Member since:
April 13, 2007

TRACY FABRE did a Gather interview with me about her new novel !!!

February 20, 2009 04:05 PM EST (Updated: March 01, 2009 09:00 AM EST)

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What is REASONS – what’s it about?

According to the blurb on the back cover (which as you know is never wrong), it's about a young woman who travels to Colorado to visit family friends one summer after having been told by her parents that one of the sons of that family was responsible for the hit-and-run accident which nearly killed her when she was a teenager. That was a really, really long sentence. Reasons puts "Delphi" in the middle of the Laughlin family, as she studies how they interact, and tries to figure out which son was the driver, and how this information might change her or the Laughlins if it comes to light.

How do you write romance novels that satisfy both the romance novel reader and those readers who otherwise don’t read romance novels … in fact, they brag about how much they hate them. (You Gather people, look up Evan’s Castle at Amazon – type in TRACY FABRE, there - and read the reviews to see what I mean.)

I don't know the answer -- I've certainly been surprised by the number of men who have voluntarily read Evan's Castle and voluntarily admitted to liking it. Almost everyone who read it started off by saying "Oh, I never read romances" or "I don't like romances" or "I didn't think I would like this." My theory is that my characters are regular people -- not overly buff, beautiful, lusty, saintly, angsty, or anything: they're intelligent, they're witty, they treat others reasonably well, and to me rather than being a romance it's simply a story about how a couple of people get together.

How is this romance novel similar to your first one (how is it a TRACY FABRE novel?) and name one thing about it that is very different.

It's similar in one key way -- it's told in first person, and since everyone who read Evan's Castle said "I could hear YOU all through this," I expect the same will be true of Reasons. The main way it differs is in the number of "supporting cast" -- most of the action in Evan's Castle was limited to a very few players, but Reasons involves Delphi with a larger number of characters to play off of. Also, this one is less a romance and more of a family study -- though it certainly has a strong romance element.

How do you organize your thoughts to put all those many words into a clever orderly full-length novel?

I have stunt doubles. Look! A chicken! Organized thoughts?

Where do your ideas for characters come from?

Kmart? Reasons is a bad one to ask me about because I came up with the basic plot for it nearly thirty years ago (which is also my explanation of Delphi's name; it's not one I would choose now but it's how I created her when I was eighteen; when I finally wrote the novel a few years ago, no other name fit her).

Where do you think you got your unique humor?

Kmart? No, it came from my folks. My dad was particularly witty and my mother's no slouch either, and so I blame it all on genetics. Plus you people just make it easy. ;-)

What is your advice to people who want to get published?

Hahahahaaa haHAAhahaaa haHAHAHAhhahahahaha... oh. You wanted a serious answer. Well, one word: persevere. Okay, some more words: make up your mind whether you want to be READ, or RICH. If you want to be rich, I can't help you. But if you want to be read, there are more opportunities today than ever before, from small publishers such as StoneGarden.net (there's the plug), to self-publishing, to simply getting your name and work out there via blogs and sites such as Gather. I'm too lazy to blog. I just hang around here and bug you all.

Do you think novels will ever become too old fashioned and will go away - aren’t movies really much better?

If novels were going away, there wouldn't be more small publishers and self-publishers out there now than ever before. Movies will never replace novels, period. There's too much a novel can say which a movie can never express, and novels allow the reader so much more to imagine.

Where can we find REASONS?

Online at StoneGarden.net, Amazon, Barnes & Noble; you can also order it through your local bookstore or get your library to order it!

You can find excerpts from Reasons on my website at www.tracyfabre.com.