I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Stella at her gorgeous condo, ensconced in wonderfully comfortable chairs with mugs of REAL English tea in hand. The next 90 minutes were a joy as we discussed Stella's career and her views on writing, and I got a sneak peek at what's coming up. So get a mug of tea, sit back, and enjoy the conversation.

Stella: I don't have any spare time. I came to the US after I was married. I was married in England, and then came here. My husband was in the US Air Force, and we met about 18 months before we were married. I knew that meant that I was going to come to the US, and that was fine with me. I didn't have a strong desire to come here. I had planned, in fact, to go toward Australia. I didn't want to live permanently in England. I love it, but it's sort of a depressed land somehow. It's, yes, a little bit ominous and very different from the way people see it, or the way they choose to see it, or the way we British choose to portray it. I'm ex-British, of course. So, we came here and we lived on the East Coast for two years in New Jersey, lived in Texas for a while, and then back to the New York area, and then out here. Our first child, Matthew, was born on Staten Island in New York, and I loved the East Coast while I was there. I like being so close to the theatre, which is my one vice. But I would never want to live anywhere other than the Pacific Northwest. The Seattle area, I think, is just fabulous.

Maggie: You mentioned you love the theatre. Any other hobbies? You said you like opera.

Stella: I LOVE the opera. I love classical music. Well, I like all kinds of music. There are one or two notable exceptions, things I really don't care for, but my biggest love is opera and I am absolutely enslaved to the tenor voice. Completely, just…

Maggie: Have you gone to see the three tenors? Did you go see them when they were in the area?

Stella: I didn't have a chance. But one of the things I did as a hobby for a while was, I was what is called a "supernumerary" in the opera, the Seattle Opera, which means you don't sing, you act. So you get to dress up in these wonderful costumes and have all that wonderful makeup on and get to be on the stage with all those voices. I still feel as if, when I was walking in the middle of a tenor chorus in the opera "Manon," I was transported. I could have just passed out from the sheer bliss on the spot. It was an incredible experience. But I will go to see any play that I can get to. It's a bad month if I don't get to go to a play. I've been to some I don't enjoy, but mostly I get ... it takes you somewhere else. I think we, those of us who are really into fiction anyway, have got this need to experience that "being taken away" feeling. But my only other real hobby is to read. Reading is so closely tied in with my work that some might question that it is a hobby - but I love to read. I don't really have anything other than that. It takes me ... well, it's a big deal just for me to get myself up the road to the gym and work out for a bit.

Maggie: How did you start writing and how many books have you published so far?

Stella: I wrote as a kid, and, when I got out of school, I went to London and I studied Economics and never used any of it. I just don't know what came over me. It was probably what I was told to do. But I ended up editing medical texts for a dermatologist in Harley Street in London, and it was a great experience because it was an adventure every day - all kinds of stuff going on around me all the time. Medicine is very fascinating and exciting to me. And then I met my husband and came to the States. I wrote around the edges of being a wife and a mother, and it was in 1980 that the day came when I just said, "I'm going to write for a living." Of course, I got that chorus of, "Oh, well that's a good idea. Oh, why don't you do THAT. Oh, surely, surely." I started going to classes because that's the way I see doing anything. I mean, if I were a professional singer I would have a voice teacher, wouldn't I? So, I took classes, took classes, took classes - and had a LOT of fun with them. Then I won in the Pacific Northwest Writer's Association annual contest for novels in - I think that was - 1982.

Maggie: Had you published it?

Stella: No.

Maggie: So this is like the Golden Heart Award or something?

Stella: No, no, it's open nationally - the contest is open nationally and they have specific categories. There are fiction novel and non-fiction. They also have a section for high school students.

Maggie: You were living here (in the Northwest)?

Stella: I was living here. My arm was twisted by one of the people I was taking classes from to enter the novel I was working on, which was a romance - there was no doubt about it. I didn't know what I was writing at first. I felt that it was romance and I really didn't think that it had any kind of a chance at all, but I went ahead and wrote a synopsis - the first synopsis I'd ever written in my life, a 10 page synopsis - got the whole thing in on the very last day and then, you know, won. When I heard my name, it was as if somebody was roaring in my head. And so I cried. Promptly. So original. Through that I got an agent.

Maggie: What book was it? Was it published?

Stella: It was - well, that's a sad little tale - it was, in fact, bought by a publishing company called Medallion that subsequently went out of business after the cover, after the galleys, after everything. Yeah, yeah it did.

Maggie: And so, if they have the rights to it, you can't then sell it to another publisher?

Stella: I'm really not sure what the situation is with that book. I've done nothing. I have just allowed it to ...

Maggie: Just let it go?

Stella: Yeah. Well, I have it. I have the book. It's all on disk. I put it on disk later, but what happened was that I wrote another book called "Moontide." That was bought. So I think my first book was actually published in 1984 and I think I have - I think it's about 45 novels that are in print. I keep saying that, but I'm really not sure - I think it's about 45.

Maggie: Does that include short stories?

Stella: No. I have also written novellas.

Maggie: So you've written short stories, too, in some of the anthologies?

Stella: Yes.

Maggie: Is there anyplace to find your entire backlist? Do you have a bibliography?

Stella: There's a bibliography on my website. Um, I haven't looked at it. I should take a look at it to see just how complete it is and get that updated. But yes, you could probably get it from me if I put my mind to it. I could probably drag them all out!

Maggie: Some of them are probably hard to find at this point.

Stella: Mmm-hmm!

Maggie: So, I guess the answer to the question, "Have you always written romance?" is "Yes" - because the first book was romance.

Stella: Yes, well I'd written a lot of short stories which were not romance. They were very, sort of, minimalist, typical of the person who is studying fiction intensely. Obviously, you have your own style. I love short fiction. I like some of the people ... I still do enjoy Raymond Carver, reading some of his stuff from time to time, some of his stories are memorable. But that was a whole other period of my life, the short stories. I think I was going through my ... maybe a stage I missed in my life when I was very free to express myself in the form in which it came most easily. I wrote a children's book which I really do need to do something with ... I really must.

Maggie: I wish you would because the story at the end of "French Quarter" - the children's story that Jack is telling the little girl - I read that and I just thought, "This is wonderful, this children's story is so wonderful." I thought about that while I was reading it, wondering if you had done ...

Stella: I've done children's writing. I used to write for my own children and I used to tell them stories. We'd have continuing stories at night so they had an episode to look forward to. It was not written, it was a verbal story telling. I would just carry on the next night and the next. I still remember the girls had bunk beds and everybody would crawl in on the bottom bunk waiting for the next installment. I also wrote, ripped off Tolkein, and I wrote them a Christmas letter each year. They've all got them. Each of them has some of them. I would write from the North Pole as Father Christmas and tell them all of the terrible things that had happened at the North Pole that year.

Maggie: Have you thought about putting those in a collection and publishing them?

Stella: Well, I think Tolkein did it.

Maggie: Yeah, but these aren't HIS stories, these are YOUR stories.

Stella: These are my stories - yeah, I could. The one that I really should get into again is a story called "Crinkle." It's more of a story for children of all ages. It's about a master chocolate maker to Santa Claus, and he's the youngest member of the family. He's called Crinkle because his job is to smooth the wrinkles out of the silver paper that you wrap chocolates in.

Maggie: He has to uncrinkle it?

Stella: He has to uncrinkle it. He smoothes the crinkles out at the end and he's not ... his family doesn't pay him a whole lot of mind. He decides that the really fortunate people are the various toys that get to be loved by a child to the exclusion of all else, and manages eventually to persuade the master toymaker to turn him into a doll.

Maggie: It's a reverse Pinochio.

Stella: I guess yes, it is. I guess it is. And he gets given to a little girl in a castle in Austria, and she gets him on Christmas day and she doesn't like him! One eye is one color and the other's another color, and he's not nearly as pretty as she'd wanted him to be, so he ends up in the attic. And he's just thrown away with all the old stuff in the attic in this castle.

Maggie: How sad!

Stella: But he gets befriended by a whole family of castle mice. Yes! The only thing is, they can't get him out because he won't fit through the mouse holes. So he has to be rescued eventually by his brother, Bill.

Maggie: Does it have a happy ending?

Stella: Yes, of course it does!

Maggie: Poor Crinkle! You must write it! Find a wonderful illustrator.

Stella: It would be fun.

Maggie: What a delightful project that would be.

Stella: Sounds like a lot of fun.

Maggie: So the romance just sort of happened? It was an accident - well, it wasn't an accident, it was meant to be.

Stella: It wasn't an accident, no. It was ... for one thing, I had been given a whole bunch of romances by one of the people in one of the classes I was taking, and was terribly offended. She gave me these romances and said, "You know, romance is all about relationships and you seem to be fascinated by relationships." And she said, "You should read some of these because I think it would be really easy for you to write!" (Stella laughs! Sure! It's easy! Ha, ha!) Well, what happened was I read them and I LIKED them. Mostly super-romances, things like that.

Maggie: Harlequins? Categories?

Stella: Yeah, but there's a long Harlequin called a Superromance which is really mainstream women's fiction, is what it is, that is heavily into relationship. I was very impressed with the way some of those books were written and not at all sure that I could do it, and I did a lot of analysis of books before I ever had the temerity to attempt to do it myself. But, boy, I loved writing! I mean, it was like falling into warm water, it just felt so good, and I've been doing it ever since. I didn't start writing historicals until about, I think it was 1989 or '90.

Maggie: Really, so all of your early books are contemporaries.

Stella: They're all contemporaries, yup.

Maggie: What made you decide to write historicals?

Stella: Actually, it was Jayne Krentz who said, "You shouldn't be afraid to experiment with anything. You have that natural voice, why don't you try your hand at writing historical stories set in England?" And I said, "Oh, I can't do THAT. I would never do that," and then went right back home, sat down, and wrote what became EXACTLY the opening of ONLY BY YOUR TOUCH, which was my first historical. Not my title, by the way. And I wrote that and it was the most natural thing I'd ever done. I was literally back into my own voice because the background was all there. It was not like I suddenly had to learn anything.

Maggie: So we owe Jayne Ann Krentz a big "Thank you."

Stella: Uh-huh! She's been a very good friend to me.

Maggie: So how did you start writing the suspense then - the romantic suspense?

Stella: There's always been suspense in all of my books.

Maggie: Every one of them?

Stella: Yes, there's always been an element of suspense, and I think that probably comes from being an avid mystery reader from when I was a kid.

Maggie: Did you read Nancy Drew?

Stella: We didn't have Nancy Drew. In England we had, I read all the Enid Blyton stories, the famous "Five" and all the mystery books. Anything with a mystery in it.

Maggie: Talking about historical vs. contemporary - do you like writing one more than the other?

Stella: When I'm actually writing, whatever book I'm writing I think is my favorite thing to do. But then when I stand back and I'm really objective about it, what I love doing with historicals is having a free rein for my particular kind of humor - and I think most people don't think I HAVE a sense of humor.

Maggie: Oh NO! Oh NO! We're going to get to that question in a little while.

Stella: I've always thought that people never found me humorous at all, that I was very serious. But I do have a sense of humor and I love to be free to let go of these, sort of, off the cuff comments, and a little bit of something outrageous to me is so much fun. I'm working now on ALL SMILES, which is the next book on Mayfair Square, and I'm working with a heroine whose hobby - current hobby - is, she's studying what was termed in those days "Abstract Thinking," which is actually the forerunner of meditation. People have meditated throughout time, forever.

Maggie: But not in the West.

Stella: Not in the West. She's gotten ahold of all this old stuff on yoga, yogic breathing, and meditation and so on, and so I'm having good fun because she's gotten very good at it. This is Meg. She's gotten very good at it, and she dons her black lace mantilla (laughs!) and goes into a trance from time to time. She has a mantra and so you might find her sitting in a corner somewhere saying, "I am, I AAAA-mmmmmmm," and that's the kind of thing that just entertains me greatly.

But to try to come back to the question properly, it's a big challenge to write what is, if you tear away the fabric of the stories FRENCH QUARTER, BEST REVENGE, TRUE BLISS - all of those books have a very complete suspense going on in the book. I have to plot that element every bit as carefully as anybody else who's writing a mystery, and I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of the brainwork that is involved in that, and I spend soooo long working on plot. So long! And then I get this thought from the blue, and suddenly it's all clear and it's very exciting. So what do I like the best? I don't know.

Maggie: Whatever you're working on at the time. You couldn't ask for more than that.

Stella: No, I couldn't! And I know I'm very blessed.

Maggie: I think you said that you go to England now and then. Do you do research when you're there?

Stella: I have family. Until my father died three years ago, I used to get back about every other year, and my research requires that I go, so I will be going back this year. I'm looking forward to that. But it's been quite a while. It seems strange.

Maggie: Did you find Mayfair Square there the last time you were visiting in London?

Stella: I'm not going to tell you! I can't tell you.

Maggie: It must be there somewhere! Everyone will make pilgrimages there if they find out where it is.

Stella: Uh huh! It's hidden away. It's a little gem.

Maggie: OK! Be mysterious, then! Where do you get the inspiration for your characters? Are they real people? Dorothy in the bookstore in GUILTY PLEASURES is real.

Stella: Yes, I will put a real person into a book from time to time. Particularly, well, usually in historicals I put real people, and I have used people in books for various reasons but they're compilations of people usually, but my people just come walking in. They just come in. And it may be that I've seen somebody. I've tried to analyze what happens, but I don't know. All I know is that characterization is so important to me. It's a process where they come walking in. And you know more and more and more and more about them as you go on, and then you discover that some of your initial assumptions were wrong. That you didn't know your characters well enough at that point, so then it's a process of going back and changing things.

Maggie: Do they do something that surprises you and then you realize you didn't really know them?

Stella: I didn't know them quite as well as I thought I did.

Maggie: So do your characters write the story?

Stella: No, I do.

Maggie: You write the story but the characters behave within a story. It's an interesting thing, whether the characters write the story or the writer writes the story.

Stella: The author writes the story. I definitely think that characters take on their own life.

Maggie: Do you write the whole story out or do you write pieces and glue them together?

Stella: No, I write the whole thing in a straight line, and then go back and change it.

Maggie: How many times do you do that?

Stella: I guess you probably revise five or six times.

Maggie: I don't know how you can do that - how you can write it flat out. Because the little bits and pieces I've tried, the story keeps changing on me.

Stella: But nevertheless, if you're writing sequentially and things are changing, it's only a matter of going back and changing what you did before.

Maggie: Do you ever throw pieces of your books away and start over?

Stella: Yeah!

Maggie: You write it flat out, and then by the fifth time it might look completely different than the first time?

Stella: Not completely different, no.

Maggie: Do you start out with an outline?

Stella: No. I have an idea, and the idea is there, and I will have written a little. What I write is a sketch - four, five or six pages long. That's what the publisher gets. That's how they know my general idea. By the time I write that sketch, I've done pages of notes. Pages and pages of notes and thoughts, and have drizzled around about all kinds of things, and thought about what the plot hinges on. I call it the "bone." So I have that. I have maybe six, seven, eight, nine pages like that, and that's what I have. And then when I start to write, I literally sit down and whatever words come to me are what go down on the page and I just write.

Maggie: You do a lot of thinking before you sit down.

Stella: Mmm-hmm.

Maggie: How long does that usually take?

Stella: Not long. A couple weeks.

Maggie: A couple weeks. You just sit down and out comes a book!

Stella: NO! Thank you, no! Maggie! It's an exhausting process, but I may outline at various points in the book. I may stop and just gather myself up to see where I'm going and where I've been. I may jot some notes. I may go in on the computer and I may jot some notes that way, but very often, I'm halfway through this book now and I haven't done any outlining. I will have to look at it strongly to be sure that everything is lined up, but it's feeling OK.

Maggie: Do you have to sell your books to the publishers at this point, or do they just buy whatever you're writing? Do you have to sell the synopsis?

Stella: It's not a case of buying whatever you write. It's a case of them buying YOU. What happens is that they come in and they make an offer of, usually, most of my contracts are three books. I've had four, I've had five. It's difficult to have contracts that are sort of … they stretch into that infinity feeling because I have two publishers always.

Maggie: One for the historical and one for the contemporary.

Stella: Yep. So no, I don't sell them. I mean, they literally don't know what I'm going to write. So yes, when I go to contract, they don't know what I'm going to write except one knows it's going to be historical and the other one knows it's going to be contemporary romantic suspense - and the historicals are like historical suspense, which is romantic suspense, which is another odd thing that's part of what I do. What I then do is, I write them a little outline or I write them sort of a proposal that reads very much like cover copy in a way. Or the way I think cover copy should read, which is really like a sales pitch of an idea. I don't know if you've seen the movie THE PLAYER about pitching movies in Hollywood - it's very interesting, because, to me, that's what a writer does, too. Pitch the story in such a way that it catches the attention quickly, and it's clear as to what it is you intend to do and you just get it out. You don't meander around with the descriptions of whatever. Just get in there with the conflict, with the characters, and get out again. And, you know, we may have a discussion at that point, we usually have a discussion at that point over the phone, and from that I just get on with it.

Maggie: So they can say yes or no to your idea.

Stella: Mmm-hmmm.

Maggie: You must have to reach a certain level of popularity to get you to a point where a publisher comes to you and says, "We want you to write us three books." Beginning authors wouldn't have that option, would they?

Stella: Not usually, not usually. I'm sure it happens. You'd have to assume that, when somebody has written a lot of books and they sell well and so on, that they've got to be able to be trusted to be good practitioners.

Maggie: So you have to prove yourself.

Stella: Some people do it very quickly. But on the other hand, there are a lot of people who, most people I suppose, don't get to that point. I don't know. It's bound to get easier as you publish more books. I mean, easier as far as the contracts go. Writing, in my opinion, never gets easier. The problems of self-image never get easier - if, like me, you're very sort of ... um ... one of my editors just calls me tormented, and I sort of think of Rebecca or something. I'm always second-guessing myself.

Maggie: Do you always keep raising the bar for yourself on the quality of your books or for what you accomplish, how you perceive yourself as writing?

Stella: I think I raise the bar in a way. The one thing I don't doubt is my skill as a writer. I think that you can still ... I mean, you improve and you improve and you improve if you want to, if the writing is important to you ... so I would like to think that I continue to improve. I think I raise the bar somewhat in the emotional stakes in my books - the contemporary books particularly. The emotional stakes get higher and higher. KEY WEST, which will be the next contemporary out - FRENCH QUARTER is coming out in paper, but then KEY WEST comes out in September - is just a highly emotional book, highly charged psychological suspense more than anything else. But the love story in the book - there would be no book without it. And that, to me, is the way it has to work. One cannot exist without the other.

Maggie: How long does it usually take, start to finish? Does it vary by book?

Stella: Yes, it does. It's four to six months, I think. I just think that somebody who regards their writing as what they do versus a sort of a ... it's not a hobby ...

Maggie: An avocation ...

Stella: No! It's a vocation.

Maggie: Some people don't have the luxury to be full-time writers.

Stella: No, and I didn't always. So you cannot tell me a story of how people struggled that is going to make me feel that somebody had it a whole lot more difficult than I did. I was writing and bringing up children and doing all manner of things, actually. All on time. Sleep was a foreign thing to me.

Maggie: Do you enjoy teaching? You teach a lot.

Stella: I do and, to a degree, I enjoy it. Part of me is troubled by the sensation of people looking for magic.

Maggie: A magic bullet?

Stella: Yeah, and the truth is that the magic bullet is hard work and study, and it's a real love of what you're doing. And it's not that sense of - in that article you were talking about at Totem Books - as I said in that article, one of the things you should avoid as a writer who is working towards publication are comments like, "Oh, I could certainly do that," or "Why are they publishing such garbage when there's so much good stuff that they're not publishing?" That's not the way it works. And it's not a case of somebody else having to fail to have you succeed. There's room on the bus. Your job is to write your OWN story, concentrate on your OWN work - and yeah, I like to teach. I've done a lot of it. I've done so much of it and I enjoy it if I get a sense of real involvement, that people aren't looking for just one more set of handouts which don't do anything for you. You haven't gotten something out of it. What you really need to do is to be really listening and finding the points that might apply to you. So, yeah, I do enjoy it. I got kind of burned out on it for a while, but I'm going to be doing a bit more again this year.

Maggie: You're teaching at the RWA Conference this summer, in July in Chicago?

Stella: Yeah.

Maggie: Your books are very sensual. Is that difficult for you to do?

Stella: No, it's not difficult. I remember the first time I wrote a sensual scene. I was camping with my husband and children up north, in the state up north. I used to work with this funny little electric typewriter that I could cart around with me. So I had to be able to plug it in, and we had a little trailer and were all set, and I've never been much into a lot of outdoor activities unless it happens to be sports of some kind - I was involved in that. But they would go off and they would be doing their things in the woods and so forth, and I would just stick around and do my stuff. I was really heavily into studying craft, what I felt I could and couldn't do, and I sat down one afternoon and thought, "Well, I'm going to write a love scene. I'll just write a love scene." So I sat down and started writing, and I wrote for several hours and produced this love scene which a lot of people would not be embarrassed to put it in one of their books, and I realized that that was easy for me. It was just dead easy. I liked the fact that, what it does is, it takes you into an extra dimension of the characters. One of the things I object to is if I read someone's work and I notice that in every one of their books - what they do with the sexual, sensual side of their characters' lives is the same. It's interchangeable. Absolutely, just the names are changed. Why bother? Why do that? Because you're not revealing anything about the character. So to me each time it's different. It's very different.

Maggie: And the love scenes are there to help develop the characters?

Stella: Well, yeah! Of course I want to move the reader with them. Whether it be a titillation thing, or whether it be that warmth of seeing in their minds human beings together in the best possible way if all's well. I use sex as sex. I've heard every comment under the sun about the sexuality that I use, if I use it in a negative way. But you know, people read those scenes and they are ... I think that for some people who ... some people are comfortable with themselves. I am comfortable with humanness. So for me it's all part of a big painting. If I write an outrageous scene that is likely to raise the hackles of the person - no, I don't think it raises their hackles - that's not it. The person who's going to react to a scene and say, "Oh, kinky sex!"

But I have to wonder what's happening there? Are we really saying "Well, I read this but I'm not really sure it's okay to read these things, so I've got to prove that I'm a good person, regardless of the fact that I will read these things and I'm a good person and I will read ANYTHING." There are things I choose not to read, like crimes against children, but it's all part of the fiction experience and, frankly, it's extraordinarily fulfilling to be able to write all the way. I always say, "Don't show me a scene with Mary in the rose garden if Fred is bleeding to death in the gutter outside." I want to be where Fred is and I don't want it reported to me later. Show me. And then I'm happy to go off and deal with the ramifications, but don't skate around the topic. And it's the same with sensuality. People worry about the relatives reading it. Well, WHY? How does everybody think we got here?

Maggie: So you don't censor yourself at all.

Stella: Nope.

Maggie: I have found your heroines to be almost atypically feisty. Very strong. Lily, for instance, in DEAR STRANGER. She did not pull any punches - she just barreled ahead - and I loved her. I thought she was wonderful. Do you identify with your heroines? Is there any particular characteristic?

Stella: There's a part of me in the heroines.

Maggie: In all the heroines?

Stella: Yeah. It's the part that stood on the hymnals (Lily in DEAR STRANGER). It's the irreverent part that is, I think, fairly spiritual. I believe in the power of good over evil - I really do - and I'm very concerned, too much some times, for other people, but there's a part of me that says, "Oh, cut to the chase, will ya? What is really important around here and can't we just say what we mean and think? Why do we always have to pretend that we're something else?" And when Lily climbed up on those hymnals, up on all those hymnals to look out the window to take a look at him, that was me. And in WAIT FOR ME, the heroine is again very, very funny. A little bit kind of off the wall.

Maggie: Let's talk about being funny. I sit there in my bedroom reading your books, and I just start howling out loud at certain places! It's always that something that comes out of left field. There's a scene in GUILTY PLEASURES, where the shopkeeper gives Nasty the bag of herbs and says, "Here, this is for you." He drops it on his lap and says, "And say the magic word." Nasty asks, "What's the magic word?" "Foreplay!" answers the shopkeeper. And the little bag kind of twitches and drops onto his legs. I was just dying reading this scene!

Stella: Well, see, I was dying writing it!

Maggie: I think your books have an incredible sense of humor, and it's very funny because it comes out of nowhere. How do you come up with these scenes?

Stella: I see it in my mind and that's why my characters really do move. They're not stationary and that's my sense of humor. That's the way I see life, really. What's frustrating to me is that sometimes, in person, people think I'm serious. And I am serious to a degree about some things, but certainly I love writing humor and my own kind of humor. I'm not going to give you a pie in the face. That's not what I do.

Maggie: That's not funny any more.

Stella: It's not, but there is a real trend toward so-called comedic style.

Maggie: Vic's question is whether you are as funny outside your books as you are in them, and you just said that people don't think that you're funny.

Stella: Well, I don't see people as thinking that I'm funny. I have an unfortunate tendency to say what I think, really to say what I think.

Maggie: And there's your heroines again.

Stella: Yeah. I can create an uncomfortable silence in a room in two seconds flat, and then people don't know whether to laugh or not to laugh, because they don't know how other people are feeling and everyone must be very careful, of course not to offend anybody else's sensibilities! I think we're big people and we need to just not be so uptight all the time. I see the world as sort of a grand tragicomedy and I think that probably comes through.

Maggie: Something funny will happen and then something dreadful and then something funny ...

Stella: Because I'm versed in the basics of drama, because of the studying I've done, I am absolutely wedded to the fact that you must give a reader a chance to catch her breath. You can't just drag 'em down and pound on them. I don't want to be like that as a writer and be pounded on. It's too much. I don't want to sit in there and cry for six months. I do my crying, but I also do my laughing.

Maggie: How did you find the RBL board?

Stella: Skye! Skye and Shy both visit my bulletin board and invited me to come. I popped over to take a look, and I was just very well entertained. I was SO entertained. I discovered that I just sat there and laughed and I thought, "Oh, this is good stuff!" It's very good for you to laugh. I love the fact that there's a lot of honesty there. I don't think that anybody is pulling any wool over anybody. I think it's just a flat out an honest place to be. The enjoyment is so "out there," it's just right out there on the surface and I've had many chuckles. But I also like the fact that, in among the chuckles, somebody CAN feel free, if they're having a bad time, to just get in there and groan, and that's good because people should be able to share the good and the bad. But it's not done in such a way that ... you know, there are people who are always relentlessly ... always miserable, there's always something terrible. There are folks who have got unhappy things happening, but still they've got their sense of humor, and I find that very inspiring.

Maggie: How have computers and the internet affected your professional life? Is it easier to write with your computer?

Stella: I was a very early computer writer. I got my first computer in 1983, I think. I didn't know many people who were writing on computers at that point. I just knew that, with the volume of work that I was clearly capable of putting out, I needed a way to feel free to change things. So, it really set me free. I feel completely free to write masses of stuff and chuck it out, because it's not going to take me long to make up my mind. As far as the internet goes, I think Kirsten and Bryan (daughter and son-in-law) did my page the first time about three years ago. Bryan designed it. It really has opened up my life, opened up my writing life, because it gives me another outlet. There comes a time when you'd like to touch somebody, and I do feel as if I touch people because I'm out there interacting with people. Somebody sends me an IM or something. I like to do live chat sessions. I think it's fun to do them. I will occasionally go into one of the writers' club things, and just kind of lurk around and listen to what people are saying. It's kind of fun to see people going through their various phases. I think it's been good! I don't like some of the elements that come at you. I really dislike it but I'm not a fool. I can erase anything I don't want to be seeing, and I can recognize things a mile off.

Maggie: Has it opened up a whole new avenue of communication with your fans?

Stella: Yes, it has. And it's nice to get those notes that come through about books. I like that. And I always respond. Always.

Maggie: Do you think that the internet communication between readers and authors has helped the romance genre in general?

Stella: No. No. Not necessarily.

Maggie: Has it hurt it?

Stella: Particularly in the last year, I have seen a terrible sort of meanness start to creep in and, you know, I'm loathe to say a whole lot about it, really. There's a tremendous competition in any business, and I don't like the fact that I can look at the internet and in living color have the competitive edge in front of me looking at it. I never wanted to compete with anybody but myself. I can't be someone else. I can only be me. I view a lot of spite out there and I'm not sure how good that is for anything. I've watched boards actually shrink and shrink and shrink - not boards but a listserv - I've watched it shrink to nothing, to a point where it's almost nothing but a few people who remain there sniping away at things. But apart from that element, I would have to say that I do have fun interacting with people. If I should stumble into something with somebody being deliberately confrontational, I can stumble out real fast - and I can choose not to respond, and I won't. It's no doubt that we have a wonderful thing in the internet.

Maggie: I found you there!

Stella: Yeah!

Maggie: I've reached the last question! This is the most important question!

Stella: What?

Maggie: It is: Will you tell us about ALL SMILES and KEY WEST and what else is coming up?

Ketchup
December 2004

                       

Maggie: Last time we talked to you it was WAYYY back in May of 1999. It's really hard to believe that five years have passed! What changes have taken place in your life since then?

Stella: Two beautiful granddaughters, Serena 4 and Gwendolyn 2, and one beautiful and naughty Papillon, Millie who is not quite 1 year old.

Shoulder surgery - yeah, finally I had it done. Three procedures in one and I consider myself very lucky to have such a good outcome. I'm five years older ...

Maggie: I count at least TEN new publications since May, 1999, with another new release in November of this year. That's an average of at least two books a year. How do you keep up such a grueling pace?

Stella: Good question. I don't think writers talk about the wear and tear angle nearly enough. I love to write but there are times when I'd like to take a few days off. I usually slow way down in output and feel restless but deadlines keep me picking away.

Maggie: Has the writing market changed and has that affected your writing? Are there new trends or "styles" that your publishers want to you follow?

Stella: The market self-selects "new" trends. Regardless, there will be no bleeding teeth on my books. :) My publishers know I'm impossible to fix, so they let me do what I do. Fortunately I've had good editors who stop me from flying off the rails completely.

Maggie: I've heard rumblings lately that the historical market is drying up because new, younger readers don't read them. Have you found that to be true?

Stella: The historical market isn't strong. We don't see many new writers and I find that sad. However, these things go in cycles and we'll see more changes.

Maggie: What's coming up next?

Stella: KISS THEM GOODBYE is out in paperback now. NOW YOU SEE HIM, the next of the Bayou Books, will be on shelves shortly. AN ANGEL IN TIME (Christmas book) is out now. This book is a mixture of contemporary and historical - a little time travel, I suppose, with a ghost and a love story that make you smile.

I've missed everyone here at RBL. Seems my time doesn't go as far anymore, but I'll try to pop over - and you're always welcome at my place!

Stella's Website



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