Interview with Hope Tarr

Jen: Please help me give a warm welcome to today's guest, Hope Tarr. Hope, will you please share a short bio with us?
Hope: Sure thing, Jen. My educational background is in Psychology and Education—I have a Ph.D. in Educational Measurement (statistics, basically), which of course has absolutely nothing to do with writing or, dare I say, romance. I started writing my first book in 1993 and made my first sale to Berkley in 1999. My current release for Harlequin Blaze, Every Breath You Take, is my eleventh published novel, and I have more contracted for 2009 and 2010.

Jen: Tell us about your current release, Every Breath You Take
and where it's available.
Hope: Every Breath You Take, my contemporary Blaze, is set in Manhattan where I live and Belize where I now aspire to vacation. It’s a second-chance-at love story, my personal favorite. Former FBI special agent turned executive bodyguard Cole Whittaker steps inside his new client’s Madison Avenue office suite and finds himself face-to-face with his “principal”—Alex Kendall, the woman who literally “got away.” Five years earlier, Cole was forced to abandon Alex at the airport, but he’s never gotten her out of his head or his heart.

Though the book officially releases on January 1st, because of the holidays, it should be available early which is to say now. As to where, everywhere, or certainly the usual suspects: the chain brick-and-mortar booksellers as well as the online retailers—amazon.com, for sure, as well as directly from the publisher through Eharlequin.com.

Jen: At what age did you discover writing and when were you first published?
Hope: I was twelve years old when I embarked on my first serious effort, a Tudor-set historical romance entitled BEYOND LOVE’S REACH. I still have the manuscript copy, which I wrote and rewrote on my manual typewriter a truly painful number of times. I finished the book at roughly the age of fourteen and dreadful though it is I’m enormously proud of it.

I’d like to say I published my first novel in my teens, too, but unlike Mozart I’m no prodigy. Fortunately slow and steady wins the race, or at least it keeps you in the race. There were, for me, detours aplenty along the way. Convinced I’d never make “it” as a writer, instead I went on to earn a Master’s Degree in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Education. Ultimately I had to make peace with the fact that I wasn’t really interested in analyzing people or teaching them, at least not in a classroom setting. What I wanted—longed—to do was write about them.

In 1993 on a week’s break between consulting assignments, my then day job, I wandered into a bookstore and meandered over to the Reference Section. My gaze snagged the spine of a small pink paperback shoved onto the very top shelf. It was Kathryn Falk’s 1989 edition of How to Write a Romance for the New Market and Get Published. I bought Kathryn’s book, wrote a Regency-set historical almost as dreadful as my first Tudor-set one, and then wrote a second Regency-set historical, which fortunately wasn’t altogether bad. A Rogue's Pleasure was my first sale. Berkley bought it as one of the launch books for their Seduction romance line. Fifteen years later, that line is long gone and others with it, but I’m still here, still writing the stories I love and that I hope readers love, too.

Jen: Do you have a writing routine?
Hope: Yes and no. I work six days a week, though certainly when I’m not on deadline I cut myself some slack—okay, a lot of slack—on weekends. But literally when I walk into my home office, coffee mug in hand, I am officially “on duty.” My shingle is hoisted, my butt is planted in that chair, and my brain is focused on getting down to business. Granted “business” may involve writing or editing the actual manuscript or it may involve writing the blog post and web site content that promotes the book. It may involve guest blogging on sites like…well, this one! It really depends on where I am in the schedule. Either way, I am at my computer, which is to say working.

As for “process,” I’m a hybrid, neither a plotter nor a pantser but what another author coined a “puzzler.” As a puzzler, I start out with a pretty detailed outline or synopsis, which I think of as my road map. That said, once it’s written—and don’t hate me, but I love writing synopses, really I do—I rarely look at it again.

Once I start writing, I write the book completely out of order. The dialogue comes to me most strongly and so I will write whole scenes with no notion of where they fit or even if ultimately they fit at all. This is where the “puzzler” part of me really takes over.

The last two weeks of a book are this mad time where thanks to the miracle of word processing, I’m cutting and pasting, meshing and melding scenes, tossing some out that don’t fit, writing new ones to fill the self-imposed holes until finally it all comes together into a close-to-perfect fit. Once it does, I pretty much hit “Send” and go to bed.

Jen: What is it about the romance genre that appeals to you?
Hope: I love romance fiction for the same reason that as a kid I loved all the Walt Disney fairytales. I love Happy Endings. In fact, I demand them. Really, doesn’t the world have sufficient pain and suffering without all of us reading about pain and suffering for ahem…pleasure? As a writer, I don’t hesitate to put my characters through hell but once they go there and do the work, once they face down their dragons, the dragons within as well as without, they get their Happily-Ever-After—period—and so do my readers.

Jen: What’s the most challenging aspect of writing? Easiest?
Hope: The most challenging aspect would have to be balancing keeping the work fresh with meeting readers’ expectations. I believe they call the latter “branding.” ((wink)) The easiest part of writing is well…writing. Think about it. I get to make up stuff for a living. How cool is that?!?

Jen: Do you do anything special to celebrate a sale (new contract) or release?
Hope: A lot of writers I know buy themselves a little sparkly to celebrate but me, I’m not so much into the bling. For my first few books, I used to reward myself with a first edition volume of…something. How geeky is that? For example, I bought myself a lovely 1861 first edition of The Habits of Good Society after I sold Tempting. I’d prefaced several chapters with quotes from the book, written in the first-person from a former dandy from the perspective of the bow front window of White’s. Think wry humor paired with practical advice that is strangely timeless and absolutely delicious!

As I get…ahem, older, more and more I give myself the gift of time. Whether that means going for a lovely long run by the Hudson River, spontaneously strolling into an art gallery and wandering around for as long or as little as I like, or simply breaking out the pet brush and having a grooming fest on the floor with my cats, I give myself permission to take time out and just “be.”

Jen: Is there a genre that you’d like to write?
Hope: Within the romance genre, I’ve written historicals set in multiple time periods (Regency, Georgian, Victorian, and Medieval) as well as contemporaries. I’ve done two paranormals so far and given the way my psyche works I fully expect I’ll write more. I have some projects in progress that have strong romantic elements but aren’t romance novels per se. I’m not terribly keen to do a Young Adult novel though if the proper project were to come along, that could change, too. I’d love to do some children’s books and have a concept for a picture book series drafted out. Those books, which have compassion in the context of animal well-being as their core theme, aren’t yet ready to be born, but I believe they too will have their day.

Jen: Who has inspired you as an author?
Hope: It’s the authors writing the truly wonderful books who inspire us, to write in the first place and then once we do, to hone our craft and write better. Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones—amazing. I recently read Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert and all I can say is “Will I ever be worthy?” Back in September I met Candace Bushnell at my local Barnes & Noble and in addition to being gracious and down-to-earth, IMHO she really is the Edith Wharton of our times. Within the romance fiction world, my list may not be endless but it’s certainly long. Nora Roberts, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Mary Jo Putney, Cathy Maxwell, Julia Quinn—all queens of the craft. As for the late greats, Nora Lofts, Anya Seton, Victoria Holt—after all these years, their amazing stories still have me scratching my head and wondering, “Just how does she do it?”

Jen: What has been your highlight of your career to this point?
Hope: At the risk of coming off as coy, I’ve had so many highlights and amazing moments I’d be hard pressed to pick just one. Frankly, I can’t do it. Most revolve around the many amazing people I’ve had the good fortune to meet in this business, some of them mentors, some of them peers. Now if someone were to hand me that um…Rita, we might have to revisit the question. <>
Jen: What's next for you?
Hope: I have two more Blazes coming out starting with the sequel to Bound To Please, my most recent Scottish Medieval and the launch for Harlequin’s Blaze Historical Miniseries. This book will be Callum and Alys’s story and due out in December 2009, it will be a Christmas-themed book. A second Blaze will come out in summer 2010 in time for beach read season. At present, it’s set to be another historical, late-Victorian set and edgily erotic very much in the tradition of Robin Schone’s The Lady's Tutor.

Jen: Where can you be found on the web?
Hope: I’m at http://www.hopetarr.com/ and my “new and improved” blog is at http://www.hopetarr.com/blog. I run a regular monthly contest with multiple winners as well as special contests timed around new releases and yes, the holidays, so I hope J&J readers will pay me periodic visits to catch the latest happenings.

Jen: Is there anything you’d like to ask our readers?
Hope: Publishers’ marketing departments are forever running sample studies and the like, trying to figure out what it is “the public” wants from us. At writers conferences, writers are always angling for the inside scoop on the next big trend. Frankly, I much prefer getting my information from the horse’s mouth, which is to say I’m a lot more interested to hear what sorts of books you, the readers, are interested in seeing come out, so please drop me a line on my blog sometime and let me know your thoughts.

Jen: Hope, thank you so much for being our guest today. Readers, Hope will be stopping by all day today to answer your questions and respond to your comments, so ask away. Late tonight, I'll pick three winners to win autographed copies of Strokes Of Midnight, Hope's New Years themed book. Please leave your email address in your comment if you are not subscribing to the post comments or checking back to see if you're a winner.