Tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to write romance.
I'm the single mother of two grown boys, now 23 and 20. I had the first as a freshman in college and the second during my senior year. I studied archaeology but worked part-time at a local newspaper. When I graduated, I went to graduate school for a while, but I realized I was just doing that to escape doing what I truly wanted to do — which was to write romance. I'd been a fan of romantic fiction since I'd read The Flame and the Flowerwhen I was about 14. My friends and I wrote love scenes and traded them back and forth. That was the first practice I got at romance writing. I wish I still had copies of those handwritten pages because I bet they’re pretty amusing.
It was important for me to pursue my dream of writing romance. Because I thought journalism would help hone my writing skills, I pursued that as my day job, but wrote fiction in my spare time on the side. I say that tongue in cheek because I didn't have a lot of spare time. I was working full-time with a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old. But even if all you write is one paragraph each weekend, you eventually end up with a novel.
It took me seven years to write my first book, a historical titled Sweet Release. During that time, I moved up the ladder in the newsroom and became the first woman editor of the paper. My team and I won a boatload of state and national journalism awards, including the National Journalism Award for Public Service, which included a party at the National Press Club across from the White House.
Initially I intended only to write historicals because that's what I read and what I loved. I still read more historicals than anything else. I ended up branching off into romantic suspense at the suggestion of my agent, who knew about my work as an investigative journalist. She called one day to chat, and I told her that I'd gotten a call from a state health inspector who had been inspecting a factory that I, too, was investigating. He'd called because he'd heard the plant manager telling the workers that if they couldn't get that “lady reporter” to back off, they might lose their jobs. So this inspector was afraid the workers would track me down and beat me up.
I shared this with my agent. She knew I'd gotten death threats in the past and that I'd had a couple of wacko stalkers. She said, “Why don’t you write romantic suspense because you live it.” And I said, "Yeah, except for the "romantic part."
But I gave it a shot, turning the investigation I was doing at that point into my first romantic suspense novel, Extreme Exposure.
I would love to know how you balance your job as a reporter, your career as a successful romantic suspense and historical romance author and being a single mom too. I find that amazing!
Do I balance it? I'm not sure. There are days where I feel like I'm not a person, but rather a “to do” list. The hardest things for me are getting enough sleep, remembering to take care of myself and dealing with the stress of the newspaper and preventing it from eating into my creative time. That last one is really tough. Journalism is not a low-stress job. I joke that it's a contact sport. But I'm getting better at compartmentalizing and saying, "This doesn't matter now. What does matter?"
I've had to determine what's really important to me and cut everything else out. I don't have television. When I go to the store and see the covers of the tabloids, I have no idea who those people are. I've never seen Buffy orSurvivor or Lost. I rarely go to movies. I don't date. I don't entertain guests or go to parties. Every hour of my day is built around being productive.
To aspiring writers out there who say they don't have time to write, I say, "Baloney." If I can do it, almost anyone can do it. What are you doing between 4:30 AM and 7 AM? I've done a lot of writing during those hours.
I try to get all non-fiction related stuff done Monday through Thursday. That includes laundry, shopping for groceries, cleaning the house — everything. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday are about writing romance. And I write all day until I can't stay awake any longer.
My kids' needs come first. When they were little that was especially true, of course. But even college-aged kids need TLC and support from their mommies. I text and e-mail back and forth with them every day.
Do you have enjoy historical or romantic suspense more? Do you find one easier than the other?
That's a tough question. I enjoy each of them, but for different reasons.
Historicals provide more escape for me, both as a reader and a writer. I love history passionately. I love everything about writing historicals, including the research, which I take quite seriously. I have many more ideas for historical novels than I do for contemporary novels.
But writing contemporary romantic suspense is fun because I have such freedom to use any language I want to use without looking up the words to make sure they existed in 2010. The stories can be edgier both with regard to the story and the sex. When I first started writing them, I would sit at my computer and laugh, because I was funneling stuff from my day job into the stories and that struck me as hilarious.
Another cool thing about writing romantic suspense is that I am able to funnel real experiences into the stories. All of the I-Team novels are based on something I've actually done and deal with real challenges that society is facing from pollution to human trafficking to the abuse of women in prison.
It's nice to be able to alternate between the two subgenres, actually. It challenges me and also keeps my creativity limber, I think. I don't know too many authors who regularly write two distinctly separate subgenres.
Is there another romance subgenre you’d like to try?
Hmmm… Well, I have an idea for a paranormal series in my head. No vampires. No werewolves. No shape shifters, demons, gods, angels, fairies, leprechauns, satyrs, dragons, mummies, zombies or sidhe. Whether I ever write it remains to be seen. But other than that, no. I need reality in stories in order to enjoy them.
I do have some things I want to write outside of romance altogether, including a thriller or two that I'd like to write in Danish. I really want to get to this one day, and soon. Plus, I'd like to write some straight historical fiction one day.
All of your romantic suspense novels are part of the same series. Tell us about the I-Team. What is it? Is there really such a thing as an I-Team out there?
I-Team stand for Investigative Team. It's a team of top-notch investigative reporters whose job it is to dig deep into what’s going on around them and to expose wrongdoing that would otherwise never come to light. That's the kind of reporting I enjoy the most. Because investigative reporting can be expensive, a lot of papers are no longer doing it. But it’s really vital to healthy society to have someone out there who’s working as a watchdog.
The I-Team in my books is based loosely around the group of investigative reporters with whom I won the National Journalism Award. Though we no longer work together, we're still in touch and are very good friends. The big difference between the I-Team in my books and journalism in real life is that most investigative reporters, most columnists and most editors are male. So rather than being made up of mostly women, the newsrooms where I've worked have been almost exclusively male. When I first started, the sports editor shook my hand and said, “Welcome to the men’s locker room.” And that’s kind of what it was like for a long time. I've tried to hire more women and bring more women into the profession, but not a lot of women can deal with the confrontational aspects of investigative reporting. Like I said, it's a contact sport. It's the rugby of writing.
Your next book in the series, Naked Edge, will be out on Tuesday. What can you tell us about it?
I'm so excited! It will be almost two years since Unlawful Contact, the third book in the series, was released, so it's about time!
Here's the blurb from the back of the book:
What do you do when desire drives you to the very brink?
The day Navajo journalist Katherine James met Gabriel Rossiter, the earth literally moved beneath her feet. Nearly killed in a rockslide while hiking, she found her life in the tall park ranger’s hands. Although she can't forget him she thinks she’ll never see him again. She is crushed when she recognizes her rescuer among the law enforcement officers raiding a sweat lodge ceremony one night, throwing her and her friends off Mesa Butte, land they consider sacred.
Gabe long ago swore he would never again lose himself to a woman not even one with long dark hair and big eyes that seem to see right through him. But from the moment he first sees Kat, the attraction he feels is undeniable. Appalled by what he has been ordered to do, he'd determined to get to the bottom of recent events at Mesa Butte and to keep Kat safe.
But asking questions can be dangerous almost as dangerous as risking one's heart. And soon Kat and Gabe's passion for the truth and each other makes them targets for those who would do anything, even kill, to keep Native Americans off their sacred land.
Naked Edge tells the story of Kat James, the I-Team's only American Indian reporter. Raised on the Navajo reservation, Kat has a very different world view than the rest of her I-Team friends. For starters, she's a virgin and she'd determined to remain so until she meets her "half-side,” i.e., her perfect, matching male half. In many ways, she's the strongest heroine I've ever written, but she's not a “kick-ass heroine.” Her strength is a quiet inner strength that is based on her spiritual values as a traditional Navajo.
Gabe is in many ways her opposite - "a man slut" who believes in nothing and no one. But there's a reason he is the way he is. He saves Kat's life one day when she's almost killed in a rockslide and finds himself drawn to her, in part because she sees qualities in him that he has either forgotten or never recognized. When someone close to her is killed, he realizes that she may be in danger, too, and he puts his life quite literally on the line to protect her.
Characters from the past novels in the series play a part in this story, so fans of the other books will get to catch up on what's been happening in Denver.
The story draws not only on my years reporting on events on the Navajo reservation, but also my own experience of nearly dying in a mountain climbing accident. Like Kat, I was badly injured and was rescued by a park ranger who just happened to be a paramedic and was backpacking in the same area on his day off. I was airlifted to a trauma center — a harsh way to earn a free helicopter ride.
I wrote a long author's note to accompany the book describing the story's background and my climbing accident in full. It's on my Web site, together with excerpts and other extras, at www.pamelaclare.com.
And on the whimsical side, if you could interview anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?
Wow, so many names rush through my mind all at once: Bono. Martin Luther King Jr. John Lennon. Cleopatra. Jesus. Mozart. Caesar. King Arthur (the real one). Anne Boleyn. Hitler. Marco Polo. Bartolomé de las Casas. Michelangelo. Erik the Red. Robert Rogers. Queen Elizabeth I. Joan of Arc.
I don't think I could pick one, though perhaps it would be Robert Rogers, the creator of Rogers Rules of Ranging and father of the Army Rangers. My MacKinnon's Rangers series, set during the French and Indian War, is based on his work leading a company of Rangers out of Fort Edward, NY. I've been there. I've walked where he walked. But I'd sure love to hear his stories and watch him fight.
Thanks for inviting me here, Christy. It's been fun getting to know you! I've got your books on the of my TBR and am looking forward to getting some reading time so that I can enjoy them.
Pamela, thanks so much for visiting with us. Now that I've learned more about you, I'm even more impressed. And NAKED EDGE sounds even more enticing!
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