Ok, I’m loaded now. Got lots of coffee. I like to do my web stuff at a coffee shop here locally so this is good.
Now, as to when I started writing. I was about 6 and wrote a play called “Love”. My best friend was a guy named Dickie who lived a few houses down. Of course, when I explained this to him and that we were boyfriend and girlfriend in the play and got married, he was horrified. I ignored him and my sisters and I put on the play instead and made 20 cents. Now, I wrote occassionally after that. However, I didn’t get serious again until my late 20’s. At this time, I had my MBA and CPA and was raising three children on my own. (Well, I have to admit my Mom helped some during these years.) Yes, I was a driving, hard professional woman. A girlfriend of mine and I were talking and got onto the subject of romance novels. I was in love with them and so was she, so we decided to try our hand. We’d even outlined a book together. However, we both got promoted and went our separate ways. However, I still entertained this dream. So in my early 30’s I actually started writing again. The first group I ever joined was the RWA chapter in North Carolina, which was where I was located at the time. I also met my husband there, and he encouraged me to keep writing.
So I did. However, it was always part time and always through a heavy work schedule, children, natural disasters and everything else. In fact, as an aside, we were in the Virgin Islands working there for two years when hurricane Marilyn devastated the island. We didn’t have power for four months, telephone for over 8 months and never got the cable back before we left. Anyway, I would charge my laptop I’d had up at work then come home and write in the dark. It saved my sanity, that’s for sure. And I completed my first manuscript this way. We moved to Colorado after that–for my job. Let’s face it, I made MUCH more than my husband, but he’d transfered into the national guard long before that and was full time national guard here. When 9-11 hit, he deployed to Afghanistan with the 19th Special Forces group. I was a high-powered consultant at that time. Our son was about 10. There was no way I could travel. My husband and I talked about it. I’d had some money saved up. We decided it was time for me to do what I wanted full-time. Spend time with my son (which I never seemed to have enough time to do with the other children), enjoy being a mother, and write full time.
So I did. It was hard psychologically to adjust. I’d been so driven before. However, it was the best thing I’d ever done. I’m healthier and happier now, and I LOVE my life.
Now, action vs chicky-type romance. You know I think the biggest difference is that with action, it HAS to be suspenseful, some kind of external physical conflict. There an element of intrigue and danger that must be present and I write this stuff as detailed and gritty as needed for the book to be believable. You don’t HAVE to have that in chicky books–but you do need some kind of conflict. However, the similarities are in the characterizations I think. Knowing their emotional angsts and challenges. Knowing them deep enough to have the reader (and you as the writer) care. I love rich characters. And I think this is what makes ‘women’s’ fiction so powerful.
Well, hope that’s enough for now! Talk to you tomorrow!
Lise
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