“Cuppa Joe” by Joe Kennedy
Sometimes people ask me to give a talk.
“About what?” I say.
“About your job,” they tell me.
Sometimes, I do.
I tell them about the planning, the organizing, the scheduling and the reporting.
I don’t tell them about the writing, because I wouldn’t presume to explain such a mysterious thing.
Nancy Herkness must feel the same way. Last week, she and I talked at length about the pending launch, in August, of her first romance novel, “A Bridge to Love.”
We discussed her years as an English major, poet and creative writer at Princeton University; her first jobs in the department store business; her time as a computer analyst and creator and marketer of software systems for the financial industry; and her leap, a dozen or so years ago, into full-time writing.
We never really talked about the writing. I knew better, and so did she.
Herkness, 45, grew up in Lewisburg, WV, and lives with her husband, Jeff Theodorou, in Glen Ridge, NJ. She and their two children, Rebecca, 13, and Loukas, 11, came to Salem to visit her sister, Damon Newsom, and her family.
Herkness is small, wears glasses, has reddish-brown hair and has produced a professional press kit for her book.
“A Bridge to Love” revolves around a question that she asked herself: “What would I do if my life was suddenly destroyed?”
She places that burden on Kate Chilton, a suburban widow coping with her husband’s death, her children’s needs and her own grief.
She introduces other characters, notably the wealthy and ruthless Randall Johnson, and then she tortures them toward not a happy ending but “a hopeful beginning.”
“The rule in romance is they [the two main characters] will end up committed to each other in some way,” she said.
Sometimes it seems that everybody in the world wants to write a book. But only a fraction ever starts, and only a smidgen gets one published.
Romance writing offers a lot of opportunity. The literary stepchild turns out more than 2,000 titles per year, Herkness said. Paperback romances constitute more than half the annual paperback sales. Romances had 51.1 million readers in 2002 – up 10 million from 1998.
One-third of total popular fiction sales fall into romance’s many genres. General fiction accounts for 17 percent.
How did Herkness – who already has a contract for her next book – break into this field?
She wrote a lot. She joined romance writing groups and associations, whose members generously share industry scuttlebutt. She entered romance-writing contests, hoping to get noticed. She called up friends with contacts in the publishing business.
When she got an editor, she was prepared. “Bridge” required few major changes, though her editor said Kate’s children were “too good to be true.”
Herkness’ gift for systematic thinking helps her keep plots and characters straight. Research does not intimidate her, because people love to talk about their jobs. A lawyer at a child’s ball game filled her in on divorce in New Jersey; a friend in library science looked up fibromyalgia.
She writes five pages per day, and – jot this down – she refuses to revise her work until the whole book is done. That keeps her from getting stuck.
You can read an excerpt of “Bridge” at www.nancyherkness.com.
And then, with these tips, you can get back to your keyboard and continue the quest.