Welcome to our Author Ask and Tell in which the published authors of Coeur de Bois Romance Writers of America Chapter respond to the questions of inquiring minds! Our first author to “tell all” is Robin Lee Hatcher. 

On Shelves Now: Home to Hart’s Crossing and The Perfect Life

Wagered Heart, an historical romance set in 1880’s Montana, just arrived in bookstores. The link on Amazon.com is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0310259266/novelistrobinlee

Upcoming: Bundle of Joy

 

1. Describe your latest project.

I am currently writing the first of three books about women with unusual jobs for their time (1915 for the first book). In A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE, Gwen Arlington (a determinedly single young woman) is running for mayor of Bethlehem Springs against the relative newcomer to the area Morgan McKinley, a wealthy businessman who is building a health spa (fed by the hot springs) near the town. Problems and romance ensue.

 2. What ONE other author do you think readers should read?

Oh, this is an impossible question. There are too many wonderful novelists who should not be missed.

However, I’ll choose James Scott Bell, not just because he writes wonderful legal suspense novels (Try Dying is my current favorite of Jim’s; it has a film noir feeling which I adore – “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”), but because he also writes some of the best writing books offered by Writers Digest today in their Write Great Fiction line. Plot and Structure has been around since 2004. Jim’s new book, Revision & Self-Editing, came out this year.

3. Please share a passage from a favorite author of yours, and what do you like about it?

Since I already mentioned James Scott Bell’s Try Dying, I’ll share the opening of that novel. It’s an unusual opening, a terrible series of events being described in such a matter of fact way — and then boom, it becomes personal. Each following scene sucked me in deeper and deeper to the mystery behind what actually happened on that freeway.

“On a wet Tuesday morning in December, Ernesto Bonilla, twenty-eight, shot his twenty-three-year-old wife, Alejandra, in the backyard of their West Forty-fifth Street home in South Los Angeles. As Alejandra lay bleeding to death, Ernesto proceeded to drive their Ford Explorer to the westbound Century Freeway connector, where it crossed over the Harbor Freeway, and pulled to a stop on the shoulder.

Bonilla stepped around the back of the SUV, ignoring the rain and the afternoon drivers on their way to LAX and the west side, placed the barrel of his .38 caliber pistol into his mouth, and fired.

His body fell over the shoulder and plunged one hundred feet, hitting the roof of a Toyota Camry heading northbound on the Harbor Freeway. The impact crushed the roof of the Camry. The driver, Jacqueline Dwyer, twenty-seven, an elementary schoolteacher from Reseda, died at the scene.

This would have been simply another dark and strange coincidence, the sort of thing that shows up for a two-minute report on the local news — with live remote from the scene — and maybe gets a follow-up the next day. Eventually the story would go away, fading from the city’s collective memory.

But this story did not go away. Not for me. Because Jacqueline Dwyer was the woman I was going to marry.”

4. Who would you love to invite to dinner (living or not) and why?

Abraham Lincoln, the most written about President of all presidents. I am currently reading (on my fabulous Kindle ebook reader!!) Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of our Most Admired President. It is impossible to read about this man without wishing you could know him and ask him about his life and the people he knew and the decisions he made. I admire him on numerous levels.

5. What’s on your playlist right now (music)?

In my office while working, I’m currently listening to violin music by Joshua Bell and Andre Rieu plus Vienna waltzes by the New 101 Strings Orchestra.

In my iPod, I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Philippa Gregory’s The Virgin’s Lover (after having already completed the same author’s books about the wives and lovers of Henry VIII: The Constant Princess; The Other Boleyn Girl; and The Boleyn Inheritance).

In my car stereo, I’m listening to Found by Travis Cottrell (a voice very similar to Josh Groban).

6. Have you had any interesting experiences with one of your readers– via blog, book signing, conference, correspondence?

I have lots of stories that I could tell, but one that was special was hearing from a childhood friend of my oldest daughter about 27 years after she moved away from our neighborhood. She inquired if I was the Robin Hatcher who was mom to Micki, and then told me who she was. She retold a story about a time she stayed overnight with us and the girls got scared (a lightning and thunderstorm, I think) and what I said that had calmed their fears. Of course, that moment hadn’t made as big of an impression on me as it did on a ten-year-old. It was great fun connecting with her, and it never would have happened if she hadn’t seen one of my books (I knew her before I wrote my first book).

7. Is there anything about being a published author that you wish you’d known before you were published?

I wish I’d known that writing actually gets harder, the more books you write. Yes, you learn more all the time, but the expectations get higher and higher. I probably wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me, but I still wish someone had told me. However, when I started writing, there wasn’t email. Writing groups for novelists didn’t exist either, at least not in Boise. Although I joined RWA as soon as I heard about it, that was after my first two books had been sold. So whatever I learned, I learned from how-to books that I checked out of the library or bought at the bookstore.

Robin Lee Hatcher discovered her vocation as a novelist after many years of reading everything she could put her hands on, including the backs of cereal boxes and ketchup bottles. The winner of the Christy Award for Excellence in Christian Fiction (Whispers from Yesterday), the RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance (Patterns of Love and The Shepherd’s Voice), two RT Career Achievement Awards (Americana Romance and Inspirational Fiction), and the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award, Robin is the author of over 50 novels, including Catching Katie, named one of the Best Books of 2004 by the Library Journal.

Robin enjoys being with her family, spending time in the beautiful Idaho outdoors, reading books that make her cry, and watching romantic movies. She is passionate about the theater, and several nights every summer, she can be found at the outdoor amphitheater of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, enjoying Shakespeare under the stars. She makes her home outside of Boise, sharing it with Poppet the high-maintenance Papillon.

To learn more about Robin and her work, please visit her web site at www.robinleehatcher.com