A Different Kind of Forever - By Dee Ernst Page 0,95
water. That happens a lot. We live in a very old house, which is what I’ve always wanted to live in, but there’s a downside to high ceilings and beautiful hardwood floors, and that downside usually involves problems that can only be solved by highly paid professionals.
We’ve lived in this great, big old house for about eighteen years, and it’s almost finished. Brian and I originally thought that it would be fun to get an old fixer-upper and do all the work together. You know, bonding. However, older houses have things like plaster walls, so just trying to hang a picture requires expensive tools and titanium screws. We soon found it easier just to pick up the phone and ask for estimates. All our common living areas are beautiful, as are most of the upstairs bedrooms. The master bath has one lone toilet and lots of exposed beams, not to mention various lengths of copper pipe. And the walk-up attic, which is supposed to be my sanctuary, has plywood covering all the windows, because the windows haven’t been actually ordered yet. It’s not money that’s the issue, but time, energy and the red-hot blood-lust that’s needed to actually find the antique window store located down some dark alley in a strange little town and make the decision between four-over-four or six-over-six.
Why do I need a sanctuary? Because I’m a writer, and all writers need someplace quiet, peaceful and totally theirs where they can go to relax and be inspired. Actually, I’m an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author. Now, before you rack your brain, trying to think of that beautifully written family saga that got short-listed for the Booker, or the thriller that Robert Redford optioned as his Next Big Thing, let me explain to you that the New York Times has several bestselling lists. There’s the hardcover fiction and non-fiction list, the Holy Grail of lists. Then there’s the trade paper, fiction and nonfiction lists. Trade paperbacks are those books that you think are hardcover because they’re the same size as a hardcover, but they’re really soft cover, and infinitely cheaper to publish. Then there’s the mass market list. Mass markets are your basic small-enough-to-stash-in-your-purse sized paperbacks. That’s the list I made. I hung on to the number one spot on the mass market original paperback list for almost four months with one of my favorite titles, Passion At Dusk.
Yes, I’m a romance writer. When I started almost twenty years ago, romance novels were pretty much delegated to the back corners of bookstores. Since then, it’s grown to be quite a respected, not to mention lucrative, genre. I write under the name of Maura Van Whalen, because my real name, Mona Quincy Berman, doesn’t have a very romantic ring to it. Because I was a history major in college and am a sucker for old, moldy ruins and rusty swords, I write historical romance. Maura’s heroines are usually raven-or-auburn haired women with fair skin, clear green eyes and warm trembly lips. They are usually named Clarissa, Isabella, or Honoria, have amazing breasts, and are strong-willed and daring. Their brooding, handsome counterparts are usually Drake, Trane or Lord Aubrey Sinclair.
Being a history major, I’m big on historical accuracy, which is tough when you’re writing not only about history, but about sex. Way back in the day, women were having all kinds of sex all over the place, pretty much the same as today, but the only ones who admitted it were the prostitutes, and, of course, royalty. I like to have to get my characters married off in the first chapter or two, often unwillingly, so they can then be separated and/or put through some trying ordeal together during which they realize how much they really do love each other. I write about a lot of arranged marriages, which were, in fact, very common among the gentry. I also like to throw in the occasional Duke who must hand over his gorgeous and willful daughter as payment of a gambling debt to an unscrupulous but amazingly hunky blackguard.
Lately, though, I’d been wanting to write for the twenty-first century, which would allow my characters to sleep with each other without even knowing each other’s names. Their names would eventually be something like Chloe, Zoey, Colton or Paco, and they would have exciting jobs like magazine editors or undercover drug enforcement agents. I even had a new nom de plume picked out, Monique B.