There’s retirement and then there’s retirement. I guess a born writer never really stops writing. But with the free hours that suddenly appeared in retirement, I found time, in addition to writing, to read for pleasure. Not a book a month, as in my working days, but often a book or more a day. I started out tackling biographies and various novels and eventually segued into romance novels. Undoubtedly I have read more than a thousand of them by now, maybe even two thousand.
I have also bailed on a number of romance novels, for various reasons, which my blog explains. It’s arrogant, I suppose, for a writer to think she can do a better job than someone who has had a book edited and published, but there you have it. To my way of thinking, good writing isn’t a function of grammar, punctuation, syntax and themes. Every writer has a different voice, and it’s that voice, the writer’s personality, that makes all the difference.
So I decided to use my own voice and personality to write the kind of romance novels and novellas I like to read and to publish them as e-books. I hope you love them, but I’m sorry to admit that, at this point in my life, I don’t care whether you do or not. Different strokes for different folks. I’ve had zillions of things published and produced. My name has been in print more times than I can count. Simply put, I wrote what I love to read, starting with my Mail-Order Cousins series.
After the Civil War, there was a shortage of women on the frontier and way more single women and widows than available men in the East. What courage and stamina it took for women to travel across the country to marry men they had never met, somewhere they had no friends or family. And it took no small amount of bravery for men to accept a bride sight unseen. I create the kind of women I like to read about. No sniveling, whining or stupid women here. And no artificial conflicts. They’re westerns, but I’m not trying to be Louis L’Amour or Linda Lael Miller. Just doing my own thing here and loving retirement.
