Please join me in welcoming
Barbara Delinsky, author of
Not My Daughter to Always With a Book! If you missed my review, you can read it
here. Today Barbara guest blogs about her moving from writing romance novels to fiction.
Enjoy and be sure to enter the giveaway below!
Breaking Out is Hard to Do...
Okay. I know what at least a few of you are thinking. "Barbara Delinsky - isn't she that famous romance writer? I don't read romances (well, not that I admit to!). Why is she reading at a bookstore/appearing on a talk show/popping up on a blog that celebrates 'good' fiction?" Normally, I ignore it. My books have changed so dramatically over the span of my writing career that I figure anyone who reads me now knows what I write. But the problem is, some readers won't pick up my books at all because they think they won't like what I write.
So let me be clear. I do not write Romance. I did once. That's how I got my foot in the door of publishing, and I will be forever grateful to the genre for that. I also have the utmost respect for that genre. Romance writers work hard. And most of the time, they earn very little respect - thought I do think that is starting to change - see the
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog.
Romance writers will always have my respect. Their books are interesting, well-crafted, and fun. They're also sexy - which, way back when I wrote romances, caused some memorable family moments. My husband was often asked if he helped research the bedroom scenes. His sister refused to read my books; "I don't read trash like that," she said with some scorn. And, to this day, when we bump into an old friend, a Congressmen in the US House of Representatives, he puts an arm around my shoulder, lowers his voice to a seductive drawl, and murmurs, "How's my favorite romance writer doing?"
As teenagers, my sons actually found my books to be "girl-getters."
But my favorite story involves my oldest son. When he hit high school, we sent him to an all-boys school. Well, as kids get to know each other, they talk about what their parents do. So one day Eric brought in one of my books to show his friends. It was an early book of mine, written under a pseudonym. The title? The Passionate Touch. Apparently, the boys at nearby desk were leaning over his shoulder to read what I assumed to be the ... juiciest pages, when the teacher said, "Hey, Delinsky, what have you got there?" Eric quickly stuffed the book in his desk, but the teacher was already down the aisle, holding out his hand out for the book. He studied the cover, thumbed through a few pages, looked at my son in horror and said, "What would your mother say if she knew you were reading something like this?"
As it happened, I was doomed as a romance writer. My books were too realistic. I soon began writing full-length novels, all with a harder edge, more in-depth plots, even an issue. And I loved doing this. But in the 1980's, that's not what romance publishers wanted. I know things are a lot different now, but I had to deal with then. So I thought I'd simply switch shelves in the bookstore - off the romance shelf, onto the plain-old-fiction shelf.
But I quickly learned on thing: Breaking out is hard to do.
I first hit the publishing scene as a Romance Writer. Changing that image has not been easy. I've tried everything. I deliberately sold my work to publishing houses known for literary fiction. I wrote sagas that follow multiple generations over many years, something not generally done in the romance genre. I killed off a main character, definitely a no-no in romance back then, and tackled another then-taboo topic, serious sexual abuse. My most recent novels have been published by Doubleday, a well-respected literary house, and there has been zero sex in these books. And still, some of you out there think ... you-know-what.
So. Let's get past it right now. What do I write? I write books about relationships, often about relationships between friends, more often about relationships between family members. Writing about family crises is truly my niche. In recent books, I've tackled subjects like sibling rivalry and marital angst, illness, infidelity, even infertility. I write about situations in which the unexpected happens - like when a black boy is born to a white couple, as happens in Family Tree - and I write about these things because I'm interested, and because if I'm interested, I figured my readers will be too since I am my quintessential reader.
People intrigue me. I want to know how they handle crises. Do they run away? Do they freeze? Or do they use those crises as vehicles for growth?
My agent calls this domestic drama. I call it reality. I create real people, who have real friends and real family, then I put them in situations that test their mettle. My characters are very much like you and me and people we know. I build a history for them, so that their personalities ring true, because I do believe that we are shaped by the events in our lives.
I certainly was. My mother died when I was eight. That shaped me. I gave birth to three sons, no daughters; that shaped me, too. I was diagnosed with breast cancer fourteen years ago. More shaping, in every sense.
These were all situations that tested my mettle, which is what I do to my characters. The end result is I hope, a well-written, fully-realized story that moves. As in pages turning because you have to find out what happens next. That's always my goal. One of the best compliments a reader can give me is to say that she couldn't put my book down. And happily, that's a compliment I hear a lot from my wonderful readers. If you haven't read one of my novels yet, I hope you'll take the time to enter this contest to win a copy of NOT MY DAUGHTER.
About the author: Barbara Delinsky is the author of more than seventeen bestselling novels with over twenty million copies in print. She has been published in twenty-five languages worldwide. Barbara lives with her family in New England. Visit Barbara's
website for more information.
Thank you Barbara for visiting and now on to the giveaway.
GIVEAWAY RULES:
Jen at Random House has provided five copies of Not My Daughter for readers of this blog!
Rules:
- Open to US/Canada
- No PO Boxes please
- Be sure to include email address in case you win
- Book will be mailed out by the publicist
- All comments must be separate to count as more than one
How to Enter:
- Required entry: Leave me a comment letting me know you want to win Not my Daughter. Please include your e-mail address in your comment, so that I have a way to contact you if you win. No e-mail= no entry!
- Bonus Entry (+1) Follow my blog. If you already do, thanks, and please let me know in the comments. You're eligible for the extra entry as well. Must be in a separate comment to count for the bonus entry!
- Bonus Entry (+2) Blog about this giveaway and leave me the link. Must be in a separate comment to count for the bonus entries!
Don't forget to LEAVE A SEPARATE COMMENT for each entry. The total possible number of entries for each person is 4.
Thanks to everyone for entering! Good luck!
GIVEAWAY ENDS
AT 6 PM, EST, NOV 30th