Robyn: First of all, I want to welcome Rowena to the Once Upon A Romance website and to our interview section. Just from a few emails we have shared, I already know that Rowena has a fantastic sense of humor and is a very witty person.
Rowena, would you tell us a little bit about yourself through the years? I want our readers who don’t know you to get a little taste of the flavor of your life.
Rowena: Thank you, Robyn. I'll share a little known fact. I'm shy, and I'm not very good at talking about myself. If you don't mind, I'll cut and paste my back-matter bio, because a great deal of time and thought went into it.
Robyn: Back matter?????
Rowena: It makes you think of a cow, doesn't it? "Back matter" may not be the politically correct industry term for an author's photo and bio, but "Front matter" is how my editor refers to the title page, family tree, dedication and thank-yous, publishers' protestations that my seven-foot-tall, super-impregnator aliens with penile bones aren't real, and warnings about stripped books.
A school chess champion and winner of the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Award, Rowena went to ancient Cambridge University for her four-year combined honors degree in English and Education, after which she taught at exclusive boarding schools, first in Dorset, then in London.
Eventually Rowena met and married her auto designer husband, who whirled her off to Germany to live the glamorous life of an alien abroad.
Reassigned to America, she rode in pace cars at the Indy 500 and Brickyard and has flown in corporate jets to exotic locations. Her life so far has been fantastic inspiration for romance novel scenes and alien-world building.
Did you notice that my "bio" is a careful collection of buzz words strung together to resonate with as many potential readers as possible? Those of my alien Djinn who are in exile, spend their time in Cambridge (or Las Vegas), but in Forced Mate, the hero took the heroine to a hill-figure in Dorset in order to improve his chances of a happy and productive marriage.
Carved into the white chalk of a Dorset hillside, the Cerne Giant has a thirty linear foot penis, and sitting on it is supposed to have a mystical effect on a virtuous young woman. It certainly worked for me! And, yes, you can see a picture on my website
http://www.rowenacherry.com/excerpts/excerpt_11.php
Do not look if line drawings of aroused naked males offend you!
Robyn: Do you think all the years you have spent living as an 'alien' in a foreign country has impacted your writing—especially your alien romance books?
Rowena: The gurus say, "Write what you know!" and I think I know what it is like to be an outsider, and to have to be very careful not to criticize or to express astonishment at one's host's backward ways, or to talk too glowingly about the myriad virtues and extraordinary prowess of one's own people.
I think one acquires an enhanced sense of the ridiculous, and an "alien" way of looking at language, when one lives abroad. For instance, at some point in the German year, everyone went into the streets, hooked arms, and danced a combination of a hokey-kokey and a sideways conga. And we sang a very strange song about a Horse in a Corridor.
Robyn: I'm not sure how much fun that particular custom was, but I'm laughing thinking about some of my neighbors hooking arms and dancing.
Rowena: It's possible that I mistranslated. The title Frau Gemahlin (honorable wife) amused me because Gemahlin was so similar to the adjective for ground coffee beans.
Also, one notices the nuances of language more when one has to learn thousands of words. It struck me that the German language (which I love!) has a different word for every kind of excrement depending on the size of the animal that produced it. Maybe we do, too.
Robyn: Was there a defining moment in your life where you said, "I want to write a book," or was writing something you always wanted to do?
Rowena: Neither, really. I should warn you that I am a bit of a contrarian, and quite often if you offer me the choice of A or B, my answer will be C.
I always enjoyed writing stories and essays and dissertations. At university, I impressed a few faculty members with my esoteric theories about Shakespeare (or perhaps they politely pretended to be impressed.) My unrealistic dream was to do a doctorate, and have my Shakespearean ideas published, and perhaps inflicted on future generations of school children.
Fortunately, my parents couldn't afford perpetual scholarship, so I had to leave Cambridge with my "good" Combined Honours degree in order to earn a living, teaching.
While we were in Germany, a friend of my husband's (a publisher of car magazines) told me that I ought to write, however, I didn't set my heart on it until we were living in a relatively small, rented apartment in the Detroit area, with all our possessions in storage, and I had nothing to do beyond house-hunting.
Robyn: I must admit, I knew there was a connection between the titles of your books, but couldn't put my finger on it until I searched your site. Can you tell us about the connection and why you chose to use it for book titles?
Rowena: Forced Mate, Mating Net, Insufficient Mating Material, Knight's Fork… are all chess terms.
Forced Mate was always Forced Mate except for when it was Favorite Enemy.
Forced Mate was the perfect title for a cosmic love triangle story where two "Kings" –the black clad one, and the White—race to be the first to make a pawn into their Queen. I experimented with an alternate title when a few contest judges confused Forced Mate with a film called Forced Entry, and were obviously prejudiced.
Once I had a contract, I knew I had to "brand" myself. Susan Grant capitalized on the fact that she is a pilot, and used the tag "aviation romance" for her novels. I thought that was pretty cool, and scraped the barrel of my life to see what I could exploit.
The chess reference was legitimate. I was a school chess champion for three consecutive years, I was captain of my school's chess team, I played in a 27-board exhibition chess match against the late Dr Max Euwe, former president of the world chess federation (he played against 27 local champions and beat all of us… but it took him three hours to beat me).
There were chess scenes in Forced Mate, and at one time the book had forty chapters, each one with a chess piece or move subtitle. So, I didn't think I'd have any trouble keeping up the "brand" image with plenty of "mating" and "forking" titles.
Robyn: Can you explain to me what Insufficient Mating Material means in terms of chess? How did you apply that to the book?
Rowena: "A situation where it is impossible to win, no matter how good your moves, or how bad a player your opponent is."
It's nothing to do with shortcomings in the wedding tackle department, but I do enjoy the ambiguity. In the book, I use every permutation.
The heroine –whose biological clock is ticking-- looks at the emaciated, limping fellow approaching her for their Royal shotgun wedding, and she sincerely believes that she has been tricked, and that an inadequate –if not diseased-- mate is being forced on her.
In fact, she would be a political liability wife, and the hero knows that if he marries her, he has no future as a popular political leader. To say more would be a spoiler.
Robyn: Most people think of authors as more right-brained (creative) than left-brained (concrete). However, my experiences with authors is that they are very smart people who are a little more left-brained, but have enough right-brained creativity to concoct marvelous stories. Would you describe yourself as more left- or right-brained and why do you say that?
Rowena: I'm a strong right-brainer, and I say so because Margie Lawson told me so.
Publishers' Weekly blogger Barbara Vey put up a Right Brain, Left Brain, Whole Brain, No Brain quiz created by Margie Lawson a couple of months ago (November 29th 2007).
Here's the url in case anyone reading this wants to have a go!
http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/880000288/post/1420017742.html
<< Right brained people are creative, intuitive, and see patterns. They tune into nonverbal communication. They trust their hunches while left brained people are logical, linear-thinkers. They think rationally. They trust facts. >>
I scored a seventeen, which shows that I am impulsive and unbalanced. I logged 10 A's and 7 B's.
Margie Lawson commented:
<< HELLO ROWENA -- Ah -- another STRONG RIGHT BRAINER at 17. Sounds like you know yourself well. …. Thank you for sharing! Best...........Margie >> www.MargieLawson.com
Robyn: When writing a novel, do you use a formula or pattern to write, or do you just toss ideas together to get a story?
Rowena: I toss. No…strike that. It amused me to say that, but I'm not really a tosser at all. I don't follow a formula or pattern, either. I'm terrible at following instructions, directions, recipes (but pretty good with a map).
I definitely do not toss ideas together to get a story. Would we call that the salad method? My stories come together more like a jigsaw, and the corner pieces are the main characters. Everything depends on the characters.
Robyn: How long did it take you to get your first book published? Did you receive any rejections along the way that were either really helpful or really memorable?
Rowena: It took me approximately eleven years to get Forced Mate published. In my case, I think the near misses are more edifying than the rejections.
Along the way, one dot com "publisher" (who used one of a major Fortune 500 company's product's trademarks as its name) offered me a contract based on a partial on a floppy disc. This was the one I whooped and did the happy dance over until my Intellectual Properties attorney looked at the contract… thank goodness I had the wit to get an opinion!
Another acquiring New York publishing house editor requested my full manuscript based on a contest win, and then she left the business without getting back to me. My old manuscript may still be in a forgotten slush pile somewhere, for all I know.
Yet another offered me a contract based on a second placement a contest, but she wrote her offer in the footer of the returned contest entry, and I didn't see it for two years, by which time, she was no longer with that publishing house.
Someone's assistant told me to cut 20,000 words, tighten up the beginning, and if I was still interested, to resubmit. That was actually very good advice. It's a pity I never found out who the editor was!
Robyn: I have found experience to be a wonderful teacher. I especially try to learn from the experiences of others. As a published author, what things have you learned that would help other aspiring authors to see a work published?
Rowena: Absolutely nothing, Robyn. Think crap shoot with a blunderbuss.
Robyn: I love the honest approach. I know what you mean because becoming a reviewer was the last thing I ever saw myself doing.
Rowena: Now, I can pass on plenty of advice about the importance of networking, persistence, being nice. But as for what helps get you published, you have to get the right story onto the right desk at the right time.
For that, you need talent, timing, luck… and perhaps ruthless efficiency.
1. Write the best book that you can. Hone it. Polish it. Prune the adjectives until you have a novel of around 90,000 words. Enter contests, make agent and editor appointments at RWA, RT, and other conventions.
2. Make yourself pleasant and useful, maybe by volunteering, or being a driver for visiting speakers, or coordinating a contest, or a promo table and be ready to get more than your "fair share" of elevator pitching opportunities.
3. Identify which authors your work is similar to, and be honest with yourself. This is rather like young actors and models who make a short list of which established stars they resemble, and then they make a point of sending a photo, in case the star ever is in a part where he needs a younger brother…. or a stand in.
4. Keep a finger on the grapevine. Rising star authors move to bigger, richer publishing houses. Older authors retire. A series flops. A natural disaster hits. Maybe a make-weight story is needed in an anthology.
As Kensington editor Hilary Sares said on my radio show recently, editors are very understanding, and they do their best to help when one of their authors cannot come close to making a deadline, but they do have to keep to their publishing schedule with something similar. I've never tried being "that something," because I am very happy with the way things are.
Robyn: I understand you are the queen of research. When I read that, I immediately wondered how it works when researching sci-fi and aliens. Are there places you can go to research aliens and their characteristics? How did you create this fabulous race and make them so real? It really appears that you found a place to research the Djinns.
Rowena: Jacqueline Lichtenberg would say, "Start with the alien's sun…."
If that's too daunting, Writers' Digest publishes lots of fantastic books, such as Orson Scott Card's How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy; Stanley Schmidt's Aliens and Alien Societies; Stephen L Gillett's World-Building; Lawrence M Krauss's The Physics of Star Trek…
In fact, I created a Listmania on Amazon of some of the best How-To books for aspiring futuristic authors. If anyone takes a look, and likes my list, I'd very much appreciate some "helpful" clicks.
Several futuristic, and science fiction romance authors are extremely generous and sharing, and should be googled for their free workshops and blogs. I know that Linnea Sinclair, Patti O'Shea, Gena Showalter and Susan Grant (and I apologize if I've forgotten someone) did a fabulous blog workshop.
Alien romances is a group blog http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com (it's called that because I set it up, and I thought we ought to use a name that I'd claimed with register.com) Linnea Sinclair, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Margaret L. Carter, Colby Hodge, Susan Kearney, Susan Sizemore blog, some more often than others.
As for my alien Djinn, I started with a premise inspired by Erich von Daeniken's theories that all the gods of our myths and religions were visitors from outer space. I settled on Djinn, also known as jinn or genie and tried to keep my alien race loosely consistent with the myths, but scientifically explaining some of the "magic".
As for realism, I try to research anything that CAN be researched, and not make up anything that I ought to be able to get right. With luck, it is then not such a strain for my reader to suspend disbelief as and when absolutely necessary.
Robyn: On a more personal note, the things I read about you and the things you have done in your life fascinated me. Can you tell us a little more about some of your experiences I've heard about? I'm really interested in hearing about the birthday serenade by a rock star. Are you willing to share some details with us?
Rowena: Ah! No. I don't drop names… much. Now, if you'd asked why His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, called me a cow, I'd be happy to explain that. One of the worthy things I did as a schoolgirl was The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, which is an extremely worthwhile project… in fact, it's recently been launched in the United States.
There are, or were three levels, Bronze, Silver, and Gold, each intended to take at least six months to accomplish. Eighteen month minimum commitment. Character and backbone a requirement.
During that time, candidates would take up a sport, and achieve a degree of physical competence in it. There would also be some kind of service to the community, which could be working with animals, or with the police, or with the fire brigade, or a nursing home, or an orphanage. There was something fearsome called Adventure, which involved camping and survival stuff as well as a written project. There were other requirements, too, including a few residential courses.
Those who completed the rigorous program received a certificate and a badge, and attended a reception at Buckingham Palace, where Prince Philip graciously spent a few minutes talking with each of us. Since I came from Guernsey, which is quite famous for its cows, a gracious joke was made.
Robyn: Having been raised on the British isle of Guernsey, then moving to Germany and eventually to the United States, you have seen more of the world than most of us dream of being able to see. As a child, did you ever hope or dream that your life would take so many twists and turns?
Rowena: I never dreamed that I would marry an auto executive, no. If we are talking about my youth, I thought Guernsey was the most wonderful place in the world –apart from the unfortunate fact that most of the young gentlemen who went to the boys' school were quite a bit shorter than I am.
However, owing to Guernsey laws, I was a mainlander, and I didn't live on the island long enough to qualify as a resident, and if I'd gone back to Guernsey after getting my degree, I would have had to patrol the hedgerows picking up the rare bit of litter (or whatever menial work the unemployed who are "On The Parish" do) because the islanders who graduated from teaching college or university at the same time that I did would get priority for the few available teaching jobs.
Robyn: Is there a most memorable moment in your years of travel and living in so many places?
Rowena: No, not a "most"….I'd have to share a really long list, and some of most memorable moments I've either sworn or promised never to reveal. Fictionalized accounts don't count as revelation.
Robyn: What would be the one thing you would say you could never live without??
Rowena: Air?
ROTFLMAO.
Is that not what you meant? Seriously, I don't think I could live in America without air conditioning.
Robyn: I have to agree that air conditioning is a must for me, too. The one thing I must know before we close is what was it like riding in Pace car at the Indy 500? Is it as fun as I imagine or is it not very glamorous and just plain hot and sweaty driving on that track?
Rowena: I had the gracious Chuck Yeager ahead of me, Ari Luyendyk in something low, red, and very fast behind me, and Fabio surveying the scene from the corner of the balcony up in the Hulman suites (at least, that's what they were called then).
I do not remember if it was hot that May. It was being there that I remember… also the butterflies in my tummy from meeting so many celebrities, and trying to remember every cool thing that I could possibly fit into my book.
Robyn: I want to thank you so much, Rowena, for spending time with all of us at Once Upon A Romance. I appreciate your thoughtful answers. Is there anything else you can think of that you would like to tell our readers about yourself or your writing?
Rowena: Not precisely tell… but I would like to thank you and Connie for your kindness, and I'd like to thank everyone who has read this interview for their time and interest. Thank you.
Robyn: Thank you again. It's been a real pleasure.
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