…Besides fear, the other thing that had been holding me back all my life was a conviction that in order to write novels, you had to know the answers to the major life questions -- Why are we here? Is there a God? Why is there suffering? How should we live? If you didn't know the answers to those questions, you had a lot of nerve, I thought, not only writing a book but expecting people to buy it and spend precious time reading it. And since I had no clue to any of those questions, not the slightest idea -- that let me out. 

But then -- Eureka! -- just in time, I had a brainstorm. It suddenly hit me that in order to write books, you don't have to know the meaning of life -- you can just tell stories! A genuine breakthrough. Figuring that out released me from my life-long writing paralysis. Just tell a story. 

This was back in the mid-1980s, a time when I was first discovering the delights of historical romance via Kathleen Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rogers, et al. I loved these books. They were sexy and wild, not very respectable. Outlaw books. If I hadn't been dying, I might've chosen something else, something more respectable -- a mystery, maybe; I also loved whodunits -- but time was running out, and I wanted to spend my last days writing something for the pure fun of it. I couldn't think of anything more purely fun than a romance. 

So I wrote Sweet Treason in about nine months and sold it to Dorchester. It did pretty well; in fact, it won the Romance Writers of America (RWA) Golden Heart Award. My editor started asking me what I was working on now. I wrote another book. One day I woke up and realized two things: I wasn't dead, and I had a new career. 

Crescent Blues: What challenges you most: plotting, pacing or characterization? 

Patricia Gaffney: The three jobs you've listed all challenge me about equally. You haven't named the really tough one -- sitting in the chair and not getting up. The distraction factor. My husband just designed and built a new office for me. It's up in the attic, quiet as snow; it's got a fireplace; it's got a stained glass window; it's gorgeous. Do I get a lot more work done now? No, I gaze around and admire things. I gloat over how pretty it all is. Everything distracts me. Dust motes. I can find a hundred excuses a day not to sit at my desk and work. Plotting, pacing? A bagatelle. Self-discipline -- that's a challenge.  

Crescent Blues: Your novels appear to fall into distinct groups, particularly the Wyckerly novels and your wonderfully humorous westerns Crooked Hearts and Outlaw in Paradise. How difficult was it to move from one sub-genre of historical romance to another? What prompted the transitions? 

Patricia Gaffney: A low boredom threshold and a reluctance to write the same thing twice, at least on purpose. Sometimes I like to write comedy, sometimes I like to write trouble and heartache. And no, it wasn't difficult to move around among the sub-genre, because of the aforementioned Audrey LaFehr. She wholeheartedly supported every proposal I ever ran by her -- and I know other editors who would have objected, on the grounds that that much hopping around would confuse reader expectations or delay the happy phenomenon of name recognition. Audrey always said the book should come first.  

Crescent Blues: Now that you approach the publication of your third mainstream novel, are you feeling restless? Are there new literary playgrounds you'd like to explore? 

Patricia Gaffney: Not restless yet, no. I think it's because what I'm trying now is so much broader than what I used to write. I'm not even very good at it yet. I could see my romance novels improving as time went by -- I'm really hoping something similar happens with my mainstream stuff. 

Crescent Blues: Are you ever surprised by reader reactions to what you write? 

Patricia Gaffney: Not really; I can usually predict what's going to provoke controversy (Sebastian in To Have And To Hold, for instance), and if I'm excited about a book when I finish it, that's usually a good sign that readers will like it, too. Same goes for the lukewarm ones. But speaking of Outlaw in Paradise -- and you were -- I guess I was surprised by the readers who didn't get that it was a comedy. Not many, but the fact that there were any really confounded me. Could the humor possibly have been too subtle? Hard to believe. I'm still scratching my head over that one. 

Crescent Blues: Of all your novels, which characters have struck the deepest chords among your readers? What do they find most compelling about those characters? 

Patricia Gaffney: In my romances, readers seem to really go for the heroes -- which is interesting, because I usually care more about the heroines. Sebastian in To Have And To Hold really got some people where they live; I had more mail on that guy than any other character I've written. They loved him -- or rather, the ones who didn't hate him did. But the four women in The Saving Graces have provoked the most commentary, I'd say, with readers eager to tell me which one they most identified with, which one they liked best, which one was just like their best friend from college, etc., etc. Isabel resonated with them, probably for obvious reasons. Also Emma, who's my favorite character. 

Crescent Blues: Which of your characters strike the deepest chords within you? 

Patricia Gaffney: Emma in The Saving Graces basically is me, although she's younger, prettier, and has a more exciting love life. (Hey, writer's prerogative.) Anne in To Love And To Cherish is my romance-self, highly idealized. I gave her a first-person viewpoint by quoting extensively from her journal, and when I write in the first person it seems to free up a lot of honesty inside me. Something to do with the right brain, maybe. I guess the moral is I like best the characters I most resemble. How egotistical. 

Crescent Blues: Your academic career displays both a literary and philosophical bent. What influence (if any) do you feel your education had on your fiction? 

Patricia Gaffney: When you major in English -- at least at my college -- you don't do any creative writing. You study literature and write papers about other people's books, which I'm sure is instructive and forms lifelong habits, prejudices, tolerances, bents, predilections.  

I could more easily tell you what books influenced my writing than how my education -- which, frankly, I can barely remember -- did, or how the jobs I've had over the years colored my work. I was a court stenographer for about 15 years; briefly I was a photographer; even more briefly, an English teacher. When you're a court reporter, you're invisible; ditto photographer. So, being an introvert, I thrived on those jobs.  

Teaching English, on the other hand -- which requires being front and center -- brought on for me deep psychic nausea. I only lasted a year in that job, had to get out. What I liked about court reporting was the chance to study people. You could be up close, but covert -- perfect. I'd watch a guy's tie flicker up and down with his heartbeat, and realize he wasn't as relaxed as he wanted to look. Fascinating. I can't help but think that's been useful when I write my own characters. 

Crescent Blues: What do you feel were the strongest influences on your fiction? Do those influences remain strong? 

Patricia Gaffney: I think most writers' -- most people's -- strongest influences are the books they read when they were adolescents and young adults, and I think the obsessions those books engender last the rest of our lives. And so the writers who've most influenced my fiction were, and are: Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Samuel Richardson, Kingsley Amis, Dorothy Sayers, D. H. Lawrence, Margaret Drabble, Anne Tyler. 

Wait -- are you talking about people? I was thinking you meant books and authors. If you're talking about people as influences, I'd have to say my mother. She taught me to read, love reading, want to write, love writing. 

Crescent Blues: In the romance genre, who are your heroes and why? 

Patricia Gaffney: Oh, if I answer that question I'll just start naming friends. I'm lucky to be pals with my favorite romance writers -- Nora Roberts, Jennifer Crusie, Judith Ivory/Judy Cuevas. I don't read extensively in the genre anymore, truthfully, but I also admire Eileen Dreyer, Kathleen Eagle, Ruth Wind/Barbara Samuels, Diana Gabaldon. Of course, Laura Kinsale.  

Crescent Blues: How do you feel about political correctness in romance? Do you find mainstream novels subject to the same limitations? 

Patricia Gaffney: This issue usually boils down to how much macho behavior you can put up with in a hero, which you must admit is a pretty narrow definition of political correctness. And no, of course mainstream fiction doesn't have that limitation. Except for someone like Bret Easton Ellis [author of American Psycho], the subject simply doesn't come up. 

Crescent Blues: How do you address those limitations in your work? Are you ever tempted to write something totally outrageous or does your muse work in different ways? 

Patricia Gaffney: Luckily, I don't have to address those limitations anymore. But when I did, I was much too mature to react by writing something outrageous just to thumb my nose at the genre. 

Ha ha ha ha ha. 

No, really, the only time I can remember deliberately flauting the romance convention was when I wrote the character of Sebastian in To Have And To Hold, and that wasn't -- honest! -- just to prove that I could. But I do remember thinking as the manuscript went along: "You're going to do this? My God, you're going to let him do that?" And each time the answer was: "Yes, I am because that's how the story goes. I'm not responsible."  

As to political correctness -- sure, it's a bad thing in fiction, it's self-censorship, it's cowardly, it's self-defeating, because it makes for sameness and decay and moribundity. It takes a healthy, vital genre and knocks it unconscious, makes it dull dull dull. On the other hand, writers who ignore reader expectations (and some of those readers really are "gentle" -- they're tender flowers with delicate stems, and they don't care to get smacked upside the stamen with a shovel by writers being politically incorrect for the hell of it) do so at their peril. 

Crescent Blues: What are the best and worst things about being a successful novelist?

Patricia Gaffney: Best: working at home. Not having to put on pantyhose or makeup. This cannot be underestimated. 

Worst: having to go out in the world for publicity and promotion. It's embarrassing. And I hate to talk, I realize in my old age. Speaking is hard work. I have to go on a book tour for Circle of Three soon, and the prospect of speaking to groups, speaking on the radio, speaking on TV, is making me ill. Not that I don't like people. I do, very much, but I like being among them, not the center of their attention. 

Crescent Blues: If you could create a fantasy book tour, what would the schedule look like? Where would you go? 

Patricia Gaffney: Monday: Begin book tour. Respond to e-mail questions in privacy of beautiful new office from brilliant reporter for respected national publication with worldwide circulation. 

Tuesday: Book tour ends. Champagne for everyone. 

Crescent Blues: Anything you'd like to add? Any topic you'd like to cover? Soapboxes provided free of charge. 

Patricia Gaffney: Hm. Very tempting, but I think I'd just like to say thanks to anybody who's ever read a book of mine and liked it, then written me a letter saying so. That was awfully nice of you, and I appreciate it. 

Also I would like to say, on rereading this interview I am not quite as curmudgeonly as I sound. Really. 

Jean Marie Ward 

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