NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER EAST SIDE -- CITYPEOPLE;
By AMANDA CANTRELL
Hillary Fields writes romance novels for a living, but
she doesn't date much. At 26, Ms. Fields, a native
New Yorker, seems as independent as her strong-
willed heroines. She has leapt screaming from an
airplane, traveled alone to Australia and New
Zealand and published two novels with female protagonists -- a pirate and an explorer --
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But unlike her swashbuckling heroines, Ms. Fields doesn't have a
dashing, muscular vagabond banging down the door of her Upper
East Side apartment.
"I'm very shy -- I know it sounds weird," she said. "But I would like to
date a lot more." Ms. Fields doesn't fit the stereotype of the romance
novelist. "People think, Barbara Cartland, 98 years old, wearing pink
taffeta and a tiara every day of her life," said Ms. Fields, whose second
novel, "Marrying Jezebel," made its debut in October. "Spare me from that!"
She's also more literary than her bodice-ripping books suggest. She
studied classics and philosophy at both campuses of St. John's
College in Annapolis, M.D., and Santa Fe, N.M., and a short story she
wrote was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 1998. She signed a
book deal with her publisher, St. Martin's Press, within months of her
graduation in 1997. Her first novel, "The Maiden's Revenge,"published
last January, features the deliciously named Captain Thorne, a female
pirate who robs a handsome businessman's ship, holds him hostage
and falls in love with her captive. Ms. Fields said she deliberately set
out to create a strong female character. "I was really tired of these sort
of insipid heroines who always need some guy to rescue them when
they're in trouble," she said.
So why romance? As a child, Ms. Fields devoured historical romances,
the genre in which she now specializes.
Nevertheless, Ms. Fields said, the men she meets in real life often find
her occupation intimidating, believing that she'll expect to be whisked off
into the sunset. Moreover, "they have this weird expectation that either
a, I'm an expert on sex, or b, that I have really high standards for what
their performance is going to be like," said Ms. Fields, who added that
she is often tempted to tell men that she is an accountant. "I have to say
to them, 'Don't worry. This is fiction.' "
Ms. Fields's first boyfriend died in a fire, leaving her devastated (the two
were not dating at the time of his death). And she spent months
recovering from an unrequited crush. "I haven't really been in a lot of
situations where it was just hunky-dory," she said. Ms. Fields said she
had recently become smitten with a Texas state trooper who was
moonlighting in the Houston hotel where she was attending a romance
writers' convention. Though the two shared a romantic weekend, Ms.
Fields said things fizzled when she returned to New York.
Ms. Fields chuckles over the similarities she shares with Joan Wilder,
the terminally single New York City romance novelist in the 1984 film
"Romancing the Stone." But when she dreams of her future, she
happily envisions a self-sufficient author. "I see myself in a sunlit room,
with my absolutely brand-spanking-new computer," she said. "Maybe a
cat walks in the room. Maybe I've got kids." Her mother, Susan Fields,
who also lives in New York, makes one addition to the serene portrait.
"It's very unfeminist," Mrs.Fields said, "but I'd love for her to be in love
with a great guy."
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