Jen: This week we are pleased to have Anne McAllister joining us. Anne has written over 50 books for Harlequin and she is here to tell us about her latest release. Welcome Anne! Please share a short bio with us.
Anne: I was born in California and grew up on SoCal beaches for the most part, but spent summers often in Montana where my mother’s family’s from and in Colorado where my grandparents had a small ranch. Both the beaches and the ranches form a background for a lot of my books, though big cities, especially New York City, have played a part in quite a few of them. I didn’t start writing romance until my youngest was 2, but before that I taught Spanish, ghost-wrote sermons, capped deodorant bottles and did all manner of things that have made my heroines well-rounded people!
Jen: Tell us about One-Night Love Child and where it's available.
Anne: One-Night Love Child is a Harlequin Presents that came out last April. It’s still available online and probably in your favorite used bookstore! It is a book I’ve wanted to write for several years as it’s a spin-off of a single title I did for Silhouette Books called The Great Montana Cowboy Auction in 2002. In TGMCA there were two supporting characters who had a relationship that resulted in a pregnancy. I so much wanted to write their story and tell people what happened to them and find their happy ending. Finally I got to do it – and I’m delighted. I hope those who have followed my Code of the West series in Silhouette will find it and enjoy learning about what happened to Sara and Flynn. My next book in Presents (a Mills & Boon Modern in UK) is Antonides’ Forbidden Wife and will be out in November in UK and January in the US. The hero is my surfer/inventor, PJ Antonides, (perhaps not your average Presents hero) and the heroine, Ally, is his wife who turns up to get a divorce about the time PJ discovers that divorce is the last thing he wants.
Jen: At what age did you discover writing and when were you first published? Please tell us your call story.
Anne: I discovered writing when I was in grade school, but I didn’t seriously write until I was a stay-at-home mom. I hadn’t read romance fiction until on vacation one year a friend who read Harlequins handed me a box of them and said, “These books are saving my life.” She had a terrible high-pressure job working in very difficult circumstances – and romance novels kept her sane and able to believe there was actually goodness in the world. Then she said, “I think you could write one.” And since I’d never read one -- and since she offered to watch the kids at the beach while I did -- I took her up on it.
I read more than 100 of them and I liked that they were about relationships, which interest me, and that despite the required hero and heroine and happy ending, there was plenty of room for each author to be herself and take the story her own way, so I thought I’d give it a try. It took me a year to write the first book (during the son’s very short nap times). I sent it off and started a new book. Good thing, too, as I’d written two more and sent them off before Mills & Boon bought the first one! The second had been bought by Harlequin American three months earlier. M&B bought numbers one and three the same day. The moral of the story, as far as I can see is: don’t stop writing and don’t think about the books that are out of the house, just keep working. It taught me patience, too. There aren’t any short cuts. It’s all, like Anne LaMott says, taking things “bird by bird.”
Jen: Have you noticed your writer's voice has changed over the years due to your experience? If so, how?
Anne: No. Not really. My voice is my voice. My world view is my world view. My quirky way of seeing things is not like anyone else’s. I see things differently depending on who my characters are and what their experiences are, and my diction may change as theirs would not necessarily be the same as mine. But the voice – and the concerns and the emotional landscape that goes a long way toward informing who I am as a writer – remain.
Jen: Do you have any “must haves” with you while you’re writing?
Anne: No. But it does help to have a sense of where I’m going with the book!
Jen: What is it about the romance genre that appeals to you?
Anne: That it’s about relationships, and I love exploring the ways people relate to each other. Also, even in the short romances I tend to include family or friends or a ‘larger world’ so it’s rare that my books are simply two people working out things only focused on each other.
Jen: Is there a genre that you’d like to write?
Anne: I like some chick lit, some mysteries, some historicals. I think I’m more inclined, though, to aim for a sort of longer single title relationship story if I write something besides category romance. I enjoyed The Great Montana Cowboy Auction and wouldn’t mind doing more of that.
Jen: What has been your highlight of your career to this point?
Anne: There have been a lot of highlights – mostly times spent with friends I have made because of being a writer whom I would likely never have met otherwise. I also enjoyed going to bull riding school once for research (that was definitely fun) and going to a New York photo shoot. The night I won a RITA and my first granddaughter was born an hour later is probably the most memorable night, though. That was amazing. It’s hard to imagine a RITA coming in second to something else on the same evening – but it did. Still, I’ll always cherish the memory.
Jen: Who are some of your favorite authors and books? What are you reading now?
Anne: It’s hard to limit my choices, really. I have shelves and shelves of books that are ‘keepers’ in my opinion. My tastes vary widely. In romance, I love Anne Gracie for her sense of humor and her characters, Sophie Weston for her wit and her voice, Kate Walker for her passion and intensity, Lisa Gregory for her strong sense of character and place, Mary Balogh for her regency world and willingness to tackle topics beyond the normal scope of the period. There are many many others in the field, too. I just read Joanna Bourne’s My Lord and Spymaster and thought it was wonderful. I’ve also been enjoying Gabriella Herkert’s Animal Instinct mystery books and Maddy Hunter’s delightful mysteries – and, of course, Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books. I could go on, but I’m sure you have other things to do today!
Jen: What do you do in your free time?
Anne: Besides read, you mean???
Jen: What's next for you?
Anne: I’m working on a Harlequin Presents right now and have two more in the pipeline after it that I’ll be doing for sure. One takes place in France, so I’m off to France next month. I have a couple of other projects that are halfway between the back burner and the front burner. It remains to be seen which of them I tackle along with the Presents books. I just went over the copyedits for a book coming out late next spring or early next summer called Savas’ Defiant Mistress. It takes place in Seattle – on a houseboat. I expect it to turn up again in a month for proofreading, so I guess that’s what is actually next, besides the one I’m actually in the process of writing.
Jen: Where can you be found on the web?
Anne: My website is at http://www.annemcallister.com/ where you can find info on my books in general. It is, I hope, finally getting fleshed out since we changed the design last year and a lot of the back list content is still waiting for my webmistress to have time to update and post it. My blog, where I usually write several times a week, is available there or directly from http://www.annemcallister.com/blog.
I am also a regular monthly columnist at The Pink Heart Society and on Tote Bags ‘n’ Blogs.
Jen: Do you have any questions for our readers?
Anne: Since one of the things I tend to do is write books that are linked, I would love to know how your readers feel about them. Personally I love peopling a whole world with characters whose lives intrigue me and whose stories I want to tell. But I also work to make sure that each story stands on its own.
I worry when some readers tell me they won’t read the Code of the West books or my Savas and Antonides books because they want to be sure they have all of them first, and then they’ll read them! Believe me, they weren’t conceived as a single entity, and they certainly don’t have to be read that way. In fact, it would likely be better if they weren’t because time passes often between each book.
So what do you readers think? Do you wait and read series of books all at once? Do you absolutely need to read them in order? Do you care? Will you skip a book if you know it’s in a series and you haven’t read the others? If it’s one of mine, please don’t wait or skip! They really do stand on their own. I don’t have a brain big enough to carry one plot around in it, let alone 16 or 17 or them!
Thank you, Jen, for inviting me to visit with you and your readers. It’s been fun. And if any of you have more questions, please ask or visit me on my blog or website to comment there or send me your questions. I’m happy to answer them!
Jen: Anne will be giving away a copy of One-Night Love Child to a commenter this week. So, answer one of Anne's questions or ask Anne a question of your own and be entered to win. A winner will be picked on Friday, August 22 at 5:00 pm PDT.
Interview with Anne McAllister
Posted by Jessica | 2:00 AM | contest, interview, romance | 18 comments »
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Anne, welcome to Book Talk. I didn't realize that One-Night Love Child was the follow-up to another book. Now I have to do a little book hunting. :)
I've very much a series reader. I almost always have to read them in order. But I don't wait until a series is done before starting them or else I'd be in some trouble.
And I too love Maddy Hunter's travel mysteries. I'm about 2 books behind in the series (they are sitting on my shelf just waiting for me).
First off thank you Jen for having Anne here. To answer one of the questions I definetly have to read a series in order and I wait to read them until I have all of them. I guess I should be more specific, if they are connected yes I have to wait, but if they can be read in any random order then I don't care. I was really mad one time when I read a few books out of order because I wasn't aware of them being a connected series. So thank you for letting us readers know that yours can be read as a single title. I hope you have a great day.
Jen, I write so slowly that there's no way I could ever want people to wait to read my books until they'd got all of the ones that are connected. They'd die of old age first! I hope you find The Great Montana Cowboy Auction and enjoy it, too.
Tami, I like reading books in order most of the time, but sometimes it's good to 'back into' things. I didn't read Janet Evanovich's Hard Eight when it first came out because, as I recall, someone said that that is where Stephanie got 'involved' with Ranger, and I was still on the page in my brain where she should have been faithful to Joe. So I couldn't do it. But then I read Ten Big Ones and I liked it a lot, and I began to understand the tension dynamic of the three of them. And eventually I went back and read Eight and liked it. Reading it out of order didn't hurt it at all for me. I would hope that reading things out of order in my series books doesn't wreck things for people in the same way that reading the Plums out of order didn't ruin things for me. In fact they made it possible for me to go back and read them when I might have quit altogher.
I love reading series. For the most part, I prefer to read them in order. If they are hard books to get hold of, I read them as I can get them.
Melissa
I prefer reading a series in order especially if they are tightly connected but have read many books that turned out to be series and I hadn't read the previous ones and had no trouble understanding where they were coming from. (If that makes any sense!)
I'm a lover of the Code of the West series and can reassure you that Order is Not Important-- in many parts of life but specifically for this series!
Each book stands well alone. The themes vary, all delivered with Anne's humor and good storytelling. Some favorites of mine are A Cowboy's Gift, whose hero, Gus, has matured to allow a committed relationship to Mary, and A Coyboy's Secret, which skillfully presents illiteracy.
I'm glad there is a chance to revisit characters in One-Night Love Child. Anne, I'd also love a story someday about the mysterious cowboy down on his luck (and just out of prison?) sold for the lowest price at The Great Montana Cowboy Auction.
Nice to chat with you!
Mary
I like reading books in order, but if I find an interesting author I read what I can get, I often later reread my books and then I can have them in order...
It all depends on how I discover the series. I have read series out of order and sometimes to satisfy my need to make sense of the time line re-read portions of key moments tying the books together. If it is a favorite series I'll wait and re-read the series in order once my memory of the books have blurred. Of course if the series is by a well known and loved author I'll read the books in order and a quickly as they come out.
Melissa, that sounds like a nice sane sensible approach to reading! Good for you.
Hi Ellen, yes, it makes sense to me. Sometimes publishers make it easier to figure out which book is which in a series, too. Other times you have to look at the copyright page to find the order of the books (and hope the author is chronological!)
Mary, thanks so much for your kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the Code of the West books, especially Gus's story and J.D.'s. I miss 'em! And I really enjoyed revisiting Montana for One-Night Love Child. I still have Logan's story (the cowboy sold for a pittance to a group of kids) in the back of my mind. Just hoping to find a good place for it.
Eva, like you, if I find a good series or an author whose voice I like and it's a middle book I read first, I just enjoy going back and looking for -- and reading -- all the books I missed.
Sue, re-reading a whole series is a tempting idea. There are a few I would be inclined to do that with. But sometimes, I think, it's nice to have a bit of space between them. A few months back I watched the three Bourne movies one after the other, and they weren't quite as good because the directors used some of the same ploys in more than one film. If I'd seen them several months or a year or so apart, the echoes wouldn't have annoyed me. They would have delighted me because of the echo factor. But seen on top of each other, the sense of 'been here before' which is fun and titillating in a spaced apart version, is a little annoying in a put-all-together version -- if you see what I mean.
I have to read series in the right order. The only exception to that is where I've picked up a book thinking it's a one off and realised I'm a couple of books in. If I like it I'll compulsively go and hunt down the earlier books. I've actually done that with both JDRobb and LKHamilton...I didn't come across their first couple of books.
I'm actually tending to feel now that if I know it's a series I should wait til they're all out, before I buy. An ebook publisher closed down last year with 2 multi author series running, just missing the last book. Boy was I hacked off. Then of course there's the RobertJordan factor. Which is eminently selfish of me I know...but I want that final book.
I love series books, I do not have to read them in order but I like to
Dawn, yes, it's annoying to be left hanging! I have a certain cowboy I'd like to write about, but right now the lines don't seem to think he'll fit where I want him. So we'll just wait a while -- or I'll do him as a single title. I do remember, too, reading a Barbara Metzger regency on a plane trip a few years ago, and accidentally leaving it in the terminal when I boarded the plane. I was about 30 pages from the end. And even though I knew, of course, that the H/h got together, I didn't know how! So I ended up buying a second copy of the book!
BethRe, all authors of linked books should love you for not demanding that you have them all and in order!
I want to go white water rafting or sky diving.
I love reading a series in order. If I do not then I usually have to reread the other books to remember little details.
Do you plot out your stories first or do you let the characters lead you?
I love to read series and in 99% of the cases, will wait to start reading the books until I have them all. Then I start reading from book 1 through the end. I always read them in order. The only exception to this rule is the Cynster Series by Stephanie Laurens. I've read those books as they published. She is up to book 16 or 17 by now and is still going strong.
OOPS, had two pages open and posted on the wrong one on the wrong subject. Sorry. I like to read series and if I don't have them all sometimes I will read them out of order. prefer to read them in order though.
hi and welcome.
I love series books and have been known to read them out of order such as Sandra Brown's Texas Trilogy series. I got one and read it and then purchased the others because I loved the series.
If I know about the series ahead of time I would choose to get all the books and read them in order but don't mind out of order b/c as you said, they are readable that way.
The winner of the autographed copy of One-Night Love Child is Melissa. And since i'm feeling generous, I'm giving my copy of the book (sorry it's not signed) to Ellen. Will both of you please contact me at admin.bookblog@gmail.com with your mailing addresses?
Congrats!