Answering questions 1

While I was away in London, I asked you to post questions you'd like me to answer about my time writing Romance to reach this 50th book and some of you very kindly did that. There are some great questions and I'll answer them as and when I can - but I promise I will answer them all.


Kate Hewitt asked a great one about how the books/plotlines/characters have changed over the years and that's one I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into but it's a meaty question so as my time is limited at the moment, I'm going to start with a slightly easier one:


juliemt asked:

The question I'd like to ask is this: You've been with the Presents line for quite some time now, but do you ever wake up with a story for Romance? And if you do, do you make it more "Presents" or forget about it?


Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while - and who've taken a look at some of the older covers I have posted - will have noticed that in the past I used to write for Romance as well as Presents. In the early days I had two different writing voices - and the truth is that I didn't really realise that! In fact I was just discussing this with my editor when I met up with her and I was saying how I didn't see the differences in those 'voices' because I didn't consciously write any differently. I just write - I write as the characters dictated, as their story had to be told. I wrote the books as they just had to be.


And then editorial divided them up into Presents and Romance when they went to America. In the UK they were simply published as M&B Romances. Take a look at my web site when wonderful Heather has finished uploading all the backlist (a major undertaking!) and you'll see how the books appeared in both lines right up until 1995 when, with No Holding Back, I moved into Presents full time.


These days the lines are not as different as they might seem. The Billionaires/Spaniards/Sheikhs etc of the Presents titles are the fantasy element that split Romances from Presents - in the same way that themes like Revenge and Blackmail can be toned down or toned 'up' to fit a different intensity. And I suppose that it's that intensity that now comes much more naturally to me.


The real truth is that it always did. I had a tendency to tone it down which is why the books ended up in Romance. When I realised I could - and should - let rip then for me there was No Holding Back and no looking back. I write more naturally - more happily and am more fulfilled as a writer working on those emotionally intense themes and conflicts.

Another thing - another word - that came up when I was talking to my editor is important for me as a writer - and that word is 'ambiguity'. I'll come back to this when I talk about the dedication to my 50th book - but I have alway always loved abiguous heroes - one's where it's in doubt whether they are the hero or the villain. And that needs a Presents level of intensity
and theme to carry it off.



It's not about sex either - though yes Presents/Modern are the most explicit of the lines - why else would they be called M&B Sexy in Australia? But it's not writing sex that makes a Presents novel it's passion - and passion can be there in spades without any action between the sheets - or anywhere else for that matter.


So, to answer your question Julie - I don't think I think in terms of anything but Presents plots these days. Of course when the seed of a story slips into my head and plants itself in the fertile soil there, then just as a newly created embryo has the potential to be male of female, this always has the potential to be a Modern/Presents or a Romance. But after that it's how I feed it, how I nurture it, how I develop it that turns it into the novel it will become.

I suppose that this part of it is something like the way that Donald Maass looks at writing in his Writing the Breakout Novel - I look at my plot to see how much I can get out of it. How can I make this more intense? How can I make things matter more to my hero and heroine? How can I increase the Emotional Pace of the story - or, as my dear friend the wonderful Michelle Reid always says 'How deep can I dig the hole - and how the heck can I get myself out of it?' So if I start off with a seed that could be a plot then I work on it and add to it and intensify it until it just has to be a Presents for me to write it. Writing for today's Romance line is a very different sort of skill - still deeply emotional but not with that intensity - heart wringing rather than heart wrenching. I truly admire the authors who can do that so well.


Some stories appear like melodramas - complete with near pantomime 'heroes' coming close to twirling their moustaches and snarling savagely - to my mind, you don't need to do this sort of posturing and pantomiming - there are enough emotional conflicts in life to fill a hundred Presents novels and then more.


When I started out as a writer I didn't realise there were these distinct lines - because, as I aid, in the UK there wasn;t the split between them. And I always enjoyed the good writing that went into all the books I chose - But I did know which books I preferred on an emotional level - the ones that reached out and grabbed me. They were written by the people I now know as the Presents authors and I'm so proud to be one of them.