Fearless Fiction Podcast

Bernadette: Hello and welcome to Fearless Fiction, I'm your host, Bernadette Walsh, and I am so pleased today to introduce my guest, Marie Force. Marie is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 100 romance novels. Marie writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and erotic romance.

Her latest title is In the Air Tonight. So Marie, welcome to Fearless Fiction, I'm so glad you could join me. How are you? 

Marie: Thanks for having me.

Bernadette: Oh, well, I'm very, very excited. And let's just jump in with, I mean, 100 novels. When do you sleep? Maybe we could start a little bit about your writing journey. What made you start? What made you want to start writing? And why did you choose romance? 

Marie: Well, I, the romance part was easy, because I wrote, I write what I like to read. And so I grew up with a mom who liked to read Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts, and we used to, you know, trade books back and forth. And I always thought it would be fun to do.

I was a big fan of Danielle Steele back in the early part of my life. And I thought, oh, God, that would be so fun. And it is.

And so when my mom, who got me into reading and to romance, became ill in 2003, with pancreatic cancer, I sort of felt a sense of urgency to get moving on this maybe someday goal. And I was able to give her a little bit of my first book to read before she passed. So she's missed this whole thing. But I sort of also feel like she's sending me all these good ideas. 

Bernadette: I'm sure she's reading wherever she is. It's so funny, because that kind of echoes my, my journey as well. I was always a big reader. My mom used to read romance. She also was from Ireland. So she read a lot of Irish authors. So I got exposure to that as well. But I always talked about writing, you know, as a someday, but it's hard to think that you yourself could really be a writer, right? Like you almost think writing is this mysterious thing or gift.

And you know, I'm only an ordinary person. So what do I have to say that's an interest to anyone? And I think it took something like, you know, when is the time I turned 40? Right? What if not now, when? And that's when, you know, being pushed by my husband, actually, I started writing and, and my first book was awful. Hopefully yours was not awful.

And so when you decided to start writing, like, what was your next step? 

Marie: I had a book in mind for a lot of years before I actually started making notes. And, and when you talk about awful, like, I go back and look at those early notes. And you know, the ideas that I had for this book, and it's so funny to look at with perspective of 18 years later, but that book actually did end up getting published many years later, a much smaller, leaner version of the same story that I but I learned, like all the big lessons with Treading Water, which was my first book.

And remarkably enough, it's still one of my readers’ favorites, and I sign copies of it every week. And so I it's funny how that book is still with me very much with me present in my daily in my daily life. So but I learned so much with that first book.

And a lot of the mistakes I made with that book, I never made again. And I learned a lot about like killing your darlings, as they say, the things that you think the book cannot possibly survive without, well, yes, they can. So yeah, like, I just dove into that first book.

And it took me, I was working full time, I had two young kids, all the usual stuff that everyone has. And it took me almost a full year from the time I really dove into it. And then I wrote the second book in that series in 90 days.

So I feel like I went through like boot camp with the first book and then came out of it ready to rock and roll. Right. 

Bernadette: But even one year for your first first book is not that long, really, especially if you hadn't written before.

I mean, I have people, you know, in writing groups and people you meet, like, it seems like they're working on their same book for like five years. So one year, sounds like a long time, but it's not a tremendously long time. 

Marie: No, that was that was just for the first draft, too.

And like, I messed around with that book for years, like I finished it in 2005. And it wasn't published until the end of 2011. So I messed around with that book for a lot of years before it ever saw the light of day with readers.

And it was a much better book when it was published than it was when I first finished it. So I just mean like a year to finish that first draft. Everything is much quicker now.

But it has been for a long time. But it really that was a process of learning how because I was a professional writer before this, but not for fiction. So I've always been a writer and editor and all of that.

So I thought, oh, you know, that will translate. Well, it's a whole different as you know, it's a whole different process, with point of view and dialogue and moving a story forward and timing and all the things that go into it. So, yeah, I mean, it was a big, long process, really the first book.

Bernadette: Right. And did you feel like you almost had to unlearn some of the techniques you used in your whatever your other type of writing was, say business writing? I know for myself, I'm a lawyer, right? So I think, oh, you know, of course, I came into this like, oh, I could write a book. I write briefs. I write, you know, offering documents like contracts. So I can you know, I work with words. That's that's my toolbox. And that's why my first book was so awful, because it sounded like a contract. And I really had to relearn like, how can I talk like a normal person? 

Marie: Well, I do remember my friend who's now my full time assistant said to me when I was writing the first book, she was reading it as I wrote it. And she said to me, like, you know, people when they talk, they use contractions. So maybe you should put that in the dialogue. And I'm like, duh, you know, so like, I had to learn everything, from scratch in that way. But I was also a newspaper reporter so I learned to write lean, you know, I write like I'm not big on huge, long descriptions and descriptive paragraphs and stuff like that. I'm much more about the getting down to the business of it. Like with the I'm a big fan of writing dialogue.

And I love the character interactions and stuff like that. And I don't like long, descriptive passages, like I avoid them like the plague. So in that sense, I still write very much the way I did as a reporter.

Which is kind of funny to think about, because I did that for two years back in the late 80s. But yet those that process has stayed with me.

Bernadette: Right. And that's actually what modern readers want in a lot of ways, the more descriptions are out of favor, I think. 

Marie: Right. And it's because we're all of the Twitter generation and the Thread generation where you've only got so many characters to get a point across.

And so it's got to be easily digestible. And so I but I've always written like that. I never have had as a reader, patient for those huge blocks of, you know, just prose.Like my eyes fall back in my head. And I skip them a lot of times. And when I'm reading my own stuff back for editing and proofing and stuff, if I see a huge block of text, it always gets broken up at that point.

Bernadette: Right. But then that puts pressure on your words to really do the work. Especially in a romance, because you're establishing a lot of different things. You're establishing your main heroine, her character, her thoughts, her dreams, and then how she interacts with this hero or how and how whatever you're writing and then all the other things that go on.

So writing concise, and I also suffer from writing concise again, probably because of my day job. So I also sometimes write short and I have to struggle to get to a certain word count. But it means that your words have to be that much more powerful.

And so for you, how do you do that? How do you write in a concise way but make sure that the punch is there in terms of the attraction between your characters and the plot in general? 

Marie: I use a lot of dialogue in my books that really kind of delivers the, I don't know, I really feel like that's like where the punch is. And of course, you know, the plotting to like in the romantic suspense novels, there's a lot of bendy twisty plot stuff that keeps the pages turning and, and the pacing is very different in those books than it is in like, just a straight contemporary romance. The romantic suspense there's a lot more urgency in the plot.

So that also allows us to move the story forward. My books are very character driven, versus versus plot driven, big emphasis on family dynamics, whether it's found family, work family, the family you're born into, or the one you create for yourself, like those, like kind of like my core story, if you will. And so those elements are present in all of my books.

And so in that sense, there's a familiarity for me in writing them, even though the stories are all different, the characters are different. 

Bernadette: Okay. And so you've now done, I think, what a lot of agents and all the publishing gurus tell you not to do, which is, you've skipped around genres, you've stayed within romance, but you're writing in very different genres of romance.

And so you're breaking some rules there, Marie. How did you do that? How did you have the courage to do that? And what has been the fallout or, or have you had there been no fallout? 

Marie: I haven't had any fallout. And I really don't think of it as genre hopping, because it's all romance.

I think of genre hopping, it's being like, you know, writing straight mystery, and then writing a romance, and then writing a historical fiction. And, you know, and it makes it hard for readers to figure out who you are and what you write. There are central themes running through all my books that readers can, if you like one series of mine, you'll find a lot of the similar elements in another series, even though it's a totally different situation, totally different cast, totally different location, whatever.

I think it's the core story that comes through. You know, in my suspense books there's a found family in that, in that group of people. And then in my Gansett Island series, it starts out with a family, and it expands into friends and cousins.

But they're all connected by their fact that they live on this remote island. So there's always like something, there are central themes that apply across. And I don't really think of it as genre hopping, because it's within the same, it's all romance, in a sense.

Bernadette: So then you've been able to, you know, people who like one, a romantic suspense, do you find readers also try your other novels as well? 

Marie: Yeah, yeah, I definitely have. I have a lot of readers like that, read everything. And then I have others who are very focused on certain series and, but it just depends.

I don't feel like that they're turned off by one thing or the other at all. Like, I feel like they, you know, they like what I do, they tend to like most of it, if they, you know, if they can venture into 100 books at this point. 

Bernadette: Right, right. Well, that is music to my ears, because I also genre hop as well. Well, what I call genre hopping, but I probably is a little more, you know, I write a lot of women's fiction. I started off contemporary romance, but my women's fiction, it's so hard, like, what is the line between contemporary romance and women's fiction? You know, I think there's always a lot of romance. I mean, that's part of a woman's life. So the romantic relationship is definitely a part of it. But the focus may be a little different.

So I've done that. I've also done paranormal romance. So I did all the things that they tell you not to do.

So I feel very, very good that I'm now in good company with you, Marie, because you've obviously had a lot of success. 

Marie: Well, I will say one thing. One thing I'll add, though, is I do think of paranormal as being very different from, I mean, all of my books are straight contemporary.

I have two historical romances that are, I kind of think of as off to the side, but all of my books are contemporary romance. It's just whether there's an element of suspense or erotic elements or whatever. I do think of paranormal as being, would be a complete departure from that.

So in that way, I would say that's a genre hop. Because, I mean, I find that readers either love paranormal or they hate it. And there's not a lot in the middle.

And I'm one of those people who, I think I was born without the suspension of disbelief button. So paranormal and fantasy, it goes right over my head. It just doesn't even register with me.

I can't read it. I don't watch it. It doesn't hit me at all.

So I think it just depends, too, what interests you and what you like to read and how you can bring that into your books. But the more diverse that your genres are, the harder it is to connect with a broad audience. I will say that.

That is definitely true. You mentioned that agents and editors talk about that, and it's very true. If the books are all wildly different from each other, then it does make it difficult to bond with an audience.

Bernadette: Right, right. Well, and I also think people have preconceptions, especially you're right about paranormal romance or paranormal books. I think my books are more like paranormal women's fiction.

And so a lot of my readers will say, oh, I love all your books, but I haven't read your witch books. And I'm like, you should give it a try. Because in my view, a lot of it is, it really is about the character, as you said.

They're about women, a lot of women in midlife. So there's a lot of themes that go throughout it. But let's move a little bit into your publishing journey.

And I'm going to apologize to everyone in advance. My husband is coming home. My two dogs are barking like crazy.

So you may hear stuff in the background, but we're going to just power through. So you had started off, well, let's talk about your first book, how you got that published, and where you are now in your publishing journey. 

Marie: So my first book was the seventh, the first published book was the seventh one I wrote.

And it was with Sourcebooks in 2008. And I was with Harlequin for a time, I was with Berkeley for a time, I was with, I did two books with Kensington. So, you know, kind of have been around the publishing landscape a little bit.

And also, in 2010, self-published my first book in November 17 of 2010, I published one of my single titles. And within six months, that move had changed my whole life. So I was lucky that in the sense that all the books that hadn't sold back in the day, when there was only one way to get to readers, were not only finished, but they were polished, because I had continued to work on them for all the years that I tried to get published.

And they were ready to go. So when the door to KDP swung open, I was in a really good spot, because I had a bunch of books ready to go, including the first three books in my Gansett Island series, which has gone on to sell like, that's my biggest selling series. You know, it's been a juggernaut.

It's changed my life. I can't even, in so many ways. And then my Fatal series, which was originally with Harlequin.

And, you know, also that series too has been really big for me. And then the follow on First Family series, which is self-published. And that is now my biggest seller.

So it's like, it's just been a little bit of everything. And In the Air Tonight, which came out in September, is with Blue Box Press, which is an amazing group of women who are dynamic powerhouses. And I really have enjoyed that process with them.

In the Air Tonight is a slightly different book than I normally write. It's got like a mystery thriller element to it. There is romance and there are trigger warnings on this book. So make sure if you want to check it out. But that one is a little bit of a departure for me. And so it was fun to do it with Blue Box and to do a single title for the first time in five years, because I'm like the series girl.

And sometimes I feel chained to them. So to do something different was really fun. 

Bernadette: Well, sometimes to do something different, you need to like clean your palate a little bit.

So it sounds like maybe that's what it was for you. In terms of series then, how many books do you typically have in a series? Like what do you think is the sweet spot in terms of series length? 

Marie: Well, I have trouble finishing series. I have one series that's at 27 books and going strong.

I have one that's at 24 books and going strong. I finished one at 15 books. I finished one and two of them at five books.

I finished one at eight books, but that one's getting another one five years after I finished it. So I don't know. And then I have another one that's at four books, but that could go on forever.

So yeah, I don't know. So it just depends. It depends on like my readers are so crazy about Gansett Island still at 27 books.

I can't seem to quit them. So sometimes I'd like to because there's other stuff I want to be doing, but I've also learned the value of giving the people what they want. And that's what they want from me.

And so after a while you start to figure like, okay, I could go off and do this, this and that. And it would be really fun and this and that and the other thing. But the readers that come back time and time again, they want this certain thing from me.

And as long as I keep giving it to them, obviously with variations in all the books, I mean, none of them are exactly, they're not similar. They're just, well, some of them are, but there's one series, my Fatal First Family series has the same couple in every book. And that's kind of an interesting story because when I was first starting out and I wanted to write this series, my editor at the time told me it's simply not done in romance.

And I have proven otherwise. So, and it's been a juggernaut. That series has just been unbelievable for me.

So, and it continues to be. Even with a spinoff series now, I did 16 books in the original and now I'm at eight books in the follow-up series. And it continues the same couple, 24 full-length books and two novellas.

And the readers, that's the one that is my, that's my biggest series right now.

Bernadette:  How old are they now? Have they aged? 

Marie: No, they're, it's the whole 24 books covers just over two and a half years of their lives. 

Bernadette: Oh, wow. Okay. 

Marie: Yeah. Because every book picks up almost exactly where the last one left off, which is why, like, you know, she's a DC homicide detective.

He's a politician and he bullies, he starts off as a chief of staff to a Senator and ends up, the Senator is murdered and he's tapped to take his place. And so like, you know, here he is now on this up and coming political journey with a girlfriend slash Beyonce slash wife, who is the homicide commander in Washington, DC, in the Metropolitan Police Department. So those two careers could fuel a hundred books, you know? 

Bernadette: Yeah. And do you have to do a lot of research? So do you have any background in your real life about that or did you have to do, do you have to do a lot of research for these, for these books? 

Marie: So I was just telling the story to somebody today that when I was a little kid, so just in two and a half years, his trajectory, and it's believable. The way that it goes down is really crazy, but he ends up going all the way. And I was taking books out of the library about US presidents when I was like nine years old, like the biggest, world's biggest nerd.

I've always been super interested in the presidency, in politics, in media, in all the things. And so, and I worked in DC for, for a company in DC for 16 years. So I was, some of it was a big chunk of that was remote, but I was in and out of DC all the time, you know, very tuned into what was going on there.

And then I feel like everything, like I was a journalism poli sci double major. I have a master's in public administration. I feel like all those things, I worked for 16 years for accountants who did financial management and government.

I feel like all those things were like leading to this series, you know? So at the crime element, I had to bring in, I have a police officer, a retired captain from a local police department who was a homicide detective who helps me with the police details. And then of course, you know, there's a ton of resource in all of them for that, that portion of it. But all those other things, I feel like were preparing me without me even knowing it to write this series.

Bernadette: Well, everything does, right? I mean, really what everything in your life, I think, prepares you. And it, because it influences what interests you, right? Where your, where your eye goes. And so, you know, I think where sometimes people get into trouble is they're like, romances in Iceland are hot right now. I'm going to write a romance in Iceland, even though I hate cold weather, I know nothing about Iceland. And I actually don't even like romance, but I want to sell a lot of books.

Like, that's not, that's not going to be natural, right? You're not going to create a, maybe you'll create a great book, but chances are you won't. So I think like people who are successful write what's passionate to them, because, you know, you have to spend more time with this book than anyone else. 

Marie: I also find that if everybody's doing something, I, it's the last thing I want to do.

That's always been my, and it's not necessarily like even something I actively think about. It's just like, if something is all the rage, like I tend to be like, where's the opposite pole of that? So I just, I like doing my own thing. I don't like, you know, like I have, I hear like all this stuff about tropes and of course, you know, I'm not opposed to using that and marketing and all that stuff, but I fear that tropes makes, starts to make romance all sound alike, you know? And I, I don't know.

That's sort of a little concerning to me. 

Bernadette: Well, that's why a lot of people are down on romance, right? A lot of people like, why don't you read, you know, I've heard this from people like, oh, why don't you write a real book? Well, okay. 

Marie: People who are down on romance, people who are down on romance have never read one.

Bernadette: That’s my experience. I mean, they think they know what it is. 

Marie: Yeah, exactly.

Bernadette: They think they know what it is. Exactly. And I think romance has evolved.

Like, romance is a little different from, you know, the books I used to steal off my mother's nightstand. Like it has evolved. It has.

Marie: It’s so much more than people think it is. And I mean, I've often had like, especially even some of the guys in my life who will be like, razzing me about, you know, my sexy books and all this stuff. And then I'll challenge them to read one of them.

And this recently just happened, actually, a friend of my brother-in-law's came to my reader weekend this year, and he was his first real submersion into my world. And he went home and read one of the books and wrote to me and was like, wow, okay, I get it now. So yeah, and it was just like a totally different experience than he expected.

And I think that's true whenever a lot of times people say some really dumb stuff. And I mean, I can name a few people who I see once in a while who are just always have something stupid to say to me, you know? And it's like, it just doesn't even bother me anymore. I've been writing romance since 2003.

So what's the math on that? Like 19 years or something like no, I don't know. 

Bernadette: 21 years now. 21 years.

Marie: Yeah. So I don't even defend it anymore. It's just like, you know, anybody who's going to disparage it doesn't understand it and doesn't know, you know, like, why wouldn't you want to write about love and hope and optimism and all the things that people want in their life? You know, everybody who's disparaging it is after the same things that happen in a romance novel.

So, you know, it's ironic to me that people think they know what it is. And then when they venture in, they're like, oh, okay. Wow.

Okay. Way more than I expected. I'm like, you think? 

Bernadette: Right. Right. Now, in terms of your marketing, maybe you could talk a little bit about what you do in marketing and how your approach to marketing has maybe changed, you know, since you first started to now. 

Marie: Well, I'm the rare author that really likes the marketing.

Like that, it makes me very weird among my peers because most of my author friends hate it. I love it. It's something that I used to do in my day job.

And so like a lot of the stuff, like I was my old job, like I was there when we developed our first website, you know, so it's like I've been doing stuff like I don't do my own website, but I mean, you know, I've been involved in stuff like that for 25 years, you know, so to be able to do it for myself is super fun. And I'm big into Facebook ads. I'm big into, you know, Facebook posting and Instagram.

And I like Threads. I haven't been on Twitter in 10 years, but I'm, I'm very, I really like Threads. Threads is what, what Twitter was before it lost its way.

And so I just do all that stuff. And, you know, Facebook ads are a big part of my, my daily life. And I have some Amazon ads too. I seem to do better with the Facebook ads than the Amazon ads right now. So I go back and forth. I also have some books in Kindle Unlimited.

Some are wide, some, I have a booming business with my own store, selling paperbacks from there every day. And now also eBooks and audio books and bundles and all those things that are new to the store in the last year, which has been really amazing. And one of the things I'm doing too, that is I'm releasing all my new books a week early in my store.

And one of the things I love about that is I get customer data from that, that I wouldn't have from, that I don't have from the retailers, you know, so I've sold something like 14 million books and most of those were on Amazon, but I don't have access to any of that customer data. And now I do. So that has been really amazing.

Bernadette: Yeah. And a lot more people are doing, well, I guess as the technology improves, it's easier for people to do it. 

Marie: Well, I've had the store for 10 years, so it's not new to me, but what some of the things we're doing with it now with what we needed and what eventually happened was a safe delivery method for the digital books.

And once BookFunnel developed that, my objection initially was that when you bought a book from BookFunnel, you also got the EPUB file attached to an email. That was a no-go for me. I have so, you know, we have so much trouble with piracy that I'm not going to hand somebody, I don't know, a digital copy of my book and hope that they're going to do the right thing with it.

So once that was addressed, I was all in with selling eBooks and audio from my store. 

Bernadette: That’s great. That's great.

Bernadette: Hello, and welcome to Nice Girls Reading Naughty Books. I'm your host, Bernadette Walsh, and I'm so pleased to introduce my guest this evening, Kristen Higgins. Kristen is the New York Times bestselling author of over 12 contemporary romances.

Her books have been published by Harlequin and have sold over 1 million copies. Kristen lives in a small town in Connecticut and loves to write books about relationships, since the search for love and security is one of the driving forces of life. Her titles include, Read a Winner, Too Good to Be True, and Waiting on You.

So welcome, Kristen, to Nice Girls Reading Naughty Books. I'm so pleased you could join me. How are you? 

I’m great, Bernadette.

How are you? 

Bernadette: I’m good, I'm good. Well, I'm a huge, huge fan, as I told you before the show started, and I listened to your presentation at my local RWA, and also I listened to that very famous speech you gave at the RWA conference last year. So I'm just beyond thrilled that you could join me today.

Kristan: So thanks so much. Thanks. My pleasure.

Bernadette: Now maybe you could talk a little bit about your writing journey. How long have you been writing professionally, and how did you get started writing romance? 

Kristan: Well, you know, it's not the most dramatic story, but like every writer, I was a great reader. You know, I was a very appreciative reader of romance since I was 13 years old and stole my first romance from my grandmother.

And I, you know, I just, I loved to read. I was an English major in college, and I always did have a job as a writer of some kind. So I wrote PR copy and advertising copy, and I worked for a museum, and, you know, writing exhibit copy.

And then I had my kids, and I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. So I thought, you know, I wonder if I could sell a book, a romance book, because I figured that's the genre I really know. And so I gave it a shot, and I started with a historical, because I thought, oh, I love to read historicals, and, you know, so I'll just, you know, make up some history. Surely it doesn't have to be accurate or anything. And I never finished that book. It was really, it was so bad.

It was so, like looking back at it now, it's so hilariously depressing and melodramatic. It's about an impoverished Irish heroine who makes a deal with a rich Protestant duke because her family is starving to death during the potato famine. So, you know, really not that fun to read and really horrible to write.

In fact, so I stopped writing it. I said, what are we doing? Patty died today. What do you do? Bad news, little one.

But I think I'm in love. You know what I mean? That's very funny. So I thought, how about a romantic comedy? You know, everybody loves to read a book that will make them laugh.

So I went to a conference, a writer's conference. I think it was the New England Romance Writers Conference, and everyone was writing books about very remarkable people, like, you know, dukes and duchesses and billionaires and Navy SEALs and vampires and, you know, really talented, wealthy people. And I thought, well, I'm none of those things.

You know, I don't think I could pull anything like that off. But what about a book like all of us here? You know, like just about an ordinary person who has a job and a family and, you know, is yearning to find the right person and, you know, make it funny. So I came up with the idea for my first book, Fool's Rush In.

And so that was the first book that I finished, and it took me about two years after, you know, I started it to find an agent, and I found an agent, and she sold it to HQN, which is a division of Harlequin, and I've been with them ever since. That's great. And now so many people have copied you.

Bernadette: Like, do you consider your romances small-town romances? Because I know that that's why I was at RWA, I think, a couple years ago whenever it was in New York, and that was, like, you know, a theme. That's what we want to see, small-town romances. Do you think they were kind of copying you because your books have been so successful? 

Kristan: Well, I don't think so, no.

I mean, I think that everything goes around and comes around. So if, you know, if, I don't know, vampires aren't selling today, they'll be selling again in a few years. And if small-town romance is hugely popular right now, it might not be in a couple of years.

But I was kind of unusual, I think, in the market at the time because everything was chiclet. It was sex in the city, and it's knockoffs. And so everyone had, you know, wrote for a magazine, and everyone had Jimmy Choos and drank Cosmos and stuff.

And I thought, you know, that wasn't what I was interested in writing. And so I think the timing was right more than anything. Robin Carr had Virgin River, and my first book came out in the same year.

And they just kind of struck a nerve. I don't know if it was just Robin and me who were writing the small-town romances. It kind of felt like that at the time, and Jill Shalvis, you know.

But I felt like, well, you don't have to live in a small town to appreciate one, and you don't have to live in the city to appreciate a book set there. So I do think that the successive writers like Robin and Jill and myself show publishing what readers respond to. And it's always readers setting the tone and setting the pace.

Like, we like this book. We'd like to see more of them. And then I think those kind of books are acquired.

So it's really in response to the readers that the market changes. And that's what's so great, you know, that the readers have all the control. We want to see more of this, and that's what comes out.

And the self-publishing has definitely affected that too. There's so much to choose from now. 

Bernadette: Now, do you feel that because it was something that you knew so well, it helped you to really develop these stories? Because in some ways you didn't have to research what it was like to live in a small town, because you grew up in a small town, and I believe you live in one right now.

Kristan: I live in my hometown, yep. And, you know, I definitely do think that if you don't know your subject, then you'd better learn it quick. Because I think readers can appreciate when something feels honest and real, and they can also sniff out a fake.

So you can't just say, well, I'm going to write a small town romance, because they're selling really well. You have to really understand what a small town is like, the pros and the cons, the complexities, you know, the wonderful things about living in a small town. So, yeah, I wrote about a small town because that's what I knew and that's what I loved.

And, again, I really wanted to write a story for the average woman, you know, because my take on the average woman is that she's extraordinary, but it's not maybe so noticeable right away. She's not Paris Hilton. She's not an opera singer or a movie star or a billionaire or a senator.

You know, she's just us. And that was such a joy for me was to write these extraordinary stories of ordinary people. And it was just really gratifying to give someone like a diner owner on the coast of Maine this wonderful love story that, you know, that kind of like becomes so much bigger than like just a couple in the town, because every couple has a great story, you know.

Bernadette: Right. Well, it's funny that you say ordinary people. I don't know if you've read Alison Dermot, but I think she's a fairly well-known Irish-American writer.

And, for me, she's really, when I first started writing, I almost wanted to emulate her because she wrote about where she grew up. She grew up on Long Island. She was older than I am, but she wrote about a certain generation.

And that's what I've also done. All my books are about typically Irish-Americans and people living either in Long Island or Ireland, where I have a lot of ties, because that's what I knew. And I actually tried, when I came home from that RWA conference, I tried to write a small-town romance, and I got about, I think, 25 pages in, because I don't know anything about living in a small town, you know what I mean? Like, I originally was born in Brooklyn, and, you know, Long Island has trees, but it's not a small town.

And so, you know, that's when I was like, well, this isn't really working for me. And I actually read something that Alison McDermott had in an interview, and she had said, you know, I like to write about Irish-American people because I know what their houses look like. I know how they turn a phrase. And so she can get the outside right, and then she could really focus on, you know, digging into the character. And so that's what made me say, okay, you know, even though I think my life is not all that interesting, you know, it may be interesting to somebody else. And like I said, I can get the outside right.

So I think there's a real benefit to writing about what you know and also focusing on the ordinary person and making them show how they're extraordinary. So, you know, that's one of the things I love about your books as well. And another thing I really love about your books, and I love the Blue Heron series, and we'll talk about that in a little bit, but I love your heroes.

You know, so often, you know, in a romance, the hero is almost like a cardboard cutout, right? Like they're what the heroine kind of projects onto them. But your heroes to me really feel like, you know, full three-dimensional people, and they also like tend to be outsiders, I think. So maybe you could talk about, you know, how you come up with your heroes.

Kristan: Well, thank you, first of all. That's really flattering. You know, I think that one of the ways that my heroes feel three-dimensional is because I really do fall in love with them.

You know, I mean, I really think about them. I mean, I've heard authors who say like, oh, I write a book in a month, and I think, oh, my God, I could never do that. You know, I can barely do two books a year.

And I think part of that is because I live in the skin of my characters, and it takes some time to do that. So I could say like, okay, I want like an alpha male hero. But what does that even mean? You know, is that a job? Is that, you know, a guy who's, you know, doesn't talk a lot or something like that? And then I ask like, well, why is he like that? And how did he get to be like that? And what's his family like? And what's his past romance history like? And so I really try to develop them.

And as far as them being outsiders, you know, I was kind of going through the list of heroes in my mind. And, you know, sometimes they are, you know, that they are the guy who comes to town. And my heroine is usually the person who's in the town.

And sometimes they're both, you know, like I did a friends to romance love story with Trevor and Chastity where they've known each other their whole lives, and they both grew up in that town. Faith and Levi in the Blue Heron books have known each other since third grade. They're both very entrenched in the community.

But we all have that feeling sometimes of being the outsider, whether we were, you know, we're in the bosom of our family and town, or whether we're really someone who's completely new to the environment. You have this feeling of being other and being separate. And that's a big part of romance, I think, is finding the person who makes you feel a part of things and who brings you home, you know.

So it's very fun to write those kind of scenes where they kind of circle each other thinking, you know, is this what I want, not just in the person but like in the pantheon or, you know, the environment of this character, you know. So for example, in Until There Was You, we have Posey who's kind of like grounding Liam and kind of pulling him back from where he's been and emotionally and geographically and everything. And he has to think like, is this the life that I want? And at first the answer is, I don't know, I'm not sure, you know.

And then, of course, being a romance, the answer becomes yes, absolutely. 

Bernadette: Yeah, no, like I said, I love the way that your heroes, like I said, are three-dimensional. And as you said, you kind of know in a romance where things are going to wind up.

And that's the great thing about a romance, it's the journey of getting there. And I also like your heroines because they're the good girls but they always have like either they're a little awkward or they have like one big flaw. But, you know, in terms of your heroines, like how much of yourself is in those heroines? 

Kristan: Well, you know, there's something of me in every character.

And I think especially in the heroine because, you know, I have to fall in love with the hero but I have to be the heroine in order to really express her emotions and be honest about them and really understand where they're coming from and what drives her, every action and every phrase in the book. Nothing is thrown in there by accident, you know. So a lot of my heroines are like me.

I think every one of them with maybe one or two exceptions shares a characteristic of mine and that's we're very honest about our feelings. So there's not a lot of pretense of like, no, no, I want to be alone, I'm a loner, you know. All my heroines kind of know what they want, they just don't know how to get it.

And they also know their flaws. So it's not like they don't know that they're, like in the case of Harper from My One and Only, she's a divorce attorney, she's been through the ringer with her childhood and her romantic life and she knows that she's repressed and emotionally stunted and she accepts that about herself. You know, she thinks, well, this is just how I am and who can blame me? But during the course of the book, she has to overcome that.

And I think that's true in every great romance novel, that it's not just a story of getting the guy or getting the girl. It's a story of becoming the person who deserves the guy or the girl. And to do that, that's an internal, personal journey. That's not just, you know, getting him to the altar. 

Bernadette: Do you think then in your books, do you think they have, they're kind of crossing the line with women's fiction? Because they do focus so much on the heroine's journey, not just on getting the guy, but, you know, becoming a better person or getting through various things. 

Kristan: Yeah, absolutely.

I think they cross the line. And in fact, I'll be writing a women's fiction for next year, a release for next year, 2015. And it will be very much like my romances. It will be very familiar to my readers, but the classification will be slightly different because it's more about life and less about life and him. So there's definitely romance in there and a relationship is very important and it will have the emotionally satisfying ending. But it might not be, and we get married and we have babies, you know, that kind of thing.

It will be the right ending for these characters. But I do think that that's one of the things I really love to write about is all this extra stuff. You know, I'm not, as a reader, I'm not as fond of books that only deal with witty banter and sex scenes. You know, I mean, they can be really fun and really gratifying, but I tend not to remember them. And it's the books that have a lot of personal growth or a lot of heartache sometimes. You know, secondary characters who are very important to the story and the character, not just because of how they affect the relationship, but because they're important to that person.

Just the way, you know, in real life, you might have a sister or parents or grandparents or your best friend and their struggles matter to you. And they're not just there to say, oh, Kristen, you should definitely go for it with that guy. 

Bernadette: Yeah, they have motivations of their own.

And also, I think, and do you feel that that's a good transition? Because I know a lot of romance readers also like to read women's fiction, obviously. That's a great segue. And, you know, it's sometimes hard to tell what the line is. I know for my first book, Gold Coast Wives, which is about a woman who's going through a divorce. Her husband left her and he had made some bad investments and lost all their money and she got fired and, you know, lost her job as a lawyer. And she went on TV and, you know, went on a schlocky version of The Real Housewives. And it's funny, but it's also, and there's a love interest, but it's also about a woman's journey. Like, how do you get yourself out of that situation? And, you know, the reason why I classified it as contemporary romance is because I submitted it to a romance line. I could have just as easily called it women's fiction, you know.

So it's sometimes hard, you know, where is the line there? 

Kristan: You know, it's interesting. I was having this conversation with Huntley Fitzpatrick, who's a wonderful YA writer. And we were talking about, you know, why do we have to divide up literature and fiction, you know, to say, like, well, this is women's fiction and this is literary fiction and this is YA romance and this is contemporary romance and this is new adult romance, you know. Why can't it just be a book that people want to read? And, you know, I understand, you know, romance fans want that happy ending where the couple is together and the focus is primarily on that couple. But a lot of women's fiction fits that description too. And I love the blurred lines, you know. As a reader, I really enjoy it. It's not just in contemporary, you know. There's historical writers like Sarah McClain and Anna Campbell and Eloisa James who really have very big books. It's not just witty banter and a ball, you know. And, you know, I think the trend is going towards women's fiction. I think that society kind of tells us writers what to write intuitively.

So when times are really bad, happy stories sell. And when times are a little more stable, it seems to me like readers are a little more interested in maybe something that's more emotionally complex, you know. So after September 11th... 

Bernadette: That deals with more media issues, something more, you know.

Yeah, but you can take it now. You know, we're not at war. The Twin Towers haven't just fallen.

Kristan: But like when the Twin Towers fell, romance sales shot through the roof. You know, people wanted a happy ending and they wanted a guarantee. And that's when that escape romance came.

You know, the vampires and the shapeshifters and that was really popular because it was a total escape. And now that we're a little steadier, I think we're looking for a story that maybe is a little bit more, I don't know, a little riskier maybe, but that can engage in things like unemployment and divorce and bankruptcy and stuff because, you know, we can take it now. Yeah.

Bernadette: You know, like I wrote a women's fiction. I actually just got the rights back, so I'm kind of rewriting it. But it sounded like a real downer, you know.

But it was about a woman whose mother was dying of cancer and how they resolved things. And you knew in the first page for this character it's not going to be a happy ending. But that doesn't mean it's not an important story to tell.

Right. So I agree with you. Yeah, and I think there's a place for both.

Like you said, sometimes you are in the mood for an escape and then there are other times when you can take it, you know. So that's very interesting that you're moving to women's fiction. I can't wait.

What's the name of that book that's coming out, the women's fiction? 

Kristan: I don't have a title yet. I just suggested a title to my editor today. 

Bernadette: Oh, okay.

So it's still in the works. So we don't have anything yet. 

Kristan: Yeah, I still write romance, but I'll do like a women's fiction and a romance or two and then a women's fiction and kind of see how that goes.

Right. Like I said, I think it will be – it's just a question of marketing. It's really not a different genre for me.

Bernadette: Right. Yeah, you're not doing something completely – like you're not all of a sudden doing like a paranormal, something completely out of the realm. 

Kristan: Right.

Bernadette: So maybe you could talk a little bit about your Blue Heron series and how you got started on that and how many books are in it currently and how many more are coming down the pike. 

Kristan: Sure. You know, that's another – a series that was born out of the response of readers because I do really love to write those towns.

People said, you know, God, I love this town. I wish I could stay here. I wish I could visit it.

And I love your family so much that I wish you'd write a series. And so I thought, all right. You know, I really didn't know how to write a series.

I asked a couple of friends, Susan Mallory and Robin Carr, I said, how do you start this, you know? And one thing I knew was that I wanted a business or a center, I don't know, like a pinning point that I could really enjoy. And I was thinking, well, you know, I like to eat. So maybe I could do a restaurant.

But I'd actually done a story that centered around a family restaurant, the next best thing. So then I thought, well, okay, what else do I like? You know, baseball. I can't really do a baseball book.

That would be too big. You know, how about wine? So I picked a vineyard and I was talking to my brother about – he owns a wine shop and he's very knowledgeable about wine. And I said, I'd like to write a book about a family-run vineyard, but I don't want to go to California.

Because as we were talking earlier, you know, you want to write what you know. And I'm a Yankee, you know. I understand the northeastern sensibility and how we are. I'm from New England. I'm, you know, like a seventh generation New Englander. And so I – 

Bernadette: And even the weather, right? I feel like the weather really is almost like another character in your books, like snow and all that stuff.

So, yeah, you know, you don't have to – 

Kristan: Yeah. All of a sudden you're a Googler. Yeah.

Yeah. So he said, oh, you go to the Finger Lakes. I'll hook you up with some people that I know up there and you can go visit. So I went up there and I toured a couple places, and one vineyard in particular really spoke to me, Fulkerson Vineyard in Dunby, New York. This eight generations of farmers turned winemakers, and I just thought this is perfect. And the towns up there are so beautiful. So I decided to do a family with grown children, and three of the four of them are single. And I thought, okay, I'll do three books, and then we'll move on and see how that goes. And so I wrote Faith's story, and I knew that Honor’s would be next.

And so I wrote The Best Man and then The Perfect Match. And then I was going to do Jack, their brother. And I wasn't really ready. You know, it's funny. I loved him as their brother, but it was hard to transition him in my mind to a romantic hero because he's just, you know, the brother. He's the one boy with the three sisters, and his sisters are merciless with him, you know, always calling him names and telling him about their periods and stuff. And I wasn't really quite ready to see him as this romantic, sexy guy. And so the character that really did interest me at the time was Colleen, who is the best friend of Faith and runs the little tavern in town with her twin brother. And she was just a blast.

You know, she was a woman who was always advising people on their love lives and is a great matchmaker and is always helping people up and get married and stuff. Yet she's single, and she's 32. And I thought, why is she single? You know, why would someone who knows everything about men be single? And she's funny. She has this thing for older men, and she says she's always looking for a sugar daddy. And I thought, something's going on there. And it's always funny. You know, you know Bernadette as a writer. You know, you put something in the book that you don't think is important, and then you find out it's hugely important. You know, it just kind of pops out of your head. So here's Colleen who's single, and she's not looking for age-appropriate men. And the only reason could be that her heart was broken. So that's where Waiting on You came from.

And the books have been really popular. My readers really like them. The reviewers seem to like them. So I am going to write – I have written Jack's book. That's called In Your Dreams, and that comes out in September. And I think I'm going to write one more because there's another character who became really interesting, and that's Colleen's twin brother, Connor.

And I've gotten a lot of mail from people saying, I loved Colleen, now when's Connor? 

Bernadette: Yeah. You know, he was a great guy, even though he was a small character in them. You're right.

He was very vivid. That's actually – that's interesting. It will be fun to read, you know.

Kristan: So that's where I'm planning to go, you know, with five books. And then we'll kind of see. You know, my friend Robin has written 20 books in Virgin River, and I think she's working on her ninth, Thunder Point.

I don't know that I can sustain a series that long, but we're just going to kind of wait and see, you know. 

Bernadette: I think you know when it's done. 

Kristan: Yeah.

Bernadette: You know, I started – I did a standalone, Devil's Mountain, which originally was supposed to be contemporary romance. It was about a woman who, you know, kind of – one of the characters was supposed to be kind of mentally ill, and she thought she was a witch. But I kind of had fun writing about witches, so I just completely rewrote it and made it a paranormal romance.

But it's kind of almost women's fiction as well because it talks about mothers and daughters. But anyway, that was supposed to be like, you know, a standalone. And then I tried to write that infamous small-town romance that went nowhere.

And I still – you know, there was one – it was a small character. I was like, you know what, I wonder what her story would be. And it was the daughter.

So it became a two book. It became a three book. And then it became four books.

But you know what, now it really is the end. Like I said, everything I wanted to say about, you know, the world that I created about this family of Irish witches. And so now I'm done.

So I really did – in the fourth book I said, this is it. I had a great time here, but I'm done now. Right.

So you'll probably feel the same way, you know, when you've said everything you wanted about the Blue Heron people. 

Kristan: Yeah. 

Bernadette: But it's hard to leave them, too.

You know, like it's – you become very attached. And you become attached to the locale, you know. Right.

And also the fact that in some ways writing in series, the second and third and fourth book are easier because you don't have to set the stage. You've already done that. And so you can just like jump into the middle of it, you know.

Kristan: Yeah, that's definitely true.