Her topic is an interesting one for a romance author. We many times assume that romance authors are writing happy, sexy romances from happy experience—and sometimes they are. But how do you write romantic comedy when your life is anything but romantic or funny? A good question and one that Isabel addresses.
Imagine you are writing a romantic comedy. Light, funny, a farcical romp. Now imagine that while you’re writing it, you’re going through a separation and divorce, and that a few weeks before your deadline, the date September 11, 2001 rolls around.
Light! Funny! Romp-y!
Now imagine you’re writing again, years later (with many books in between), a sexy, sassy and very hot read (I have affectionately nicknamed these boinkathons). You’re nearly at the end, when the supposed-to-be love-of-your-life you waited too many lonely years to meet, dumps you. You are a bawling miserable snotty mess of a person.
Sexy! Sassy! Hot Hot Hot!
It can be incredibly hard to push away life’s pain and concentrate on the page. So hard to write “I will love you forever” when you’re thinking, “Yeah, good luck with that.” Because for all our optimism about love, we romance authors are real people living real lives which sometimes dump on us hard truths that would never make it into our books.
So how do you keep on? You take on those characters like a professional actor takes on a role, you become them and you make writing a performance that isn’t about you. Actors create backstories, do their research, and come to inhabit their characters the same way writers do. And while an audience pays money to see an actor pretend to be someone else, a reader buys your book not to hear your story, but that of your characters. You owe them the same genuine intensity of experience.
So you blow your nose, turn all mirrors to the wall, sip hot tea for comfort, then leave yourself and your moods and become whoever it is you’re writing about. I would love someday to mount a camera on top of my monitor to record my facial expressions during particularly intense scenes. I bet it’s a hoot (and maybe a little frightening.)
If you’re wondering how I did, the second book I refer to above is the third book in an online dating trilogy (Dating E-Males) called Hot to the Touch, out in June 2011 from Harlequin Blaze. The first two books are Turn up the Heat, out this month, and Long, Slow Burn, out in April. Hope you enjoy them!
Turn Up The Heat
Vibrant and multifaceted party organizer Candy Graham is looking to forget her dating past, even if it means joining a dating website. But creating four different e-profiles to suit her personality could land Candy in hot water…or better yet, in the arms of her scorchin'-hot neighbor!
Journalist Justin Case suspects he has the scoop of a lifetime—women hired to lure men into online dating. Could Candy be part of some kind of e-romance scam? But try as he might, even he can't resist the temptation of sexy, sweet Candy…and one taste is definitely not enough! Excerpt
~*~*~*~
You can find Isabel on Facebook and on her Website
