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Apart from romance novels, what kinds of
books do you like to read?
I love what I think of as relationship
suspense/mysteries: anything by John Sandford, Robert Parker.
I'm wild about Elmore Leonard's novels—open almost any one of
his books and see if his opening paragraph(s) aren't the best
you've ever read. I'm an Anne Tyler fan, too, for her subtle use
of characterization. I read some so-called women's fiction. I
also read non-fiction books that deal with wildlife and
wilderness issues.
Where do your story ideas come from and how
do you develop your ideas? What comes first - character,
situation or setting?
My ideas come from everywhere. I see a couple
huddled over a table in a restaurant, read something in their
body language and think, "What if…?" I spot an item
in the paper and it triggers that same "What if…"
reaction.
When I'm ready to write, characters come to me
first. Usually, the first character I see in detail is the hero.
Next comes a heroine and my take on her helps me go back and
flesh out the hero. Conflict grows out of those two people, as
does situation and plot. I'm fluid when it comes to settings and
will often choose a setting last, well after I've determined who
my characters are and what their story will be.
You create such wonderful heroes. How do you
breathe life into your heroes, give them that edge and
intensity? What do you do to make them special?
Thank you for enjoying my heroes. I always fall
a little bit in love with each and every one of them. How do I
give them edge and intensity? By knowing so much about them,
long before I start writing, by never forgetting that a man
who's larger than life must first be grounded in reality, by
keeping in mind that no man sees himself as perfect, and by
remembering that even heroes often do what they must to survive.
I never write about a man until I know not just what others
think of him but, more importantly, what he thinks of himself. I
have to know not just his successes but his failures, too, or,
at least, the things he's done that he's perceived as failures.
All this helps me see him in three dimensions.
In some ways, men are more complex creatures
emotionally, than women. Perhaps I should say they're more
complex in that they hide their feelings so well that uncovering
them can be difficult. That makes creating a sympathetic male
character an interesting challenge. What you see on the surface
is often nothing like what's really inside a guy. My job, as a
writer, is to explore both the outer and the inner man, to make
that hidden part of him become visible to the heroine, to the
reader and, most of all, to himself.
My editor gave me a wonderful compliment a few
years ago. She said I'd had a lot to do with changing the
Presents hero. There was a time the Presents hero was often so
murky he was indecipherable. When I first tried to use male POV,
I was told that doing so would give away the plot. I argued that
you could only give away the plot by continuing to write men who
were so one-dimensional that they were unreal. I think a hero
must have great depth to hold the interest of both the heroine
and the reader. I like to determine what my men were like as
little boys, what their familial relationships were, what sorts
of experiences they had growing into manhood, etc. Real people
are the products of years of living. A fictional hero should
appear to develop that way, too.
I've always thought men who are a little bit
dark and dangerous, who are (or were, at some point in their
lives) what society considers "bad boys," are more
interesting than those who aren't. I particularly like to imbue
my heroes with qualities that seem direct opposites of each
other. For instance, in a Presents I just finished writing, THE
SICILIAN SURRENDER, my hero, Stefano, won his first financial
stake in a poker game; he grew up as part of a Sicilian famiglia
on the streets of New York. He rides a Harley. All those are, to
me, sexy, hard-edged qualities…. And yet, for his very first
evening spent with my heroine, when he can't decide what sort of
flowers she'd like, he orders literally dozens of blossoms of
every color and kind, enough to fill her suite at his castello.
By balancing Stefano's tough side with a soft side, he becomes
even sexier and more desirable.
If I wrote historicals, my heroes would be
adventurers or outlaws. That's how I think of them even in my
Presents/Modern/Sexy romances and in the single titles I've
written. They're men who would skirt the edge of the law if they
had to, but who always, always live by their own
stringent moral codes, and who would give their lives in a
heartbeat for the one woman who is the right woman.
There's an old Eagles tune—Desperado—that
goes to the heart of the man I create: a guy who's strong,
somewhat mysterious, a loner who needs to open himself to the
love of a woman before his life can be complete, even though
he's not aware of that need.
In creating your hero and heroine, how do you
find the right balance of personalities so that the characters
suit each other?
My favorite analogy to explain my idea of the
right man and woman for each other is to talk about wolf packs.
Alpha wolves—big, powerful, glossy-coated, intelligent,
assertive and brave—only choose females who are Alphas, too.
That doesn't necessarily mean an observer would
be able to look at the pack prior to the Alpha picking a mate
and say, oh yes, that big, beautiful, bright, adventurous female
is the one he's going to select. Sometimes, the Alpha male sees
something in a female the rest of the pack has ignored or even
treated with contempt. (Cinderella and Prince Charming.)
Sometimes, she's obviously the right female for him and only
needs his attention to mark her as such. (Sleeping Beauty and
her Prince.) And sometimes, she's already so strong and powerful
that you can see that they belong together, even if there are
major obstacles separating them. (Elizabeth and Essex, but with
a happy ending!)
Primarily, I try to give my people character
traits that complement each other in addition to traits so
similar they can cause conflict and then sparks.
How well do you develop your characters
before you start writing your books or do you learn about them
as you go?
I always know a great deal about my hero and
heroine: childhoods, motivations, successes, failures, perceived
goals as opposed to goals they're unaware of at the start of my
story. Still, both of them "tell" me things about
themselves as I write. Interestingly enough, after a couple of
chapters I often realize that I don't know enough about my
heroine. Then I have to stop writing, go back to my original
character sketch of her and think it through again. I've been
told I almost always write the hero's book, not the heroine's.
To some degree, that was true even back in the days when M&B
didn't permit writers to use male POV. I almost always found
ways to get inside the hero's head without seeming to do it.
When I'm writing a family saga like the Landons,
the Barons or my new series, the O'Connells, I know a great deal
about all my primary characters from the beginning. That helps
me work them into the overall fabric of the saga, something I
always do no matter how many books are ultimately involved. I
write sketches of all of them, everything from age to likes,
dislikes, occupations, etc. and I update those sketches as I
write each book in the series.
The only characters I let develop from the story
as I go are secondaries. I enjoy discovering their histories and
personalities, even the role they'll play in my book, as I
write. My secondary characters spring from the plot as I create
it, even when their actions are vital to the story as is the
case of a secondary character in THE SICILIAN SURRENDER.
Rejection letters often contain the words
"lacks emotional punch and excitement". How would you
describe emotional punch and excitement? How do you weave this
into your novels?
These are tough terms to explain because a lot
about emotional punch and excitement are visceral reactions on
the part of an editor. Moreover, I believe that both things are
dependent, in large measure, on the individual voice of a
writer.
For me, emotional punch means the passion your
story delivers. I don't mean only sexual passion, though that's
part of it. I mean the sense of excitement you generate, the
level of sexual tension, the pure emotion your novel delivers.
Is the tension between hero and heroine there all the time? Can
the reader sense it, feel it, experience it on virtually every
page? Are there moments in the story that grab the reader by the
throat? Does your story move at an all-consuming pace from start
to finish? Is it difficult to put down the book? Is there a
sense of destiny in the love affair you describe? Can you
imagine this man, this woman, falling in love with anyone else?
The answers to these questions provide the answer to the basic
question, "Does your story have emotional punch?"
Excitement covers the same ground though it also
includes your ability to incorporate good writing technique.
Does your dialogue move the story forward? Is it fast-paced? Are
your flashbacks clear? Do you use them to enhance the story as
opposed to using flashback to explain things that should
otherwise be woven into narrative and/or dialogue? Have you
slowed down the story with too much narrative? Your goal is to
keep things going at all times. Think of what it's like to drive
a car on a highway. Occasional side trips taken via exit ramps
are fine but you never want to pull over on the shoulder of the
road and stand still.
What is your writing routine? Do you write
every day?
Writing is exciting, rewarding and wonderful
work. It's my career so yes, I write every day. I go into my
home office somewhere between 8 and 9 in the morning, break for
lunch but otherwise work straight through until dinner. I try
and keep to a five day a week schedule but if a story's really
moving well, there are times I work six days—I just can't
break away from the characters. I always take Sundays off to
spend with my family. It's important to me to keep in touch with
the real world and with the people I love.
Do you do extensive planning, plotting and
pre-writing?
I plan my characters for weeks, sometimes
months, but only in my head. Characters for one book often
develop while I'm still writing another. In the case of family
sagas, the characters and their possible stories are constantly
unfolding in my thoughts but I never lock into a story until I'm
ready to write it.
I do short but intensive character sketches for
my primary characters, as I mentioned earlier. I don't do a lot
of plotting beforehand and rarely commit anything to paper
except the motivations of my characters—general motivations,
not necessarily ones specific to the story. I know where I'm
going to start my book and where I'm going to end it, but I like
to let the twists and turns develop as I work. I'm not sure what
you mean by 'pre-writing,' unless it's the character/motivation
sketches I already mentioned.
Do you ever sit down to write and not know
what you’re going to write?
I always have a general idea of where a story is
going. On the other I generally begin a chapter without knowing
what's going to happen in it, and I rarely know how a chapter's
going to end until it does. I often don't know the climactic
moment of a book until I reach it.
With four and five releases each year for the
past few years, how long does it take you to write a novel? Do
you have to do much editing to fit in with your editor’s
requirements. Do you submit a proposal or the full manuscript?
I've been keeping to a hard schedule the last
couple of years. For instance, between January 01 and January 03—just
two years—I wrote a single title novel of 120,000 words, two
75,000 word continuity novels and four Presents, each of which
came in at about 60,000 words. It's exciting to be asked to sign
multi-book contracts and to be invited to take on lots of
special projects, but it's dangerous to drain yourself
creatively by maintaining too tight a pace for too long.
As for editing… the sole M&B requirement
is that an author write an exciting romance that focuses on the
hero and heroine, and that she stay within the word count. My
editor and I have been working together for a very long time.
Tessa (Shapcott) knows my style and voice, and she and HMB/Harlequin
really permit me a fairly wide latitude in what I write. When
Tessa makes an editorial suggestion, it's always to strengthen
the book and, knock wood, it's rarely anything major.
As for what I submit, I submit a short proposal
for the first book in a multi-book contract .
How long did it take for Harlequin to accept
your first novel?
I was lucky. My submission (query letter and 3
chapters) caught an editor's eye very quickly and she requested
the balance of the manuscript. It only took her a few more weeks
to tell me she liked what I'd sent and to ask if I'd be willing
to do revisions with no guarantee of a sale. After several
months and several revisions, that editor said she wanted to buy
the book, but it took some time until she got approval from her
boss, the M&B Executive Editor. All in all, the process took
about a year though it was two years before I saw the book come
out on my home turf in the USA.
How many single title novels have you
written?
Three. Two for another publisher and one for
Harlequin. I love writing them but my heart is very much in
Presents. I've also been lucky enough to have been invited to
participate in several other projects—the continuity books I
mentioned as well as novellas, and I wrote one of the earliest
online serials for eharlequin.
Of all of your books, do you have a favourite
story, a favourite hero and/or heroine?
I'm always head over heels crazy for whatever
hero is currently in my life. Right now, it's Stefano Lucchesi,
from THE SICILIAN SURRENDER. I do have some favorite heroines.
Joanna, from THE SECOND MRS. ADAMS; Alexandra, from MORE THAN A
MISTRESS; Cassie, from both RAISING THE STAKES and KEIR
O'CONNNELL'S MISTRESS, and Fallon, from THE SICILIAN SURRENDER.
I don't have a favorite story but I do have a favorite theme:
love as redemption. In one guise or another, that theme appears
in virtually all my novels.
When you wrote INDECENT PROPOSAL, Cade Landon’s
story, how did you go about planning the Landon Legacy series?
Did you plan all four stories and submit the proposal for each
simultaneously?
I told my then-editor I wanted to write a series
of four books centering around three brothers and a sister and
that the stories would heavily involve male POV, still a rarity
at HMB at that time. I didn't plan the stories until I was ready
to write each one. I submitted a proposal for Cade's story and
signed the contract for the series on that basis.
Did you intend the Barons to become a series
right from the outset?
Yes. Reader reaction to the Landons was
incredible. People wrote to me and to my publisher, asking that
I please find a way to continue the Landon saga. I couldn't,
because I'd limited the size of the family from the start.
Instead, my editor asked if I had another family in mind. I gave
it some thought and came up with the Barons.
And now Raising the Stakes introduces a new
family - the O’Connells. Is Raising the Stakes the final in
the Barons series now that Keir O’Connell’s Mistress is
about to be released?
RAISING THE STAKES is the final Barons book…
for the time being. I've had lots of requests for a second
generation of Barons. Who knows what the future will bring? I
might just re-visit the family.
How many books do you plan for the O’Connell
series?
I've introduced six siblings so there'll be six
books in the series, though some might call RAISING THE STAKES
the seventh book in the series since it introduced the O'Connell
clan. And it's possible I might write a single title as a
culminating book.
What was the best piece of advice you
received when you began your writing career?
Actually, it was advice from my husband. He
said: Never write down to your readers. Always write a book you
can be proud of. And always tell a story you, yourself, would
want to read. To this day, those are guidelines I follow.
Do you have any other tips or advice,
particularly for someone targeting Harlequin Presents?
Read, read, read. Read Presents, of course, but
mostly to get the general feel of the line, not to try and
duplicate what you've read. The strength of Presents is in its
diversity. Take a look at your favorite Presents authors and I
guarantee you'll see that we all have different styles. Read
outside romance, too. I'm convinced that helps keep you fresh
and aids in your growth as a writer. Tell stories you enjoy, not
stories you think will sell. If you believe in your own work, if
you have talent, if luck is with you, you'll sell.
As a best-selling author, where would you
like to go from here?
I'm thrilled to have succeeded in becoming a
best-selling author and to have stretched the boundaries a
little by introducing my readers to strong but sympathetic
heroes, solid male POV and closely-woven stories in ongoing
family sagas. I hope to continue writing the best books I can,
to gain new readers while pleasing my long-time fans, and, most
of all, to go on writing books that touch women's lives and
hearts.
Sandra’s website is http://www.sandramarton.com
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Sandra Marton is a best-selling author for
Harlequin Presents, with more than 55 books to her credit. Her
books are published in 20 languages in more than 100 countries.
She has received numerous awards and honours for her novels,
including the Holt Medallion in Single Title. Sandra's a
three-time Rita finalist and a four-time winner of Romantic
Times magazine's Reviewers Choice Award for Best Presents of the
Year. RT also honored her with a Career Achievement Award as
Series Storyteller of the Year. Currently, she's once again a
finalist for RT's Best Presents of the Year. KEIR O'CONNELLS'S
MISTRESS is due for release in the US in March 2003. Book 2 of
the series, THE SICILIAN SURRENDER, is due for US release in
October 2003.