My guest is, historical romance author, Gwyn Cready. She has a fabulous Scottish tale of love, laughter, and tears--that's just the book. How she began writing seriously is yet another tale of tears, but I'll let her tell you about that.
Sia says to share the laughter and
the tears, so I’m going to share the story about how I became a writer. It’s
something I get asked whenever I do a talk, and I understand why. I’m always
fascinated about how people ended up in whatever profession they’re in.
I have
a friend who went into advertising because he wanted to be like Cary Grant in North by Northwest. When I went to
graduate school in business, I wasn’t sure what I’d concentrate in until I went
to a talk given by a brand manager from Frito-Lay. The brand manager was
talking about the launch of a new ridged potato chip called O’Grady’s, and the
company has launched with a plain version and a Cheddar version. One of the
students in the audience raised their hand and asked why the first flavor after
plain was Cheddar. The brand manager looked around, a bit surprised anyone
would even have to ask this, I guess. “Oh, honey,” she said, “the
cheese-flavored segment is the fastest growing segment in the salty snack
market.” And that’s the moment I knew I had to become a brand manager.
So I did. And life was good until, my
younger sister, Claire, died without warning. She was 31, and my only sister. I
was devastated.
I wanted to do something to honor her
memory. My sister was a photographer and a poet—a hippie punk rocker with
floppy hats, gypsy skirts, and patchouli perfume. We couldn’t have been more
different. In a perfect world, or perhaps a different world, I would have named
a child after her. And if my husband and I had had no children or even just one
child at the time of Claire’s death, that’s what we would have done. But we’d
already had our two and didn’t want a third, even to honor my sister. So I
thought about what the next best thing to do to honor her memory might be, and
the answer was obvious. The next best thing would be to try to create a piece
of art and dedicate it to her. And since the only talent I had that even
approached something like art was writing. I couldn’t paint, draw, sculpt,
dance, act, design or build. But I thought I could maybe try to write a book.
I had recently read a book given to me by a
friend, a book that affected me more than any other book I’d ever read. It was
a sweeping love story with the bravest, most honorable man I’d ever encountered
in a story. And he fell in love with a woman named Claire. The book was Outlander. I’d never read a romance
before, and I didn’t even know I was reading one until I had to hunt down the
sequel in the bookstore and couldn’t find it under “Fiction.” In one of the
last conversations I had with my sister, I joked with her about Outlander because the man in the story
was named Jamie, and my sister had dated a Jamie for many years. Jamie and
Claire. Claire and Jamie. I told my sister I’d lend her my copy. I never got a
chance.
Within a month of my sister’s death,
I started to write a romance novel, and if I was ever lucky enough to get it
published, I would dedicate it to my sister.
That was 1997. For six years, I wrote
when I could in the evenings and on the weekends. My kids and my job required a
lot of my time. When I finished the book in 2003, I sent it out and found an
agent. She tried to sell it for a year and a half to no avail. She encouraged
me to write a second one.
The first book had been a historical
romance requiring a lot of research. I decided I could leverage the research
I’d done but still write faster if I tried my hand at time travel romance
instead. I also found that a heroine from the present day allowed me to write
in my own voice, which turned out to be a rather funny one. I finished the
second book in “only” two years. My agent loved it, and it sold it in a
two-book deal. That was 2006. In January, 2008, Tumbling Through Time came out, ten and a half years from the time
I started writing. The dedication read, “For Claire, who would have laughed.”
From RITA winner Gwyn
Cready comes a Scottish borderlands time travel romance perfect for fans of Outlander
For Duncan MacHarg, things just got real…
Battle
reenactor and financier Duncan MacHarg thinks he has it made—until he lands in
the middle of a real Clan Kerr battle and comes face to face with their beautiful,
spirited leader. Out of time and out of place, Duncan must use every skill he
can muster to earn his position among the clansmen and in the heart of the
devastatingly intriguing woman to whom he must pledge his oath.
Abby needs a hero and she needs him now
When Abigail
Ailich Kerr sees a handsome, mysterious stranger materialize in the midst of
her clan’s skirmish with the English, she’s stunned to discover he’s the
strong arm she’s been praying for. Instead of a tested fighter, the fierce
young chieftess has been given a man with no measurable battle skills and a
damnably distracting smile. And the only way to get rid of him is to turn him
into a Scots warrior herself—one demanding and intimate lesson at a time.
Rafflecoptor: Sign up to win a copy
Gwyn Cready is the RITA-winning author of sexy, funny romance
novels. Her newest book, Just in Time for a Highlander, is the first in
the Sirens of the Scottish Borderlands series. In the book, a young but
determined clan chieftess seeks a strong arm to help her command her
clan, but when a fortune teller's spell goes awry, she finds herself
with a dashing man from the twenty-first century instead. Find out more
at cready.com
