Interview with Author Kate Hofman
Interviewed via e-mail by Karen MacLeod
Who, or what, inspired you to write "Enchanted Castle?"
I had been thinking about the South coast of England, around the Poole — Wareham — Bournemouth area. Slowly, this derelict castle began to make itself known to me, and I had a lot of fun writing about its restoration. It is an area that lends itself to the invention of castles. There is Corfe Castle, several others.
Would you care to share a bit about those characters?
Brett appeared to me in his entirety, when I began the prologue about him driving back to London via small, quiet roads, thus finding the castle. He was simply gorgeous, honey-blond (a departure for me, most of my heroes are dark) with gentian-blue eyes. Originally, I had planned for him to meet a young woman who had disappeared from his life two years ago, and he knew instantly he was her baby's father because it had gentian-blue eyes.
I changed my mind about that — and about the young woman, who went through several metamorphoses before Victoria appeared, stunning, and hot for Brett, who refuses a one-night stand with her. There's a change…
I enjoyed writing the Cockney cleaning woman whom Brett employs as his housekeeper. I remembered some speech patterns from when I lived in London, and had my Mrs. Mop, whom I rarely saw, I worked all day and she came one afternoon a week.
I liked writing Brett's best friend Helga, a Lesbian, who does her best to help Brett find happiness.
Initially, I liked the closeness between Brett and his father; later, I thought Dad was a tad too keen for Brett to settle down, so he could become a grandfather. That is not usually the first priority of a married couple, right?
Do you have any goals in life you have yet to meet? If so, would you like to elaborate some on them?
I would like to be the best writer I can possibly be — a bit of a stretch for a Romance writer. I'm post-menopausal, and at that age, most of one's goals have already been met or given up! I was very happy with my husband. Now that I am a widow, I have a great advantage over other writers, who have to stop to make meals for the family. I can write whenever I want — like right now: 4 o'clock in the morning. I couldn't sleep, so I got up to do some work.
I've owned and operated a gallery of fine art, surprisingly successful. Some of that knowledge comes in handy when I describe Tom Fredericks, the art dealer who floats into, and out of, many of my books that play in Ocean Breeze, Florida, a place I invented, between Ormond Beach and St. Augustine. We lived in Ormond Beach for seven years, so that was easy to do.
Could you picture yourself trying to write in another genre, like Historical, or Horror, etc?
No. The writer Nina Bruhns urged me to write, some five years ago. I thought she was mistaken, but no, she was right. I did not choose to write Romance, it chose me. My first book was partly autobiographical, and as I wrote, it became the Romance genre.
I gave JL Foster my very first book, largely autobio, except there was of course no marriage, and he did not come back from that final trip to Canada — WILL AND KIKI. JL serialized it, the first 30 or so pages of Chapter 1 are up now, at http://www.jlfoster.biz/weeklynewsletter/
I recently read WILL AND KIKI, and did my best to correct early mistakes, although, of course, it will never be similar to a book written now, over five years later. I wish I had re-read it one more time, I can see things I'd do better now. Well, it's done.
I hadn't read much Romance; of course Nina Bruhns's books, but I read far more mystery writers than others. I'm not too fond of historical, except when it's done by someone who has thoroughly researched her era. Horror I detest, there's enough violence and terror going on in the world without anyone writing a handbook to give creeps more ideas to follow slavishly, thus adding to the general level of mayhem.
May we talk about your upcoming novels for a moment?
This month (October 2007), The Dark Castle Lords will publish A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE. It's the story of a writer of serious fiction, whose secretary has left her fiancé, who was cheating on her. When this man becomes a nuisance, trying to sweet-talk, then force her into coming back to him, the hero decides to make a research trip to Arizona for his next book, and the heroine goes with him. To protect her from the ex-fiancé, the hero proposes a marriage of convenience. How this becomes a marriage of true love is the story.
I am in the midst of re-reading the edited copies of three books, which The Dark Castle Lords will publish under the umbrella title of TRIANGLE OF LOVE. The first book is Beau's Quest, how a reclusive widower finds love unexpectedly with his aunt's neighbour, a young widow.
The second book is Miguel's Surrender. This is the story of a man who was scandalously betrayed by his bride on the eve of their wedding. He has, ever since, only entered into occasional, brief flings, until he meets the cousin of his best friend, who slowly finds her way into his heart.
The third book is Rey's Indiscretion, the story of a famous writer, who was in a car accident with his ex-fiancée. When the rich young man she decided to leave Rey for, tells her he is marrying the daughter of a nobleman, she tries to get Rey back, with no success. Rey has fallen for the woman who types his manuscripts. They get married, to the silent fury of the heroine's aunt, who is bitterly resentful at losing her niece's many services, massage, cooking meals, etc. The aunt tries to interrupt and interfere with the newlyweds at every turn, and Rey decides to move to a luxury condo building with excellent security, to the aunt's powerless rage. The marriage experiences several rocky episodes. The book describes how they deal with these.
In November or December 2007, Romance At Heart will publish A GREATER LOVE, the story of a Romance writer and a Chief of Police, an aloof widower, who fall slowly but inexorably in love. Friends, envious of the heroine for attracting the to-die-for hero, do their best to cause trouble. There is a police sergeant, who has the hots for the heroine and tries to force himself on her, instantly thwarted by the hero. Eventually, they get married, having defeated all attempts to break them up.
In February 2008, Awe-Struck will publish THE SPANISH CONQUEST.
The aristocratic, reclusive Luis Montoya finds his interior designer soothing and calming his six-month-old daughter, who had been abandoned by her nanny. He asks the designer if she will care for the baby, who is quiet and contented with her, and she agrees. In order to keep her looking after his daughter, Luis offers marriage. The heroine accepts, finding herself falling in love with Luis. She is convinced he only likes her, but there she is mistaken. The book describes how these two find each other.
That's about all for the foreseeable future.
Are any of the characters we met in your books, planning to make an appearance in the forthcoming books, or will they all be individual titles, not connected?
When I began to write, most of my stories were connected, the hero and heroine of one book making cameo appearances in another. They lived in Ocean Breeze, and most of them lived in a luxury condo building, so it was easy for them to meet, and for us to follow their lives after their happy endings in earlier books.
But, from time to time, a story enters my head that stands on its own, and I have no plans for including the H/h in future books. Enchanted Castle is such a book, playing in England, with a cast of characters we have never met before.
A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE is a stand-alone book, too.
Miguel's Surrender is a sequel to Beau's Quest, and the characters in these two books appear again, if briefly, in Rey's Indiscretion.
I have a book, The Passionate Greek, to be published by The Dark Castle Lords, in 2008. Jason And The Love Of His Youth is its sequel. Let me say here that Jason probably needs a better title. I'm very bad with titles, but fortunately my fellow-writers throw themselves with enthusiasm on the task of helping out. They came up with the three titles for the trio under the umbrella name of Triangle of Love, coined by Stuart Bazga, the co-publisher of The Dark Castle Lords.
Do you believe its possible for authors to write characters opposite their own gender, successfully?
Yes, of course, we do it all the time, we write heroes, after all. Now, where a lot of writers will then go to the female POV and write the seduction, the love scene from her POV, I am interested in the man's attitude. I think it came out strongly in LEANDROS, the fifth book in my "Greek' series for The Dark Castle Lords, THE APHRODITE AFFAIRS. Leandros goes to pay a visit to his new condo, meets the interior designer, a beautiful woman who appeals strongly to his libido. I write what follows almost entirely from his POV. That interests me, you see. What the man actually thinks, while he lets the woman think he is smitten, falling in love, 'on the hook' shall we say. I'm not so interested in the woman's POV, after all I'm a woman, most of my readers are women, they KNOW what they'd be thinking, doing.
How do you control your characters? I know of several authors who are driven to write 'what their characters tell them'.
That's not so easy. When I'm establishing them, let the reader get acquainted with them, I try to keep a firm hand. But sometimes, they start doing things I hadn't planned.
I remember writing to Nina Bruhns, a few weeks after I had started writing — at her insistence, remember — "I don't think I can do this. I'm not writing what I want, this character is making me write what HE wants..." And she wrote back, "Congratulations, that proves you're a writer." And she went on to say that when the character dictates the story, that's the best time. Of course, you've got to read it later to see WHAT the character made you write, refine that, but it is usually both amazing and better than what I had intended to write.
What do you suppose is your greatest strength as a writer? Character development? Place? Something else?
Sometimes I have a character develop over several books — that's true of Aunt Jane in the Triangle of Love. She appears in all three books, and I was interested in Beau's Quest to see her first mask her habit of using her nieces, or a much younger neighbour, for her selfish purposes. She takes an irritated back seat in the 2nd book, Miguel's Surrender because the niece who marries Miguel was from New York, outside Jane's sphere of acquisition.
In the third book Rey's Indiscretion Aunt Jane finally shows herself increasingly in her true colours. Furious that her niece has married Rey, making her far less accessible to Jane, she does her best to interfere, interrupt, make demands guaranteed to irritate Rey; she hopes to the point where he will give up in disgust and divorce her niece, who will then be available to her again, 24/7.
What, in your life experience, has influenced this series?
I had always heard: Write what you know. I think that is very good advice. When you write from a deep knowledge, you need never fear that your research was a bit too hasty, you KNOW all these things.
I mentioned that I had owned and operated an art gallery. Several of my heroes are painters, and knowing, from experience, how an art gallery works, what an art dealer does for his artists, what kind of work is done behind the scenes, as distinct from the young men on the floor, who — if they are good at their work — let people buy, instead of selling to them.
Ideally, buying art should be like falling in love. That is why couples should not go together to buy a painting. They'll end up with something both of them quite like, or at least one of them doesn't mind too much, but they won't love it.
My husband and I lived in Ormond Beach for seven years; knowing from my own experience what life is like on Florida's Atlantic coast, makes it easy to write credibly about the people living there.
Again, my trips to Arizona have come through, notably in Navajo Dreams, a book Romance At Heart published in May of 2007. Nominated by THE ROMANCE STUDIO for one of their CAPA Awards
But in A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE, the hero makes a research trip to Arizona. Tom Fredericks has a colleague in Phoenix, with whom he is friendly. They exchange painters for exhibitions, things like that.
I loved living in Victoria, B.C, and we made many trips to Washington State, the Cascades, usually ending up in Portland, the City of Roses. Strangely enough, the only book I ever abandoned, after writing close to a hundred pages, was about the Northwest. Oh, the scenery was fun to write, and I think when you love a place, it shows. But I couldn't get the H/h to work. He was all right (but not great) but I couldn't 'get' her, and after messing about for several months, unusual for me, I deleted it.
What would you like to tell us about your becoming a writer? Anything you find difficult in crafting your work?
It happened almost without my noticing. I decided to do as Nina Bruhns had urged me, and sat down at my computer, with a big, blank screen in front of me. That was probably the most daunting thing I had ever done.
And then, I started typing, slowly, Will and Kiki. I stared at that for a while, and suddenly I could see how the story could start. That was five o'clock in the afternoon. By one o'clock that morning, I had thirteen pages of close-typed manuscript. I was so wound up that I couldn't sleep, and, after lying sleepless for maybe an hour, I got up and printed the pages I had. Then I sat down and read them. Now, I can see a lot of things that could be improved, but I didn't know that, then, and I read as if it were a chapter written by a stranger. I only have difficulty when I deviate from writing what I hear in my head.
Sometimes, I want to write the story this way, and in my head I hear something quite different. I used to write synopses, but I don't any more, because by page 3 — sometimes page 2 — I start to deviate!
As I have more books behind me, I have to become increasingly careful not to duplicate anything. After all, Romance writing is predictable in that two people meet, get together, experience difficulties keeping them apart, then they find each other again. The variants in their lives are easy, but when you get to the lovemaking... All you have is two bodies with the standard equipment — oh, you can make it extra-special… have you ever read a Romance with an under-endowed hero? No, of course not. Now these two people are going to do certain things, and they have to be kept as 'different' as possible without going into swinging from chandeliers, as it were. While describing something physical, you have to show the emotion more than the technicalities, so to say. I find that difficult, at times.
Regarding when the book is complete, or ready for editing — At one point, you have to 'let the baby go.' What do you feel then? How do you know it is ready for the next step?
I am blessed in having an editor who knows how to edit, and who does just that: edit my books. She is not a book doctor, nor does she have 'great ideas' for my story. Once I start on her edits, I feel that the book is getting away from me, out of my hands. It gives me a feeling of achievement, because after the edit, I don't tweak and fiddle any more. When I send it to the publisher, and it is published in due course, I am very happy, and I keep a copy of the book, of course, but I rarely read again a book that has been published. Maybe that day will come, and I'll start re-reading all my old books, but not yet.
Tell us what you would like about the many novels with a Greek background you've written, and other upcoming novels.
I began writing GT (Greek Tycoon) stories about a year after I started. I had become friends with a young Greek-American lawyer, who complained once, that the GTs always seemed to marry blondes. She said she'd love to see an occasional GT actually marrying a dark haired heroine, or a Greek one.
So, initially, I wrote “Nick 1” (later, I wrote “Nick 2” I couldn't let go of Nick so easily.) During the five years that I wrote in happy obscurity, I titled all my novels with the names of H/h. So, “Nick 1” was really Nick and Athena. Aha! Nick had found a Greek-born lawyer to marry, and my friend was delighted. But I wanted to write more about Nick, and what's to write about a couple with a baby daughter?
Wait, what if the heroine died in the Prologue? Then, Nick was a widower with a tiny baby daughter. Right! Of course, Nick at first has a relationship with a supremely selfish woman, who hates the little girl, something she tries to hide from the baby's doting father… But that fizzles in due course, of course, and he meets the woman living a floor below him. During his absences on business, she has been very kind to the little girl. Definitely better. Nick finally comes to that conclusion, too.
But first there are ex-girlfriends trying to put the make on him, some very blatantly.
After a while, I began to miss my GTs, and I wrote Leandros and Irene, (Leandros and his Lover will be the release title) she is of Greek ancestry, and makes Lee's life very difficult at times.
In all, I wrote nine GT novels, and am working on my tenth right now, The Greek Prince's Love Affair. It's going but slowly, because I have to keep on doing edits and re-reading. But I think I'm about three-quarters done…
If you had any advice to give up and coming writers, what would you say?
Write every day! Never mind if you're not in the mood, write! Yes, you may well decide to throw it out tomorrow, but write. And remember: write what you know. Particularly in the beginning of your writing career, really knowing your subject deep down is a great help to make everything convincing. You must sense that you have it in you to become a writer; otherwise you wouldn't be wasting your time sitting in front of the computer, staring at that daunting white screen. Now do something about it! Write. Some people need to have a critique partner — others do not. I often bounce things off my editor. She will give me an opinion on what I put before her, not give me her ideas…
See how it works for you, no one can advise you that this is better than that. It has to work for you. Remember that critique partnering is a two-way street. They'll help you with your Work In Progress, but you have to help them with theirs. And it isn't that easy to find someone, or several someones, you're at ease with, on the same wavelength. Don't bother to give your stuff to your friends to read: if they're not writers, they'll have a zillion questions for you about why you write as you do. You don't know that yourself yet, so how can you answer that? And getting feedback from your reading public will come later. Not when you're at the start of your career.
What authors do you feel influenced you most?
I don't know. Only someone else could say whether this or that writer had been a big influence. I can't tell, myself. Some of my favourite writers are Gore Vidal, John Irving, P.D. James, Ngaio Marsh. Do I write like them? I wish I did! No, not really, I think being true to one's own self is the only way to go.
When you can find time for your writing, do you follow any specific routine?
I told you I'm a widow, so I can do exactly as I wish. Unless I have an appointment, I start the computer around 9 o'clock. I deal with my e-mails, and then, comes the good part: I turn to Word and read what I wrote yesterday. Or, there is an e-mail that has the edits of my current book. That gets priority.
I usually forget to eat, but lately I've used the oven timer to get me up every hour, walking around, eating a little tub of yoghurt, drinking a glass of water, and breathing deeply and stretching. My masseuse told me to do that, and I do feel better when I don't sit at the computer for four hours at a time, a brief trip to the bathroom, and the kitchen for a glass of water, and another four hours… Quite often, for a total of 12 hours' work.
What's your opinion on the direction of the publishing industry, especially the influence of e-publishing?
I should really shut up about something I know very little about. But hey, that's never stopped me before. I think it is a pity that the smaller publishers are constantly eaten alive by bigger publishers. This robs us of the quirky, brave publishers who would take a chance on an off-the-wall writer, who turns out to be a major talent. In today's publishing (print) industry, there is no place for the unusual.
With publishing costs where they are, they go for the safe and proven. What is regrettable is that a handful of Readers at those publishing houses decide what 300 million people in the US and 33 million in Canada will read.
I write e-Books myself, or I should say my novels are published as e-Books, and this is fine with me. I've heard stories of writers for print publishers who are told to shave off 5,000 words, so the book can fit a certain format. With e-Books, it doesn't matter how long or brief the book is. My novel-lengths vary. I've done books of 125K, and others 50K. And anything in between. Today, only e-Publishers will take a chance on the unusual, don't force a lot of rules on their writers. I like that.
Is there anything else you would like to mention that I haven't asked about? This is your time, and I think you should have the 'floor.'
No, I think you've covered everything.
Please give us your publishers' websites URL, and any information on how to order the book, so that readers who may be interested can purchase Enchanted Castle, or your other works.
Romance At Heart Publications - http://rahpubs.com
Kate's Website - http://www.katehofman.com
The Dark Castle Lords - http://www.thedarkcastlelords.com
Awe-Struck - http://www.awe-struck.net
Enchanted Castle - http://www.thedarkcastlelords.com/enchanted_castle.htm