Last Spring as I researched my novel trilogy on the Isle of Skye in the Scottish Highlands I was asked by a rather large readers website to blog for five days about what had led me down the writer's path. Distance and miscommunication kept these entries unpublished...until now. Since that time many have asked the same questions focusing on my path to publication. I thought you might enjoy having a read in the chill of near winter--a look back to the early days of spring and a wonderful place called Skye. More each day this week...
Day One
Cheers, Readers. I am writing to you this lovely morn from the Isle of Skye off the western coast of Scotland. There’s a fresh breeze blowing from the sea and the bluebells so thick under the resurgent fernery of bracken it is grave competitor to the brilliant buttery yellow of the gorse lining the road leading from my B&B toward the village.
My name is Christine London and I write contemporary romantic novels with a British twist. Although I am told my books qualify as erotic fiction, I must admit to being rather tame compared to much of what is out there under this umbrella. Always much more story than sex, my penchant is to reflect real life or how one might wish it to be when her own perhaps falls short of happily ever after.
In July of 2005 I sat at my computer Googling to find out more about an actor I had just seen in a film. It had been less than a year since moving to Los Angeles from the San Francisco bay area and I was feeling restless. My career cut short by the move, I was working as a curriculum specialist for an after school care program. Trained as a teacher and having just completed seven years in the classroom with high energy kindergartners, I was glad to have the break from the rigors of full time public school teaching. Yet there was something missing in my life; something drawing me.
Eyes reflecting the depths of an amazing soul, the actor I researched had drawn me into a world of romance, torment and desire through his mastery of the role. Who was this man that I felt I’d somehow known before? Searching through numerous celebrity websites, I uncovered a world never imagined. It seems all actors have sites on which their admirers meet and message, some becoming fast friends through the process--sort of a special interest group. Like the others, the man of my interest had the same with the caveat that his fans seemed inordinately loyal and protective of him.
Puerile notions of fandom were evident but there was also an undercurrent of a truly fascinating individual behind the glitz. What does this have to do with becoming an author you ask? Move aside all you who worship at the alter of celebrity. I was about to enter a world I’d never imagined.
I wrote and mailed a letter of appreciation. Feeling quite the adolescent, I kept the note in my purse for a couple days before finally taking it to the post office and mailing it off to the UK. As I sat gazing on my back garden now in full summer’s bloom a story flashed across my internal screen. What if such a man were actually isolated as I suspect so many celebrities are, by his growing fame? What if he longed to be able to trust again? Only the friends of youth acquired before the harsh glare of the spotlight truly knew him. Others were suspect always wanting more---another piece of him until he was left fragmented and lonely. Yes lonely.
Fan screening services? Yes they are thorough and a necessary evil as an actor’s fame supersedes his ability to answer. Not so this man. He still kept connected with the ‘real’ people. Stories of personal replies, autographed dvds, cds and head shot photographs were bantered about on his fan loops. This was a unique individual--a man that does what he does not for the fame but for the legacy potential of touching lives. I was undone.
Sitting down to a blank page on my computer was not the daunting task one might expect. It suddenly took on the dimension of inspiration that you only read about. Like Michangelo’s statues hidden in the block of marble waiting to be freed, the story of my heart flowed through me and onto the page as though possessed. After a days writing I would reread what I had created and sit in wonderment. Who had done this? There was a story of love, loss and rediscovery that flowed from me unlike any experience I had ever known. All the years of penning weekly newsletter to parents; the economy of words necessary to entertain and inform suddenly gelled into a work of fiction that uplifted, inspired, entertained and touched.
My friends and family tell me they are not surprised I finally used my skill at writing in a creative way, but it never occurred to me before this incident to do so. After all, it is a one in a million chance to be published. The slush pile is high and deep at every publisher’s house. As I was to learn, only one to two percent of work submitted is answered with a request to see more.
I was undaunted. I was naïve. I submitted to every house I could ascertain as being interested in contemporary romance. I was rejected.
Hmmm… surely there is a better way than reinventing the wheel. How about a writers group? Google to the rescue. Enter Romance Writers of America’s Chapter Number 25: Los Angeles Romance Authors.
Where there is a will… and boy did I have a lot of will...there is a way.......
Ohhh...and BTW. I went over the top yesterday completing National Novel Writing Month.
