonyms, including Ann Carberry, Sarah Hart and Kathleen Kane, and currently writes Silhouette Desires and mainstream contemporary romances for St. Martin's.
"I couldn't ask for better houses to write for," she notes. "They really support their authors and really get the books out there." A case in point is her new trilogy of stand-alone, single-title romances from St. Martin's: Finding You and Knowing You were released in May in a two-books-in-one promotion, followed last month by the third, Loving You. "I thought the idea was really clever," says Child. "Judging from the fan mail, it really got people talking and drew a lot of attention to my books."
Says St. Martin's Paperbacks associate publisher Jennifer Enderlin, "We decided to publish her first two in a way that really brought value to the consumer. Frankly, two books bound together with three covers should have pubbed at $9.99, but we decided to price the book at $5.99 and give consumers something they could take to the bank."
As for Child's leap from category romances to single titles, Enderlin explains that at the time St. Martin's decided to acquire her, "she'd written 60 or 65 category romances, and every time she wrote one, she was gaining more readers and debuting in the #1 spot on bestseller lists that track series romances. We felt that if these people are coming to her for series, surely they'll come to her for single titles."
Child's appeal, says Enderlin, "is that she writes a combination of warmth and family, but the books are very sexy at the same time. That's a rare combination and one that I think appeals to a lot of women."
And what does Child herself think has contributed to her success?
"I could sit here and say it's because I work hard at my job and write hard every day, but a lot of other writers do that, too," she muses. "Maybe a lot of it is luck, being in right place at right time, but I prefer to think I've earned it by putting in the time, by trying to grow a little bit and get a little better with every book."
Perhaps too, she says, her stories strike a chord with readers because they are "warm and family-centered," which can be particularly appealing "when times in the real world are ugly."
Overall, Child says, "it's been a terrific career. To be able to daydream every day and get paid for it—this is the greatest job in the world!"
