Linda Winstead Jones holds a special place in my heart for authoring the very first romance novels I ever read (The Sisters of the Sun Trilogy) and starting me on a long delirious love affair with the genre. This is a big year for her: two of her books are 2008 RITA finalists and the RWA is honoring her with a lifetime service award. She was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer my questions.
Raintree: Haunted is a finalist for the 2008 RITA and earned 4.5 Stars from the Romantic Times, which called it “nonstop action from start to finish.”
Prince of Magic is also a 2008 RITA finalist and earned 4 Stars from the Romantic Times. Publishers Weekly wrote that the story has “Punchy battle scenes and steamy lovemaking,” and praised Jones’s “gift for creating complex heroes and villains.”
Ciara: This year you are being honored with the RWA’s Emma Merritt Service Award. Can you tell us about the service you have done to earn this distinction? How has working with the RWA aided your development as a writer?
Linda: I was shocked when Sherry Lewis called to tell me that I was getting this award. It truly is such an honor. I served on the RWA Board of Directors as a Regional Director for four years. Honestly, I don’t feel my contributions were more worthy than those of so many other women who served on the board. Everyone who reads the Policy and Procedure manual from beginning to end deserves some sort of award! <g>
Serving on the board was such an interesting and rich experience, and I made many very good friends in those four years. Nothing is accomplished by one person alone. The best of our accomplishments were joint efforts, always. I truly am honored that the current board believes I made a significant contribution.
Ciara: Lets talk about the RITA, the Oscar of the Romance Industry. You won in 2004 for Shades of Midnight, and are a double finalist this year for Prince of Magic and Raintree:Haunted, all in the paranormal category. How did you feel when you got the call?
Linda: Long before I was a finalist, I heard the words “It’s an honor just to be nominated,” or other words to that effect. Until I got the first RITA call, I had no idea how true those words are. I was thrilled, of course. I’m not one to scream into the phone, but I did laugh (perhaps a bit hysterically) and once I was off the phone I did a little dance around the kitchen. (Because dancing is always an appropriate response to good news.) This year Donna Grant called me, and honestly, I thought the contest calls were going out the following day. I greeted her with a “what’s up?” and thought she was calling about some old board business. So, I was truly shocked, and then to be told I was a double finalist – more dancing was called for. Lots of phone calls and e-mails to friends and editors. Celebrations ensued. And then I had to make dinner and do laundry and get back to the work in progress, since a deadline is looming.
While I would of course love to win, it’s true that to be in such great company is an honor. When I won in 2004 I was sitting with my friend Lori Handeland, who had insisted that I write out something just in case. I had a short list of people I’d have to thank if I did win, and when my category came around and they started calling out the names of finalists, I realized I didn’t have a chance so I stuck that piece of paper somewhere in my program. Then they called my name and Lori screamed at me and I’m desperately looking through my program for that scrap of paper while she’s trying to push me out of my chair. <g>
Ciara: How did you get started writing paranormal and what has influenced you most in your work in this sub-genre?
Linda: While not technically paranormal, my first crack at stories which were very much out of the ordinary were with the fairy tale romances I wrote for Leisure/Lovespell. I loved writing those books! They were so different, and so much fun. From there it was a short hop to time travel, then to ghosts, and finally to fantasy set in an alternate world. It’s almost as if you give your brain permission to go beyond the bounds of reality, and it happily takes off.
Influences are everywhere, in fiction and in non-fiction, in television and in music. Often simply in letting your mind roam completely free. No constraints, no boundaries. You ask that question that always has to be asked – What if? – and then sit back and listen.
The characters from Sisters of the Sun, my first trilogy with Berkley, had been with me for a while before I actually got them onto paper. I could see the first chapter or two, but then it died from there. Nothing. Nada. Their stories just didn’t go anywhere. Then one day I was in the hammock in my back yard, watching the sky and thinking about the Fyne sisters, and it came to me out of nowhere. “They’re not from here.” From that moment The Sun Witch, and the other books in that series, flowed.
Ciara: You have written in many sub-genres under the names Linda Devlin, Linda Fallon, Linda Jones, Linda Winstead, and Linda Winstead Jones. What was your favorite book to write, and why?
Linda: You might as well ask me who my favorite child is. <g> The Sun Witch was very special, as was Cash. Madigan’s Wife, one of my first Intimate Moments, because I adored Ray. Raintree: Haunted, for so many reasons, not the least of which was Gideon. Prince of Magic, because Sian really spoke to me. I’m seeing a pattern here. Love the hero, love the book. There have been several favorites over the years, but the true favorite has to be the one I’m working on at that moment – whatever that moment might be.
Ciara: You were first published in 1994. What got you interested/started in writing and how long was your path to publication?
Linda: Like so many writers, I’ve been a reader all my life. As a child, as a teenager. I even loved writing term papers in high school, which definitely marked me as different. When I was in my mid-twenties, I took a creative writing course. We wrote poems and vignettes, and that was enough to get me hooked. With three small children, there was little time to write, but I tried. Those early efforts were not particularly good, but I learned a lot. It was strictly a part time hobby, one I gave up when my husband and I opened our own picture frame shop. With three kids in school and a business that was opened six days a week, there was no time for any hobby, much less writing a book.
In a twisted way, running that business is what lead me into writing. After a few years my husband took a job that took him out of town for weeks at a time, leaving me with a business and three kids who were attending three different schools. They all had activities – band, baseball, soccer, roller hockey. I painted the living room pink, but what the heck? I did it all. Now and then someone would as me how I got it all done, which surprised me. I got it all done because I had no choice. Being in that position made me realize that I was capable of doing whatever I wanted to do. And though it had been a while since I’d written anything, I knew I wanted to write.
When the lease on our shop was up, I told my husband I wanted two years to see if I could sell a book. He agreed, but he saved all our framing equipment so if things didn’t work out we could go back into that business. We closed the shop in August 1992. I set up my typewriter (yes, my TYPEWRITER) at the dining room table, and I wrote Guardian Angel. I bought a copy of The Writer’s Market and found a publisher that accepted unagented books (and also published western romance) and in May 1993 I sent them the first three chapters of my book. (without making a copy. Yowza.) In June I got a request for the full and sent them the rest (since of course that was all I had. Again, no copies.) In June I also found a local RWA chapter, which was a real turning point for me. I remember walking into the room and realizing that these were my people. They still are. In October of that year, I went to my first writer’s conference, Moonlight and Magnolias in Atlanta. I didn’t get much sleep that weekend, so when I got that call Monday morning, I was asleep on the couch and dazed when I talked to Alicia Condon at Leisure. I wrote all the details of the offer on a MacDonald’s napkin that was sitting nearby. <g> My first book was released in August 1994, exactly two years after we closed the frame shop.
And so it goes.
Ciara: What advice would you give writers just starting out?
Linda: Join a writing group – RWA or something else that suits you. We write alone, but the support of a group is invaluable. Also, don’t allow yourself to be paralyzed by the constant bombardment of rules that are around these days. Tell the story – that’s the most important thing.
Ciara: In your opinion, what are the most important elements of good writing?
Linda: There’s good writing and there’s good story telling. I’m not a perfect technical writer, I realize that, and the books I love might not be technically perfect. Compelling characters and a gripping story are what will bring a reader to an author again and again. What one man loves another will not, but in the end I don’t know anyone who raves about sentence structure or the scathingly brilliant use of adverbs. <g> Not to say that anyone wants to read a grammatical mess, of course, but loving the characters and caring about them is what makes for a great book, IMO.
Ciara: What is your favorite book of all time, and why?
Linda: This changes, too. I grew up devouring Nancy Drew, and for a long time Little Women was my favorite book. Then Gone With the Wind. The Stand, by Stephen King, Son of the Morning, by Linda Howard. I couldn’t possibly pick one.
Ciara: What are you working on next?
Linda: I’m working on another Nocturne, currently titled The Last of the Ravens – though of course that title could change. The story is set in the mountains of Tennessee, near to the place my good friends and I sometimes go to unwind, shop, and plot.
Ciara: If you could leave your readers with one legacy, what would you want it to be?
Linda: Legacy is a strong word. <g> All I want to do is make my readers laugh and cry and escape from real life for a while.
Thank you so much Linda! I look forward to meeting you at the Book Signing Event at the National RWA Conference in July!
Romance is the most maligned genre of literature, despite being the highest grossing. How do publishers afford multi-million dollar contracts for first time literary fiction authors? On the backs of romance. We, romance readers, are the most loyal fans. We are powering through the recession, earning even more profits for Harlequin despite the buying downturn through the rest of the economy. Unfortunately, most people who criticize the genre as “bodice-rippers” and “crotch novels” have never read one. I’ll leave the eloquent arguments to Smart Bitches who Love Trashy Books and Dear Author. Check out the stats on romance readers from the Romance Writers of America to see that we’re a highly diverse, highly educated bunch. Escapist fantasies? What book, besides a textbook, isn’t an escapist fantasy? That’s what reading is. That’s what TV and movies are. ENTERTAINMENT.
But I bought an autographed copy of THE SPYMASTER’S LADY to drool over.
Get out your popcorn! It’s time for the Oscars of the Romance Industry, folks. I, for one, am quivering in anticipation.