We are the frame work that supports the people we love we nurture our young and care for our elderly, we hold down jobs and still run our homes. I was awed by the amazing courage and relentless fortitude of my own sex in their everyday lives. Other women – widows and divorcees – were all around me, everywhere, raising their children, coping, surviving the grief of death and the agony of divorce. As I began to emerge from my own misery and isolation, I looked around and realized that I wasn’t alone in my plight at all. I wasn’t capable of feeling much of anything for the next two years except the agony of his loss and the desperate need to keep going for the sake of my family.Īnd that did have a dramatic effect on my writing. I wasn’t excited about that and I was barely aware when Tender Triumph appeared on the bookshelves in November. Three months after that, Pocket Books bought Whitney, My Love and designated it a “lead title.” On June 20th the book cover finally arrived. On June 19th, 1983, Mike died in an accident. When I couldn’t sell Whitney, I finally wrote Tender Triumph, and in January of 1982, that manuscript was sold.ĭuring the next year and a half, I wrote Double Standards for Harlequin and repeatedly re-wrote the unsold manuscript for Whitney, My Love, My Love while Mike and I waited eagerly a book cover with my name on it to arrive from Harlequin for Tender Triumph. He brought me coffee in my office while I worked, he hugged me when the manuscript came back with yet another rejection letter. Not even once.įor five long years, he watched me labor over the manuscript for Whitney. Most husbands of aspiring writers offer their support in the very beginning, but when their wives’ writing inevitably inconveniences them – and when they don’t see any money coming in – these same husbands often begin to complain and even to demand that their wives give up writing. In the years between 19, when I wrote and couldn’t sell a manuscript, I lost faith in myself and wanted to give up, but Mike wouldn’t let me.
Michael McNaught was my great love, my best friend, and my staunchest ally. I’d like to ask you the same – what book were you working on when your husband died? What did you do? How did your grieving process manifest itself, if at all, in your writing? I asked her how difficult it was to be writing romance when the romance had died in her life. When I interviewed Jill Barnett a few years ago, her husband had died recently. Your husband died right before you were published. (For a look at one of my favorite endings to a book, albeit not the epilogue in this instance, click here. I’ve always intended to write another medieval, and Water’s Edge, my next book, gave me the perfect opportunity to do that in a very special way.
When I finished Kingdom, I felt a sense of pleasure and accomplishment has lingered all these years. I did however, cry when I wrote the last two paragraphs of the epilogue. I was too busy making sure that readers would cry over it. I was very emotionally involved when I wrote the scene where Jennifer humbles herself to a battered Royce on the jousting field, but I didn’t cry over it. They had so much heart, so much depth, and the secondary characters seemed to leap to life in my imagination as soon as I gave them an identity. I loved the scope of the plot, but most of all, I loved the main characters.
I loved its medieval setting – the history, the pageantry. Of all my novels, I am in many ways, proudest of A Kingdom of Dreams. Talk about that, and talk about writing emotionally – did you know when you wrote that scene that it would be such a tearful scene? Did you cry when you wrote it? When you read it? (I cry to this day, even if that is the only scene I read when I pick up the book.) Do you plan to write any other medieval romances? What was it like to have written that one, given it was such a different time period than all your other books? In many of your other books, the hero ends up humbling himself to the heroine at the end and in this case, the tables were turned. My own favorite is your sole medieval – A Kingdom of Dreams, followed by Once & Always.įor now, let’s talk about A Kingdom of Dreams. Others prefer the regency-set historicals, Whitney, My Love, Once & Always, Almost Heaven, or Something Wonderful.
Some prefer the contemporary Perfect or Paradise. Readers vary about which of your books are their favorites. I hope you’ll enjoy our Q&A as much as I did. We discussed a multitude of topics, from her persistence in making her dreams become reality, to the personal tragedies she has endured, to how she’s seen the genre change since she began writing. This summer, Judith visited one of our message boards and agreed to be interviewed. For me it was the first medieval romance I ever read – A Kingdom of Dreams. If you are like most romance readers, you have given (at least) one book by Judith McNaught Desert Isle Keeper status.
0 kommentar(er)
