Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, and welcome to a time to Thrill. This is me, your host, Amy Austin. It is November, and this month I am interviewing author Christine Cunningham Ashworth.
I met Christine oh, Lo, these many years ago.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Probably.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: 20 06 20 07 20 08.
That's about the time that I joined the local RWA, the Los Angeles Romance Writers organization and met a lot of the people there as you healed during the interview. She started in that organization long before I did.
She's one of those people I've known for so long. She's so wonderful and lovely and, by the way, gives the best hugs.
In this interview, I'm not sure we talk about this in detail, but quite a few years ago, she wrote an essay called Wear the Pearls, and I'll link to it in the show notes if it's still up there. But I and some other authors really encouraged her to put together a book of essays which I'll link to in the show notes. I actually wrote the forward for it under the pen name Sylvie Fox, the name I used to write romance under. And it was such an honor to do that for her because the essay changed my life. She had been cleaning out her parents'house and found her mother's pearls. And the pearls, the way the pearls are strung, the string had broken, and it was something that her mother had only worn on special occasions. And right then and there, she decided.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: To put them on, I think with.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Some sweats and go to the store. But it made me realize how much of that kind of thing we save, quote unquote, for special occasions. And after that, I actually am wearing a pearl bracelet that I bought right after she wrote that essay. And I wear it every day to remind myself to sort of seize the day and not put off what I can enjoy today for tomorrow for no good reason.
So I wear pearls, actually way more often than I used to. I wear all the good jewelry. I wear the good clothes because there's no guarantee of tomorrow, and there's really no reason to put off wearing my favorite cashmere sweater or my favorite jewelry for some sort of special occasion sort of thing that happens once or twice a year.
And in that way, she changed my life in both a small and a hugely big way, and I'm forever grateful for it.
So the other thing that's super interesting about Christine is that her father was a really prolific writer of so called pulp fiction, of genre fiction. And in addition to that, her brother also became a prolific writer in two genres, starting in popular fiction, but then also spreading it out into the area of wicca and other things like that. And he became sort of a foremost authority in that area. There are stores in Los Angeles where if you go today, you will see all his books on the shelf. And as she talks about during this interview, one of his books has never gone out of print. So with that, she sat down over the last years and wrote The Path Taken honoring the life and legacy of Awakened trailblazer. She wrote this book and it really honors his legacy and it's an amazing achievement to have done this. And now she's been on tour, actually lost in London, but talking to people around the world who also honor Scott's legacy. So without further ado, I am so thrilled to bring you a really interesting conversation with Christine Cunningham Ashworth.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: Hi and welcome to A Time to thrill. This is me, your host, Amy Austin. This month I am talking to Christine Cunningham Ashworth, who is a writer of romance, has recently written well, we'll talk about it, let's just say let's start with she's a romance author who has an amazing background in literature and an amazingly interesting family. Hello, Christine.
[00:04:47] Speaker C: Hello, Amy. How are you?
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Okay. And I should say the listeners, christine is doing this even though she got off a plane and maybe a little sick. So we'll excuse that. How are I'm?
[00:05:03] Speaker C: All things considered, I'm good.
Yeah.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: I'm going to ask you, and I haven't asked you about this in person because I haven't been in La. So I can't see mean, this is always my fault. People are like, we should get together. I'm like, I am not in La.
One of the things so the most recent book that came out is about your brother, and I want to know how that came about.
[00:05:31] Speaker C: Okay.
It's called Scott Cunningham. The Path Taken. Scott was an extremely prolific author of metaphysical books. He wrote his first book came out in 1982 called magical herbalism the secret Craft of the wives.
So he was very into Wicca and witchcraft and nature and herbs and the Mother Earth goddess.
Between 1982 and 1993, he published, I think I want to say, 20 or 21 books. I'm not exactly sure.
But the one that really broke everything open for him and for others was Wicca a Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, that came out in 1988.
And that was the first time anyone had drawn back the curtain on Wicca and witchcraft and allowed people to learn about stuff that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten to know unless they had been in the coven, an in person coven, because obviously the internet didn't exist in 1988.
And that book has published in 1988. It has never gone out of print. None of his books have ever gone out of print and he has been dead for 30 years.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Okay, I have about 1000 questions because we've talked about this in life, but what led you to work on that book?
[00:07:27] Speaker C: I was at a pagan gathering in Florida in 2018, and it was the year after my dad died, and they asked me to come out and talk a little bit about Scott.
And so they flew me out and put me up and I gave two or three talks, one about Tarot, which I was just diving into. And I was scared to death to give that.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: I remember this. I think we had lunch before this.
[00:08:01] Speaker C: And then the one was about Scott. And I passed around his genre fiction books that he had written because everybody knew the metaphysical ones. So I passed around the other ones that people might not have known that he had written that had his name on them. And I also held up the kitchen, which our grandmother Hazel had made him when we got our first apartment together.
And before I did that talk, the entire weekend, I had people coming up touching me and saying, your brother was my gateway drug to Wicca and witchcraft and Paganism. I am so glad that he was alive. And I got hugs from people I never met before. It was really overwhelming. And after I gave that talk, I still said the same thing, but they added, you are going to write a book about him, aren't you?
And I said, well, I hadn't planned on it. And they said, well, you're giving us insight into the person he was, the man behind the books. We don't have that. He didn't have a website because websites weren't really a thing.
He was on a few bulletin boards, but he was an early adopter. He would have been all over the Internet if he was still alive.
But he really touched so many people and never got out on the talk circuit, so people didn't get to know who he was.
And 2018 was a really hard year for me, writing fiction wise, because I had fallen in with a group that shall remain nameless, that it was just really difficult to work with them. And it stressed me out and I stopped writing fiction. And then I got home that November after the Pagan gathering, and I thought, well, this is a way to still write, but not fiction. It's just like talking about what I know.
I think I started in November of 2018 and then I didn't finish the book well, not really until like February, March 2022.
So it was not like a fiction novel where you could just pick a plot and slam it down on paper.
This one had real people in it and I had to decide was I going to name names. And I decided not to because that's a whole other ball of wax that you get into.
Does my sister in law at that time really need to be named in the book?
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Right?
[00:11:13] Speaker C: If she and my brother aren't still together? No, she doesn't.
So I talk around her. I tell people that she existed, that my brother got married in 1973, but I don't name our name because partly for her privacy, too.
So I started and I sat down at my computer and how in the world am I going to start this story? I don't know where to begin. I have no clue. So I wrote a preface, as one does, kind of like, this is what the book is about.
And most of that preface is still intact, which I'm very proud of. It's grown, it's gotten bigger. But a lot of what I wrote that first day is still in the book.
And then I pushed back from my desk and walked away from it.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Wow. Okay, so I have a question.
I know it's going to seem out of left field, but the Where the Pearls book, were you writing that at the same time?
[00:12:25] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: And no complicated.
You might remember in 2019, I had bronchitis, two separate bouts of bronchitis for a total of six months.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:12:41] Speaker C: And so the wear the pearls, I was kind of feeling my mortality. It was also the year before I was 59, the year before I was going to turn the big 60. And I was like, people keep telling me, you're being one of them, that I needed to put all these things in a block.
So that was easier. Frankly, it was like three months of just solid putting pieces together, rearranging them, coming up with a way to I mean, if I could do it now, I'd redo it.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Oh, my God, that's my whole life. So what are we going to do?
[00:13:23] Speaker C: Right?
I just put it together because even my editor at the time said, I think this book is really, you know, it's one of those things that, yeah, it's really needed, but who's going to read it? Who's going to actually read it? So it was sort of a Hail Mary. I just put it out, and to my surprise, people that I've never met have actually picked it up, which is nice.
It's not going to shoot to the top of the charts, and I never expected it to, but it was an important part of me that I wanted to get out. And in a way, it was practiced for the book about Scotland.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: And that's what I was going to ask you, because I feel like now that you're giving me the timeline, the thing is, when we or anybody I talk with about writing, when I explain this to non writers, because they're like, you talk to people about writing all the time. And I'm like, I see book covers, I hear ideas, and we're all living our everyday life. So it's not as if it's like she was telling me she was writing her magnum opus. People are doing, like, a thousand things, and little bits of conversation come in. Are you working on that? Oh, that's great. Are you having a hard time with that? Are you putting it back down, picking it up? What about this publisher? What about this thing?
The reason I had asked, because now that you're putting this time and it together, to me, it seems like a natural evolution. I think that's what I want to say.
[00:14:53] Speaker C: Yeah, it was because I got a lot of practice writing heartfelt, important things that were important to me on Facebook.
Not every day, but every now and then. I needed to really string someone up by the balls, and I couldn't because they were across the country and wouldn't have listened to me anyway.
Nobody I'm related to. Thank God.
So I would write the Facebook posts aimed at them. And that because it was so personal.
I learned not to be afraid of being personal.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it took me so many years to learn that lesson. I wrote my first book and I just wanted to hide in a closet. You know what I mean? It just felt too exposing. And now, actually, I just don't care much.
That may be like, perimenopause. It could be any number of things, and I just don't care.
And I've said this to you before, so I really appreciated your openness positivity. And it was so relatable. It was just so relatable.
Because of that first essay, I literally have changed. I've talked to you about how I live my life instead of, I don't know, living as if a there's an infinite amount of time and sort of not enjoying things in the moment. I really changed to enjoying a lot more things in the moment because there's no with the exception of saving for retirement, there really is no good reason to forego so much. And I don't know if that's like our puritanical country spirit, or I could think about a lot about the origin of that, but you were able to sort of break through that, and especially with going down to Clear. Out the house, and you were talking a lot about all these things that people had saved, that they could have just enjoyed, and it was fascinating.
How can I say this? Your window to that world at that time really resonated with me.
[00:17:23] Speaker C: I'm glad.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: And it resonated with other people. You know this because I'm not the only person. It's like, can we more, please? More. So it really have not I have written one memoir, not under Amy Austin, but I've not written about other people because okay, so I'm sure you know this. The thing about siblings is that you share the same parents and you live in the same household, but you do not have the same experience.
[00:17:54] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Was it hard?
Okay, you seem fairly clear. Right? So maybe you would not have I'm an only child, so I don't know. But I could see myself struggling with the idea of writing about someone else's experience who had a lot of experiences similar to me but wasn't the same. And so how did you separate you from him? And you were close too, but how did you separate you from him in terms of writing about that?
[00:18:23] Speaker C: Well, I never tried to give anything from his perspective because I really couldn't, okay?
I'm always talking from my perspective and he was a very private person, you know, I mean, so I could tell stories about growing up with him and the things he did, the things that we did together, but I couldn't. And I didn't ever go into his world and say, this is how Scott was feeling about mean, he joined the freaking navy for God's sake. Don't ask me why. And he was home three or four weeks later, thank God, but I mean, I don't know why. I have no clue why he joined the Navy. And I say so in the book.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Uniforms in like after fleet week in New York, people join and quickly decide that that's not so.
I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm hesitating because the idea of doing this feels like such a daunting project that my head is about to explode and I don't have to do it. You know what I'm saying?
I want to ask you how you did it, how you got through putting together an entire book of information that it's not like linearly laid out. I mean, even like a memoir or something you write. I'm going to tell you this bit about a slice of life or writing a book. I'm going to sit down and tell you this is the six months, two years, 20 years, whatever in these people's lives. And it has a beginning, middle, and end. I mean, people's lives do have a beginning, middle, and end, but you know what I mean? But it's so much bigger than real people are bigger than books. And how did you distill like a real person into several hundred pages?
[00:20:19] Speaker C: Um, every time I felt I needed to write, I'd come in and I title the top of the page, like the Cabin. Say I titled the cabin.
And then I just write everything I could possibly think of about being at the cabin. How we got it, why we sold, what what Scott and I did, we how my dad did things he'd never done before. He like, laid a cement floor outdoors so we could have a stable walking space for my mother. And it was big. It was like 20 x 15ft. It was big. It's a big cement slab and the boys chopped wood.
You just sit down and write everything you could possibly think of about that subject. And then when I was done, I walked away, okay? And I might not go back for a month or two, and that's how I did it, to maintain my sanity. Because otherwise I would have been in a place of grief the entire time while grief mingled with joy because you're bringing up memories of people who are no longer here.
My mom died in 2007. My dad died in 2017. Scott died in 1993.
I mentioned even divine. She died in the 2000 somewhere, maybe 2011, I'm not sure.
Everybody outside of Greg and me who I talk about in the book is dead, which takes a lot of pressure off.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: That's true. Yes, that's true. But then is also leading to the grief and loss.
[00:22:28] Speaker C: Yes. Which is why it's little tiny.
Okay.
When I turned the book in now I'm going to take that back greg helped me, my older brother Greg helped me with the book. And so I thought I was pretty much, quote unquote, done, and I gave it sent it to him to look at, and he put it in chronological.
I had, you know, I'm glad I had him look at it that's this is important.
And I thought I added some things he mentioned and some bits and things perspective from him, which was really good.
And then I started putting together a proposal package. This is an early 2021 no gosh 2022. And I got to the part of the package where it asks for the first few chapters, and I looked at my first few chapters, and they were so boring.
I thought, Nobody's going to buy this book. I'm going to have to self publish it. And I'll sell two copies.
I'll buy one, and my brother Greg will buy one, and that'll be that's. This is just not working. So I talked to a friend of mine, and she read through it, and she you know, you've got a lot in here about people who weren't Scott, my grandparents, a lot about my grandparents and extended family. She said, I think you ought to take most of that know, and if Scott's not involved in it, somehow take that out because people aren't going to want that information.
And she wasn't wrong at all.
So I went back in and I took out probably 20,000 words and then added another 15 because I figured it was too short. So I needed to beef it up a little bit, and then I rearranged it. So I realized it needed that emotional roller coaster.
It's still a book, and I didn't want it to be the best nonfiction books.
They capture your emotions just like and you go on that ride willingly.
When I did that, it felt like I could breathe again. It felt so much better.
And I also had people contribute to the book, but I didn't know what to do with that, so I just stuck it all at the very end, and then I proceeded to send out the proposals, and Weiser got back to me on the same day, and a month later, I had a so.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Okay, so I have a different question. I will apologize for jumping all over the place because my brain makes these OD connections.
Okay, let's go back. Okay, so I met you because you write romance, and I guess I'm asking, what do you think? Okay, so one of the things we were talking about before we were recording is that your father was a prolific writer, a very prolific author.
So that's one thing, I think it's not a huge leap of nobody's. Like, I'm surprised that a couple of his children write books. You know what I mean?
There's no surprise there, right? But I guess what I'm asking is, what do you think the divergence was?
Because okay, so we were talking off air about an other author I know whose father, okay, much older than all these people, wrote Pulp Fiction, and the son does the same, and it's very similar.
They write very similar books in the very same vein, obviously, with evolution of time and everything. Books from, like, the 1930s are not books from the 1990s, but it's very similar. But how can I say this?
What you and your brother wrote diverge not only from each other, but that's the one thing, but from the kinds of books that your father wrote. And what do you think?
Is it just what caught your interest? And what do you think that would be the reason? I guess for your best guess, obviously, you know yours. You're here.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Well, my dad wrote popular men's fiction, men's action series, mac Boland and the Penetrator and the shoot him up, lone guy that walks in and kills all the bad guys and saves the day.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: Which I will say this. So Maggie Mar always equates this to romance because she says what people are doing is they're putting themselves in a situation and sort of acting out in theory, like what they would want to do and what men would want to do, what women want to do are two different things. But the books are fairly similar in that vein.
[00:28:00] Speaker C: Absolutely. 100%.
Genre fiction is genre fiction, whatever genre you're writing in. So Scott actually started genre fiction. He had his first book published I think it was his first genre book, I think was published in 1980 or 81, I'm not sure.
And my dad did a lot of Westerns, too. He did a lot of books that were the series was owned by the publisher. The name that he wrote under was.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: Owned by when I was a kid well, really popular, because I used to read the copyright page, and it was like Valentine and the author name were owned by them, and it was work for hire.
[00:28:47] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. But it was not what do I call it? It was not ghost writing because their name was in the inside cover. Secret special thanks to Chuck cutting up. He had over 350 books published, novels published.
When my dad got too behind in contracts, he asked one of the publishers if Scott could do a book for them. And they said, well, we can't guarantee it, but have him give it a shot and let us take a look at it. And they ended up buying it. So he did a lot of genre work.
I want to say probably 2025, maybe 30 genre books.
I'm not entirely sure while he was writing the other stuff. Now, he started learning about Wicca and witchcraft when he was in his early teens, in middle school, and found somebody that was on the same wavelength in his school, and they kind of grew up together and studied under the same people in San Diego. And so that was his life's calling.
And very much like my dad, writing the genre of fiction was a way to keep the lights on, get the rent paid, put food on the table. So in a way, it's not that out of bounds that he did something like that. It's not that different, because what he learned at my dad's side. But he would go to my dad's house in the morning and write on whatever fiction book that my dad had for him to do, and he did end up getting contracts by himself, by the way, and then he would go home and write his nonfiction at night. So it really gave him a structure and discipline in writing, and he was still writing on a selector three typewriter back.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: I know that so well. Sorry. I know somebody worked for IBM, so I seen all of them.
[00:31:10] Speaker C: Yeah, right. He didn't get his first computer until my dad got his second, and my dad gave his trash TRS 80.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: I'm sorry, we're dating ourselves. TRS 80 was my first. I have very fond, warm memories of that to be.
[00:31:38] Speaker C: It's not that out of the realm of reality or possibility that he would turn to writing. See, the thing is, the books that he wrote, that Scott wrote were books that he couldn't find, that he wanted to learn from.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: That's often the catalyst, but they didn't exist.
[00:31:58] Speaker C: Yeah. So he wrote the books that he wanted to have on his shelves, and they found an audience very much.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: Okay, maybe I don't know if this is Los Angeles, because I don't look for all books everywhere, but there are certain books, you know, this, like, in the Valley where you go and he has his own shelf. You know what?
So let me ask you this, okay? Turning to what okay, I have two questions, but let me start with I guess let's go back. What kind of books did you read as a.
[00:32:37] Speaker C: Well, I read all the Nancy Drew's. I read all the don't. Carol carolyn Keane. Oh, she writes Nancy Drew's.
I don't remember the name of the author, but there was a series called Beverly Gray Freshman, and it takes her through four years of college and then out to the big world, and there's a huge, humongous amount of books about that.
And they were all my mother's books, so they were old, they were hardback. They had the fabric covering in green and blue and all the Anne of Green Gable's books. I mean, they're more than just were they went on forever. And the Pollyanna books went on forever, too. There were a lot of Pollyanna books and I had a lot of them.
So those were what I read until I was about eleven or twelve. And then I was at Drug Mart, which is the drugstore near us, and I saw they had romance novels for seventy nine cents. I was like, oh, this looks cool. So I had my $2 salary, weekly, whatever, and so I bought a romance novel and a box of Junior Mints and went home and read.
At the time I became a very fast reader because of everything I read. And I was always reading, almost never played. At recess I was reading.
So once my dad realized that this is what I like to read, he went out to the local used bookstore because, yes, he was a writer and yes, he wrote anything that would get him paid. And yes, he managed to do quite well taking care of a family of five.
But that said, he would go to the used bookstore and he would buy because they had all their romances in one huge bookshelf. And he'd go to the Harlequin Presents when they still had those white spines and he block off a yard long bit of the bookstore and goes, okay, give me all those oh my God.
He'd wrap them in different or my mother would wrap them four or five books at a time and that would be Christmas and my birthday.
[00:35:36] Speaker B: That's such an excellent idea. So I'm going to say this because I see it in my head now and every time someone on this podcast mentions the used bookstore, I have in my picture the used bookstore that I went to when I was twelve and I realized not everybody's at the same store because they had like a present section. Barbara Cartland had her own can. I'm not going to get into but there were all those I so I see it in my head. I bought so many books that way because the library okay, so I will say this. So the library carried romance. They didn't segregate, but there were only so many they didn't buy every line. Not every ranch had every line, you know what I mean? And I was a child, so I didn't get around that much, right? Because public transportation was slow. And so the used bookstore and go, I feel like one or two Saturdays a month and buy tons and tons of them and I believe you could take them back and trade them in, but that's kind of vague, that part.
But I do remember all that. So I'm trying to think how we all got caught up by that bug because I don't know if that would even happen today. It doesn't even seem possible. But so many writers have had that similar experience. But after doing that, did you move then exclusively? Because I did read the Nancy Drew and I read a lot of these other books and then. I also moved well, not exclusively, I still read widely, but the books I consumed the most were romance. Well, they were consumable, and there were a lot of them, to be honest.
And I think the fact that there were a lot of them helped, you know what I mean? I read a lot of literature, but people are writing one book a year and then you're like, okay, well, now with the January 2, what else am I going to do?
[00:37:15] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:37:16] Speaker B: So my second question is then what?
Although for you, this is your question what made you decide to write romance as opposed to any of the other things?
[00:37:29] Speaker C: Well, actually, I flirted a lot with in my teens with fantasy, with Patricia McKillop, the Riddlemaster series, the Dragons of Pern series. So I did take a detour into fantasy, and then I got into mysteries and I read all the Agatha Christie, I read all the oh, it was another Patricia, Peter Whimsy, which was Dorothyers.
So for a while I was actually writing in my twenty s I was actually writing Dorothy L. Sayers Peter Whimsy fan fiction. Okay. And my dad kept saying, you should write romance. You love romance. Yeah.
It wasn't until I was in a really crappy job, it was a.com run by kids who were 20 years younger than me, who thought they knew everything because they had daddy's money behind there. And I met Jen Reese, who is a wonderful writer of middle grade fiction.
Look her up, she's amazing. And we started getting together well, after I got laid off while I was in London, actually, and didn't know it until I got home three days later.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: Yeah, this may not be your city.
[00:39:19] Speaker C: Yeah, right. I'm thinking. But we started getting together every Wednesday at a coffee shop.
Not a Starbucks, just a regular neighborhood coffee shop and sharing our writing with each other and seeing how it went. And my dad talked me into that was 2001. My dad talked me into joining Romance Writers America. And so I did at the beginning of 2002. And I went to my first Los Angeles Romance Authors chapter meeting in January and met a lot of the people that we both know.
And that was kind of when I was like, oh, these people know what they're talking about. Well, most of them did.
I can learn from these people. And so I did. I buckled down and started writing worked. Finished the novel that I had been writing.
I mean, by the time I was finished, it was like 140,000 words. And it was international, of course, Harlequin Presents.
But it had sex in it. It wasn't Harlequin presents.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: Come on, punishing kisses have to oh my God.
[00:40:37] Speaker C: Right?
I went to my first national conference that summer in Denver, Colorado and got a pitch session with Harlequin. And the gal was, I don't remember her name right now, but she ended up a year later being let go, which was really sad because she liked my writing.
She listened to my pitch and she said, well, it sounds interesting, but unfortunately it's way too long and way too international for us.
She was representing the desire line, which I didn't know when I signed up, I had no clue.
So she said, why don't you write something for me and send it? So my first book took me nine months to write. My second book took me nine and a half weeks to write.
And I sent it to her. And that was just when they were starting the pro section, pro and Pan of RWA. And you had to have had a rejection letter or an acceptance letter from an editor in order to get pro. So she did finally send me a rejection letter. So I got that and got in.
And then I just kept going to conferences, kept going to have chapter meetings and kept writing. And the one thing I didn't do was rewrite.
I'm a very clean writer. I don't have many spelling mistakes. I don't have many punctuation errors.
Very little will catch your eye as an irritant in my writing when I first write.
And that is good and bad because it's good, because there's less to clean up. It's bad because you don't catch the things that need changing.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: I had this conversation maybe like two or three days ago with somebody and it's very true, but I think I learned years ago, and I don't actually talk about this much. I satisfied that sort of free writing, not urge I don't know how to explain the combination and how it keeps the whole brain happy. But I used to free write essays and I had like a newspaper column and that's the way I sort of satisfied that urge to talk about and how can I say this? Writing like, let's say 500 to 1500 words is like it's one and it's done. You're not beholden, you're not going back and forth. You're not really spending any time wrangling, not more than a week wrangling over it and it's gone. Whereas a book is a whole different kind of exercise and it's hard to if you're writing books on an any consistent basis, I think it's hard to have that free writing feeling. I don't know the right word for it because you're in a structured place. Writing a structured thing that's going to be a product. You know what I mean? So it's so different.
[00:43:49] Speaker C: Well, the thing about that I wrote between 2002 and 2007, that five year period, I probably wrote seven novels and I did all the things that you're supposed to do. I sent them out to agents, editors, trying to get I got a lot of really nice rejections back.
But because I never rewrote them from the beginning, before I sent them out, of course they were going to reject them. So I learned and then my mother died in 2007, and I got mad. I got really mad, and Mad Free wrote this book, which will probably never see the light of day. And I don't know, it has promise. I don't know. We'll see. But that's when I learned the power of rewriting editing. And that's when I learned that, really, every pass you make allows your voice to come through stronger. Every pass you make on the book, if you have your one focus being on your female character, make sure she's acting in character at all times until the story forces her to react out of character. And then the same thing with the male lead character, and then the same thing with the villain.
And then deepen, like a lot of my first drafts now, not so much back then, but now I don't put clothes on people.
I don't have furniture. So what are the things I do? And now I tend to go back. I'll write a chapter, and then I'll be done with that chapter and go back. And then when I come back to the writing the next day or three or four days later or whatever it is, I'll go back and reread that first chapter and go, okay, yeah, I need to tighten this up. This is a little bit add clothes to this person, add furniture. And it just helps deepen everything, make everything more real.
That's when I put sense memory in. I put my smell, sight, taste, touch, hearing for the main characters to help drag the reader into this world that they're in. And I really found that editing, those editing passes are where you make a.
[00:46:26] Speaker B: Break, because you described when you were talking about your brother and your father having that relationship involving writing, and I know you were dancing. That's a whole different thing. Were you not in those kinds of conversations with them then?
[00:46:43] Speaker C: No.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:46:46] Speaker C: Yeah. No, I really wasn't.
And I don't think I ever was, actually. We didn't meet on a we're all writers level.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: So even though your father was encouraging, because he's saying, Why don't you write? Because I can sort of see from his perspective, he's like, look, this makes a living. You like this. You can write this. This is a genre fiction. You know what I mean? You can do this and make a living, or whatever it is. Publish these books. It's not some mystery, because for a lot of writers, it's sort of like actors or comedians or something. So for some creative jobs, there's no bridge between living your regular life and doing that creative job. And people having to wade through the clouds to figure out how to do that is often part of the journey. But that seems like a part that you could have shortcut. And so when he was talking about that, it was more about doing it, going forth and doing it and not the mechanics of doing it, I guess, is what I want to say.
[00:47:49] Speaker C: Right.
I asked him to read my first three chapters of that big book that is never going to go anywhere, and he got to like twelve pages and said, yes, you're doing great. Have the ladies teach you.
He didn't want to read my sex scenes.
Yeah.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Always. So get that, right?
[00:48:24] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, yeah.
I always wonder about the people whose families are integrated as beta readers, and I think, how do you do that? But then I don't know.
That's interesting.
Let me say this. My perception of your career is that you came into romance similar to the time that I did.
Okay. So we came in with having had this huge traditional reading background and knowing people who had published very traditionally, and then the tide turns, the plot twist.
You remember those meetings we had in La. In was it Borders? Am I going to get this right? The place in the Valley, like, next to Ralph's?
[00:49:14] Speaker C: Borders. Yeah, Borders.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: There was gels across.
[00:49:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: So I remember meeting in that Borders, which is no longer there, I think. It's like I don't even know if TJ. Maxx I don't know. Every so often I drive by and it's something no, maybe it's a drugstore. I don't know.
And then even the conferences were steeped in this. This is the way things have been done for 30 years. But they were changing. And as there probably always is when there's this quote unquote disruption.
I feel like if you sat in that meeting and you said, the way publishing, especially for romance, is going to change in the next ten years is going to blow your mind, I feel like 90% of the people would have been like, Nah.
[00:49:56] Speaker C: Yeah, totally.
[00:50:00] Speaker B: And I wonder about this.
How did that change affect you? Because you were coming in at the time of the change.
[00:50:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I tried really hard to get published through Harlequin, and that didn't happen. They didn't like me, or for whatever reason, it didn't happen for me.
[00:50:24] Speaker B: So I don't know. And I cannot tell you how much I wanted it.
[00:50:28] Speaker C: Well, me too. That was the standard.
[00:50:31] Speaker B: I mean, even we're going to I can't remember her name right now because I can see her face. So the editors would come to La or Brea or whatever, and I think we'd all be down there pitching, you know what I mean?
[00:50:42] Speaker C: Because.
[00:50:44] Speaker B: They were the books I read well before Silhouette and Harlequin merged, but they were all the books I read. And all I wanted I wanted nothing more than to be one of those writers in those lines that I had read, and I had my specific lines. I'm sure we all did, but it didn't happen.
Well, let me ask you this. Do you at all grieve that not happening? Because I did have a period in my life where I really had to I mean, I remember this. I really had to sit down and think, okay, if this doesn't happen, then what? Because my whole writing identity at the time was wrapped up in that happening.
I figured I attended meetings and it was only a matter of time before I came in and said I got the call and it didn't happen. Well, it didn't sort of way, but we're not going to get into that. And so I had to grieve and it was really tough letting go of a dream that didn't happen and now I realize maybe couldn't have happened.
[00:51:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yes. And after my mother died and I wrote that angry paranormal book, I really can't even call it a romance, I pulled myself out of that and said, okay, now mind you, in 2004 or 2005, I was told by an editor who was in the know to not write paranormal romance because it doesn't sell.
Okay?
[00:52:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I know.
[00:52:22] Speaker C: So I did not write paranormal elements until 2007. And then in 2008, I hadn't yet seen Twilight or read Twilight, but Twilight was out, it was big. I was like, oh god, a teeny bopper movie about vampires who sparkle and werewolves, teenage werewolves, and I don't know if I can handle that.
Like I said, I love the books and I love the movies. So I got over my initial impression, but I wanted to write something that wasn't vampires, good vampires, and that wasn't necessarily werewolves. And I thought, what can I write?
Maybe a hybrid werewolf vampire? No, that would not be good because you'd have a half dead dog.
Not a good thing.
I came up with my king brothers who are part demon, part human, and part fairy. And it took me, the writing of that first book, to realize that the books are about each man having to deal with the gifts and the challenges that each of the bloodlines gave them. And they had to accept it all as part of them and sort of integrate all three parts of them in order to defeat the bad guy and win the.
So once I realized I really loved paranormal romance, I kind of ditched Harlequin because I didn't think they would ever get on the bandwagon with that. And they did for a while in very limited degrees.
[00:54:23] Speaker B: It kept burbling up but not going very far. And you know this, we know a couple of people who wrote for those for the 15 seconds that they had them.
[00:54:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
So there was a pitch session, I think it was a Facebook pitch session in 2010.
So 2008, I wrote one book and outlined two more and I don't remember what I was doing else that year, those years I had a baby.
[00:55:00] Speaker B: So I know that there you thing I remember from that.
[00:55:08] Speaker C: You know, did the pitch session and it was Crescent and press gosh. Oh, I remember trying to remember her name. Not Heather. Heather Howland.
[00:55:20] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
[00:55:21] Speaker C: Heather howland. And she said your first hundred words. I mean, your pitch really kind of sucks, but I love your first hundred words. I'd love to see the first three chapters. Okay, so I sent off the first three chapters to Heather. And so I went to Aspen, Colorado and spent a week with my friend Tammy.
And while I was there, apparently her email back to me had gone to spam or something and I had an email from her in my inbox saying, I haven't heard from you, I hope you can send me the rest of the book. Oh gosh, I'm really intrigued. And so I sent her the rest of the book. She read it over that week and we started chatting and she said, I'd love to make this a series, and how many books do you have planned?
Can you write 65,000 word book for me in two months? I'm like, no.
[00:56:30] Speaker B: She had to ask.
[00:56:31] Speaker C: I think this way, right?
But I got a two book contract with them and I had to be really honest with her. I said, Look, I am going to be going into surgery at some point for this tumor in my brain and I have to get it taken out. And so I will do my best to get the first book to you prior to that, which I did, which was good. But the whole thing was very I said, I can't promise. And she said, Well, I'm just going to take it on faith that you'll be okay and we'll get the second book out. Okay?
So those two books did come out. They did fairly well. I mean, I didn't make any lists or anything, don't think I made very much money on them, but I was proud of them and I got good reviews for them. And at this point then right after my second book came out, I think Crescent Moon Press dissolved and was no more. So it wasn't until it wasn't until my dad died and I got hooked up with Wolfpack Publishing, who is one of my dad's publishers, and they said they would be happy to take my old my series because I got the rights back, they'd be happy to take that series back and publish the third book. So there was a long time lag there's like four years between the second book and the third book coming out.
Yeah, which was harsh because that third book wrapped everything up story wise.
And that series is where I really learned the value of layering and editing and each pass making it deeper and more. And things that I put in book one started showing up in book three and I was like, what the hell did I subconscious whatever, I'm not sure they're writing God's blessing, blessing me, but it was great fun. They are out now under different names. It's still the Kane Brothers series, but I retitled and recovered and I still don't have the third book up yet. Sorry. I'll get it.
That's that's that's why I didn't allow myself to grieve very hard.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: Because you were moving forward then, I guess.
[00:59:27] Speaker C: Yeah, because I was moving forward. And then of course, I did who's that other publisher? And I did have a couple more another trilogy published through Burrow.
[00:59:41] Speaker B: Yes, that's what I couldn't remember that. I'm sorry. I couldn't remember the name. I remember it now. It's all come back to me. Because they can see the website with the green. I don't even know. Okay, that's a different conversation. I can see it all now in my head. It just was out of my head.
Okay. Are they still around? I actually don't know.
[01:00:00] Speaker C: I don't know either.
[01:00:05] Speaker B: Once I stepped out of some of that, I didn't keep up because my own publisher dissolved. So you know what I mean? And then was sold 50% to Amazon, like 50% to Simon and Schuster is craziest. But yeah, whatever. They were like, we're in romance because it makes a lot of money. We're out of romance. Good luck to you. But that's so interesting because I wonder if you had a different perspective because I really did grieve that the lines that I wanted to work for no longer exist. The ones that they had replaced them no longer exist. The last one they had that there was going to be the replacement I think lasted like six books. It just went down in flames.
And I'm not sure if it's because the audience wasn't there. The marketing, I mean, there's a whole lot of we could have a speculation party on harlequin, and they were also bought. And so a lot of things happened to change the industry, but a lot of my dreams were wrapped up in the industry circuit. 1984, you know what I mean? And it's not 1984. And so I don't know actually.
[01:01:24] Speaker C: I.
[01:01:24] Speaker B: Don'T know if I grieve because I can't have it. There's a lot of things I can't have because the world has moved on and changed. But I feel like in an alternate universe, I would have been that harlequin author, but it didn't happen.
Okay. All that said, you have gone down a different path. Where are you today in terms of what you think your writing future will be?
[01:01:56] Speaker C: I'm actually developing a paranormal women's fiction or urban fantasy. I'm not quite sure which it is.
You series that I'm in talks with a publisher about and I'm very excited. And I've decided that I'm going to write what I like to write and what I like to read.
And if it's not, it's not going to set the world on fire. And I'm fine with that because at some time my dad nobody knows his mean unless, you know, me and my family history, nobody knows his name. But he got books out and he got to go to book signings. And he was recognized within the community and he did a lot for writing in San Diego.
He created an awards book awards, the San Diego Book Awards, and for new writers who live in the San Diego County area. So, I mean, he did a lot for a while.
He was getting books into hands of the school kids.
I don't know all the ins and outs of that. I think that might be part of the San Diego Writers Association. I'm not sure. But anyway and he was fine with the level that he was at.
I'm going to take my path from him and my path from Scott, because write what you love and just keep writing.
He never stopped. At the end of his life, he was writing 50,000 words a month.
[01:03:54] Speaker B: I'm feeling tired of the thought to be writing.
[01:03:57] Speaker C: Right, yeah. Well, because he died at 87 and last seven years, he couldn't do much.
He had a bad ankle on one side and a bad knee on the other side, and so walking was hard for him.
He had someone to help him cook, who cooked for him and cleaned the house.
And so he was taken care of, but he couldn't do a whole lot. But he could do the one thing he'd been doing all his life, which was right.
[01:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah. It's fascinating because I'm finding okay, so I don't know if this is a function of the age that I am at or the stage of the writing career of me and fellow writers, but some like how can I say this kindly for prolific writers. Some 2030, sometimes 100 books in. I'm finding a lot of writers reevaluating what they've written. Not what they've written, because that's on the past, but reevaluating what they want to do going forward. And there seems to be a strong desire among the writers I know to write what they want as opposed to writing to market to some degree. I'm not saying everybody wrote to market 100%, but there was a strong market drive in that, and I'm finding so many people backing away from that and leaning more into writing what they want. And I don't know the reason for it.
For you. What is the reason?
[01:05:36] Speaker C: Well, I'm lucky in that what I want to write, there is a market for.
And I think that a lot of people like Tiffany Reese wrote the Sinners, the original Sinners series, which was amazing.
She's now writing under a different name, and she wrote a fabulous book. And unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the book, but it had some magical realism in it.
And it was not a romance. There was no sex in it, I don't think.
And it had me glued to my chair. I mean, seriously, this is the first thing I want to look up because.
[01:06:25] Speaker B: I have read I think she wrote for one of the lines I wanted at the end of that sort of era. I can't I'd have to think about it a little more, but I read all her books. I'm not going to say all because you never know with people. Like, I haven't read all 900 of anybody's book, but I read quite a few maybe like ten years ago. I feel like I want to say maybe less, maybe more. And I think she's an excellent writer. So now I'm fascinated with this.
[01:06:49] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:06:49] Speaker B: And this is actually, I'm going to say this, I think this is one of the things I missed from traditional publishing is that there were a number of romance writers who wrote for Harlequin or whatever and then branched out and wrote. I don't mean this in any pejorative way, but bigger books or books that had multiple themes or more layered, more elements, often longer. And I really like that evolution because there are many writers I followed that way for many years and it's not the same anymore.
[01:07:22] Speaker C: Hang on with that. The book was The Wishing Game and Meg Schaefer is her pen name.
It's excellent.
[01:07:31] Speaker B: Okay, that's how I'm going to spend my afternoon, to be frank. That's what's going to happen right, soon.
[01:07:36] Speaker C: Right, good.
Regarding the yes, a lot of authors have, when publishers see an author with a track record and then they see that they want to do a bigger book, a lot of times publishers will take them up on it because they have that track record. They have that following.
That's how Nora Roberts in the early eighty s.
I would look for the Nora Roberts name in those harlequins because her books were always a little more satisfying than everybody else.
[01:08:22] Speaker B: Out of six, say they came out six a month in whatever line one of the six or two other six you're like, this is the best thing out of four. Out of six. But you know what I mean. And then you were like, okay, so next month or next six months. And especially when they had the whole name thing and they would just use the same initials like, I learned the whole game and then I would follow those. And then when they say went to New York because Harlequin used to be in Canada. So when they went to New York, then it was like, okay, well, now they're going to write this woman fiction, or now they're going to write about sisters or mothers and daughters or romance, but also death by cancer or whatever. Then I would be like, okay, I'm in, because I already like your storytelling and I like other topics other than romance. And so I was always in. And I think, well, I think women's fiction is suffering for it, to be frank. But I think I miss that progression, the sort of tight writing that people learn with writing romance and expanding that into other areas. And it's one of the things I miss and maybe I feel is sometimes lacking in women's fiction now because there's a lot of women's fiction authors who've only written that and without the depth. There's only so many sister mother daughter stories that I can read, but I'm looking for that layering and that depth without the adamantek chairs.
[01:09:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
For weather. It seemed like every book I picked up to look some one of the main characters was fleeing to an island or a house owned by their long dead great aunt that was left to them on Florida Keys or somewhere and their nerd duel sister happens to show up and ruin everything, whatever. But for a while there, it seems like that was the only thing that was on the shelf.
[01:10:11] Speaker B: Oh my God. Everyone I opened and I was like, so now she's going to discover the path she didn't know, the secret. She didn't know the sister she never knew. And I was like, oh my God, I can only read ten. And actually I did stop reading. I don't know if I read women's fiction that much anymore. I really did stop reading that because I wanted more and I wasn't getting more. And I feel like without the authors who had the background with writing and then that ability to storytelling, that path to having those writers who do more was curtailed. And I guess it is what it is. I can't go back. And I think with book discoverability, what I haven't figured out is how to find those voices now. And women's fiction does not do nearly as well in the self publishing arena, which I think is upsetting. And some authors and I talked about is there going to be a shift with that? And I actually don't know. It certainly hasn't come. So I don't know if that's going to happen, but I really wish it did. I really wish it did.
But if people are writing for a living, then there's going to be limitations to what's out there.
[01:11:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:11:22] Speaker B: So let me ask you, you what has it been like after the book about Scott has come out? What is that? Because it's a different audience and it's a different way of putting a book out. But what has that been like having written that book versus paranormal or romance or the reception? I mean, or going out in the world marketing that way.
[01:11:52] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, having a publisher that believes in you is amazing.
Gia is the marketing manager for Wiser, for my book anyway, and she has done so many wonderful things. She's put me in touch with podcasters.
I actually did a portrait documentary with Sam Collins of Oculus Alchemy that's out. And just seeing people in both the tarot and the witchcraft world, druid. World be excited to meet me, has been kind of mind know I had Devin.
Devin, what's your last name? Hunter.
I was on his Modern Witch podcast a while back and he said, and I know this isn't true across the board, but with his little group it is true. He. Said it's like the entire gay community just wants to claim you as our sister and protect you because you're the last link to Scott.
And that was just really heartwarming.
It's been overall great.
The book came out September 4, and it's been kind of exhausting, to be honest.
I was supposed to travel at the beginning of November, but that got canceled. So it's like, okay, so I have a book signing in San Diego on Saturday, this coming Saturday, and then I get to.
[01:13:53] Speaker B: Rest.
I hear that.
So I want to thank you, Christine, for taking the time out even though you're sick to do this interview with.
[01:14:05] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:14:05] Speaker B: I really appreciate it because I realize that okay. When I have conversations with people, whether it's at conferences or we have lunch or something like that, I never ask these questions. I mean, we mostly talk about writing in life, you know what I mean? What's going on today? I think somebody saw you. I don't know. I was doing school stuff or whatever, and then we talk about writing and what we're writing now and this publisher and that publisher and what's going on, but I don't have an opportunity to have these in depth conversations. And I really appreciate you taking the time to share all of this because I've sort of wondered it. I'm not sitting saying, oh, I'm wondering about everybody all the time, but I know about your background. We talk about it in the context. But I have never sat down and asked all these questions and I don't know if I would with anybody. It seems kind of rude. Let's have lunches and tell me your whole back. You know what I mean? That'd be weird.
But I really appreciate you taking the time to share this with me and taking the time.
[01:15:07] Speaker C: Anytime, anytime. You're amazing.
[01:15:10] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[01:15:12] Speaker C: Thank you.
[01:15:18] Speaker A: This has been a time to thrill with me.
[01:15:21] Speaker B: Your host, Amy Austin. If you enjoyed today's episode, I hope you'll share, rate and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. It will help others to find and enjoy my conversations with brilliant women creators. Also, please hit the subscribe button on your podcast app. In addition to hosting this podcast, I am also the author of the Nicole Long series of legal thrillers. The first three books in the Nicole Long series are now live. You can download outcry Witness, Major Crimes, and without consent to your e reader right now. The fourth book in the new series, The Murders Began, is available for pre order wherever you get your books. I am also the author of the Casey Quit series of legal thrillers. These titles are available wherever books are sold, your local library, and also an audiobook. You can also find this podcast on Facebook at a Time to Thrill. Thanks for listening, and I'll be back with you soon with more great conversations.
