My guest is paranormal romance author Nancy Northcott. Her road to writing a book and publication was a winding road.
Nancy is a sucker for fast action and wrenching emotion, she combines the romance and high stakes she loves in the adventures of her Light Mages.
Some writers always knew
that was what they’d be. They never
wanted to be anything else. I’m not one
of them. I sort of edged into writing a
little bit at a time.
My grandfather and I used to
make up stories and illustrate them with stick people. From there, I progressed to writing in
crayon, starting in about second grade.
The stories were sort of fairy tale-ish or else primitive space
opera. They also weren't the kinds
teachers encouraged kids to write. They weren't “serious.” So I drifted away
from writing, but I never stopped reading.
I sampled pretty much every kind of fiction, finally gravitating toward
romance, science fiction/fantasy, and mysteries. Those genres influence pretty much everything I write.
From the time I was about
seven, I also read comic books. The
monthly adventures of the characters let me get to know them better than the
characters in the books I read, even the series. At some point, I found myself thinking about what happened to the
characters off-page. That led writing
fan fiction involving my favorite characters, the Legion of Super-Heroes.
I’d also written part of
what I now realize was a fantasy romance set in a preindustrial society, but I hadn't finished it. At the time, I didn't know how to plot anything long.
But my fan fiction kept getting longer and longer. By the time I left active fandom, around
1996, I was writing sagas. I’d also
written about half of a traditional fantasy novel, but I’d gotten stuck in the
middle and abandoned it.
My fan fiction was written
for amateur press alliances (APAs) I belonged to. APAs are groups of fans who send multiple copies, one for every
member, to a central mailer at regular intervals. The central mailer then collates the contributions into sets and
mails them to the membership. The
positive feedback my APAs gave me for the fan fiction encouraged me to try
again at creating my own worlds. But I
was still worried about that middle-of-the-book
roadblock.
One day, my husband stopped
beside the desk and picked up a page of fanfic. To save copy costs, we printed long stories in Times 8-pt., two
columns to a page (yes, ouch!). That
particular story was part of a lengthy Batman series I was doing.
He picked up a page. “How long do you think this would be if you
put it in standard manuscript format?”
“Hmm. Four manuscript pages to one of these…a
hundred and twenty pages or so.”
“Okay. If you put all the parts of this whole story
arc together in that format, how long would it run?”
Silence while I did mental
math, not a history major’s strong suit.
Finally, I ventured, “Four hundred pages. Maybe more.”
He nodded. “So tell me again why you think you can’t
write a whole book?”
I had nothing to say. So I dug in, went to the library and read
plot books (which I should’ve done in the first place), and finished that
traditional fantasy. And revised it. And revised it again. It never sold, but I learned a lot from writing
it. A few years ago, I pulled it out
and looked at it. I still love the story, but I don’t write that way
anymore. Maybe someday I’ll pull it out
again and clean it up.
Meanwhile, I’m writing mages
(think wizard if that term isn't familiar to you) who owe a lot to the dashing
super-heroes of my childhood. And I’m
having a blast. I hope readers will,
too.
- What about you? Is there something you've always wanted to try but haven’t gotten to yet?
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| More on Nancy's Book Page |
SENTINEL
Release: Wednesday, March 26th
He’s on a Quest for
Justice
When mage investigative reporter Rick Moore gets the chance to
clear his father’s name, it’s a dream come true. But there’s a price. He must
first uncover the truth about the mage world’s most wanted fugitive.
Her Secrets
are His Only Hope
Caroline Dare knows her
beloved brother had a reason for killing a prominent mage. Heroes don’t go
rogue on a whim. Burned by shady reporters, she pours her devastating worry for
him into her fabric art career and avoids all questions. But when her art is
panned as a fraud because she’s blind, she’s forced to seek help from Rick, a
man she knows only as a sexy arts writer.
Helping beautiful, determined
Caroline prove herself gets Rick inside her well tended walls. But as he wins
her trust, he finds he’s losing his heart. Now he has a choice–give up his
dream or betray the woman he loves.
BOOK ONE
She follows the rules
He breaks everyone of them
Now they are each other's only hope
Nancy Northcott’s childhood ambition was to
grow up and become Wonder Woman. Around
fourth grade, she realized it was too late to acquire Amazon genes, but she
still loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy and YA romance. A sucker for fast action and wrenching
emotion, Nancy combines the romance and high stakes she loves in the adventures
of her Light Mages.
Her debut novel, Renegade,
received a starred review from Library Journal. The reviewer called it “genre writing at its best.” Nancy is a three-time RWA Golden Heart
finalist and has won the Maggie, the Molly, the Emerald City Opener, and Put
Your Heart in a Book.
Married since 1987, Nancy and her husband have one son, a bossy dog, and a house full of books.
