As a tribute to the wonderful Sara Craven who sadly died yesterday, I thought I'd just repost the tribute to this fabulous writer and friend . This is a post I wrote for the Pink Heart Society when I was one of their columnists and I was asked to write about a favourite category romance novel.
I'm happy to know that back in August 2007, I was able to show Sara this article and know how much it had thrilled her to read my tribute to her. So I'd like to share it again in her memory.
PINK HEART SOCIETY 30/08/2007
My favourite category romance? Uh – no - can’t do it. Just can’t do that. My one working brain cell has fizzled and fused just at the thought. I mean – one favourite category romance in an umpty-ump year lifetime of reading category romances . . .
No – sorry . . .
But I’ve been asked to write something. And here with my lovely brand new Pink Heart Society Columnist logo all sparkly and fresh, I want to do the job that Trish and Ally have given me – so I have to think of something to say.
OK then, I can tell you about a favourite category romance author. A writer whose books I snatched off the shelves if I found one in a bookshop in the days before – and after – I was first published. When I got my first rejection letter from Mills & Boon, the then Senior Editor Jacqui Bianchi advised me to read certain authors who she felt wrote the sort of book I could write - and then try again. I read those – and saw what she meant. They were romances I could write. But then I picked up a book by
Sara Craven – and I read the sort of romances I
wanted to write. Sara Craven’s romances reached out, grabbed by the heart and the brain and they just made me want to be part of the company who published her work.
Sara was one of Mills & Boon’s stars back then in 1984 – and she’s still one of the big names in the Modern/Presents line up today. Incredibly, she’s been writing for M&B since 1975. That’s an amazing 32 years of writing top class contemporary romances - and she’s still selling. I’ve lost count of just how many books she has actually written.
I have a collection of older Sara Craven novels – starting with
The Devil at Archangel in which Christina Bennett takes a job on an island in the West Indies where she meets the disturbing and charismatic Devlin Brandon. But having been warned to ‘Beware the Devil at Archangel’ - can she possibly trust him?
But the two books of Sara’s that really live in my memory, etched there from the moment I read them – so much so that I don’t even have to go and fetch my elderly and battered copies to remind myself about them – are the 1980 title
Fugitive Wife and the wonderful
Comparative Strangers that was published in 1988.
Fugitive Wife is singly responsible for my addiction to romances in which the couple are snowed in, trapped in an isolated cottage, cut off from anywhere else. In Sara’s story Bryony, a rich man’s daughter, young, (so young she’s fresh out of school!) falls for and marries the older, cynical, foreign correspondent Logan Adair, but the marriage fails and she runs to her Aunt’s isolated Yorkshire cottage to lick her wounds. She’s there all alone, determined to recover from the break down of her marriage when in the middle of a wild snowstorm another key turns in the lock, the front door opens,
. . and then the hall light clicked on and the words shrivelled and died on her lips as she looked down into the face of the man standing below her.
For a moment they stood in silence, staring at each other.
Then, ‘Hello, wife,’ said Logan with no expression in his voice whatsoever.
Oh dear – just writing that makes me want to go and read it all over again. I know what happens after that – how the snow comes down even more heavily and they are stuck in the small house together and they have to face the strains and the problems that wrenched them apart in the first place. And how Briony has to do some growing up – fast - both physically, as Logan insists that she shares his bed, and emotionally as she discovers the truth about her husband’s relationship with sophisticated Karen Wellesly.
But if you really forced me – at gunpoint – to choose just one, desert island, absolute favourite Sara Craven novel, then it would have to be the brilliant Comparative Strangers. It’s a book I bought twice, once in the original printing – and then sadly lost it. So I was overjoyed when in 1993, the story was reprinted as a Best Seller Romance and I was able to replace my missing copy with this new edition.
Comparative Strangers opens with Amanda, the heroine, on the verge of suicide, feeling she has nothing to live for because she has found her fiancé, Nigel in bed with another woman. She is rescued by Malory Templeton, Nigel’s older half-brother. And here’s where Sara Craven’s brilliance is shown – because to Amanda Malory isn’t the man who is so stunning that women fall at his feet as soon as they see him - to Amanda he has always been a ‘vague disappointment , because she supposed she’d been expecting an older edition of Nigel, with the same outgoing charm and rakish good looks.’ Compared with his younger half-brother, is shorter, paler - Amanda even sees him as ‘colourless’.
At first.
Because from the moment that Malory rescues her, stopping her from jumping off a bridge into a river, he takes charge of her life. When in order to save face in front of Nigel, Amanda declares that she is going to marry Malory instead, he reacts quite calmly, but with total control.
“It’s quite simple,’ he said. ‘You’ve told the world, through Nigel, that you’re going to marry me. So – marry me you will. ‘
From then onwards Malory grows in stature and strength on every page. Subtly, but irreversibly, the reader is brought to change her opinion of this quiet but charismatic man, just as Amanda comes to see his strength and his qualities, his understated sexual appeal – until, when Nigel reappears he seems flashy, immature and downright shallow in comparison. Virginal Amanda had never wanted to sleep with her first fiancé before her wedding night, but he responses to Malory are much harder to suppress.
And this leads to the two scenes that etched this book forever into my brain so that I can almost repeat them word for word. (A skill I discovered that at the recent RNA Conference Sophie Weston shares with me – as we share a love for this book.)
Unable to hold back any longer, Amanda decides to sleep with Malory , but innocent and naïve, she reaches for him touches him, ruining his careful control. As a result her first sexual experience is painful, disappointing and forces from her the stunned question ‘Is that - that – what all the fuss is about?’
There will never be another time, she declares.
But Malory has other ideas. A few days later, he sets himself to a determined and skillful seduction of Amanda, teasing all her senses, awakening all her untried sensuality, bringing her to her very first orgasm. And then, when she is still reeling . . .
. . .
The shock of finding herself deposited back on the sofa woke her sharply from her dream. His hands were brisk, almost businesslike as he ordered her dishevelled clothing, pulling her dress into place and reclosing the zip.
Then he got to his feet. He said quietly and evenly, ‘Now that – that – is what all the fuss is about. Goodnight Amanda.’
Perfect. I remember almost cheering out loud the first time I read it. It was the memory of that line that had me grabbing the book to buy it a second time when it appeared as a bestseller - in the treasured copy that Sara Craven signed for me as a fellow author and friend when I met her in person for the second time at the RNA one day Seminar in Bath about ten years ago.
Do you love Sara Craven's novels? Do you have a favourite or one that has a special memory for you? I'd love to share your memories of this lovely woman and her books.
I think there was a week that just went by - but a savage attack by chest infection meant that I wasn't that aware of much of it.
Charlie is peeved because he hasn't celebrated the fact that it's 7 years since he came to live with us so there will have to be some extra treats tonight. But to mark the occasion - here is the little blue-eyed boy who arrived here on November 28th 2010 and then there's the handsome purrson he's grown into. 
(Specially for Anne McAllister - he has also made sure his Advent Calendar is out and ready for the big countdown. He's made a list and checked it twice . . . )
