Fiction
Forgotten Sea
Virginia Kantra, Penguin Group, 304 pages
Related Images
- COURTESY OF VIRGINIA KANTRA
Kantra won the best novel award from the Romance Writers of America.
COURTESY OF VIRGINIA KANTRA
Forgotten Sea
Virginia Kantra, Penguin Group, 304 pages
Kantra won the best novel award from the Romance Writers of America.
Of all the fan letters Raleigh romance novelist Virginia Kantra has received, she has a few favorites.
Like the one from the woman who reads Kantra's books aloud to her patients in a nursing home.
"She said that when she gets to the spicy bits, the girls have her read them very slowly and loudly," Kantra said. "I read that and I think, if I go to my grave as someone who gave a little bit of brightness to their day, I'll be so happy."
Kantra's journey from stay-at-home mom to best-selling romance author scaled a new peak this summer as the mother of three stepped onstage in New York to accept a 14-inch brass statuette for Best Novella from the Romance Writers of America - the equivalent of an Oscar in the romance writing industry.
Kantra's most recent novel, "Forgotten Sea," hit the shelves in June. Her newest series is set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, about three generations running a bed and breakfast on fictional Dare Island.
Staff writer Chelsea Kellner got the scoop on breaking into the business and earning a living doing what you love.
Q: How did you get into writing?
When we moved down here, my kids needed me home because they had some health issues that meant I needed to be able to go to hospital. I was writing all through that time, fantasy mostly. ... I was so tied up in the young-mother thing that it was taking me five years to complete a manuscript.
Then, when my youngest was starting kindergarten ... I took a really cold look at the market and the popularity of romance fiction, which was the largest percentage of mass market paperbacks sold in the U.S. I was very lucky - I joined the Romance Writers of America in 1994, and it took me about four years to write a book that could sell. ... I didn't realize what the odds were when I started, and that was probably a good thing.
Starting with dialogue
Q: What is your average workday like?
First, I come downstairs and hit the automatic brew button on the coffeepot. That is the single most important thing I will do all day. ... Then I open up my computer and look at it and go, I can't possibly write anything.
So I retreat, usually back to bed with my second cup of coffee and a notepad and a mechanical pencil, with the idea that anything I write in pencil on a notepad doesn't have to be perfect, because how ephemeral can you get? ... I'll sit down and try to write, something, anything. It usually starts with dialogue. When I have enough confidence and caffeine mustered to face the computer again, I go downstairs and type it up.
In the meantime, my children are calling, my house is collecting cat hair, I'm dealing with the bills - all the things you do if you have a home office. I work really until my husband comes home and we have dinner. If I'm lucky I get the night off, but if I'm under deadline, I go back and work until I meet whatever the page goal is, depending on the deadline and how behind I am.
Q: How fast do you write?
I write a book in about eight or nine months. I'm considered slow. At the beginning of a book, I write about two to three pages a day. At the end, I write 10 to 14 pages a day. If I can get out one or two books a year, that's considered lucky. ... If you do this for a living, you don't wait to be divinely inspired. You have a deadline. You write words, and if they are bad words, you fix them later, but you write. You have to keep the quality of work up, but you need to have something new out there often.
Q: Does your family read your work?
Here's the deal with having your mother as a romance writer: I do fairly sexy reads, and my kids are all enormously proud of what I do, but I'm not sure when you're reading an enormously sexy read you want to hear your mother's voice in your head.
My daughter will read some. I have two grown adult sons who don't read any romance, but their girlfriends read my books.
My husband is my first reader. If ... I'm tempted to relax into a cliché, he'll call me on it.
Choosing N.C.
Q: Why did you decide to switch from writing paranormal books based in Maine to your latest trilogy set in the Outer Banks?
I wanted to write about the (Outer Banks) islands at a time of year when most people don't get to see them. ... I love the area, and I really respect the people. I made up my own island. That way, you are respecting completely the reality of the people who live there, (but) you're not messing with the truth that they know.
Q: Why is romance such a popular genre?
Basically, romance at its heart is about building relationships, finding someone you can make a life with. Yes, there's pain and there's danger and there's struggle. Life is like that, but there's also growth and happiness, because life is like that, too. I think that is what readers really respond to.