Welcome Eileen Dreyer!

Pat here, playing librarian and introducing you to Eileen Dreyer, author of Barely a Lady, the first book in the Drake's Rakes Regency series. Eileen is a New York Times and USA Today Bestseller with 36 books in romance, suspense and paranormal written as Eileen Dreyer and Kathleen Korbel. She was the
4th member inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame, so she's been winning the hearts of readers since the beginning of her career. Eileen always has a lot of fun things to say, so let's dive right in--

How did you start writing?  Were you making up stories in kindergarten with a pencil clutched in one chubby fist, or did you come to the trade later? 

I can actually remember the exact day I started writing. I was ten, and I had just found out that not only had I read every Nancy Drew book in the library, but that there wouldn't be another one out for a year. I was devastated. What would I do without Nancy? (my mother wanted me to read Dickens. I was not enthusiastic). And then, the light literally went on. "Wait," I thought, just as millennia of writers did before me. "I can write my own book. And I can make it turn out the way I want." So I did. By seventh grade I figured out that if I wrote adventure stories about my friends and famous people(the Beatles), I would always have somebody looking for me in the morning.

 
2.  How did you become interested in writing Regency?

Actually, I came at it via Richard Sharpe.  Years ago I stumbled over the Sharpe series about the Peninsular Wars and was hooked on the period. (I know. Not the traditional route to Regency. I didn't read Heyer til I was 35. But it's important to remember that I was raised in a house with seven men. I can tell you every movie John Wayne died in. I had no idea who Shirley Temple was until she was delegate to the UN.) (Pat note--another wordwench gratuitous photo of Sean Bean as Sharpe!)

  I found it to be a fascinating era. The world was in turmoil, balanced on the edge of the industrial revolution, at war, but still with very definite rules and social mores to define society. There was frivolity, but there was also wit and passion and sacrifice. And they bathed. Very important to me in a romance. I've been wanting to write a book in the period since, but haven't had the chance til now.

3.  What was your first book, and how well do you think it characterizes your latest work? 

  My first book was a Silhouette Desire entitled Playing the Game that I wrote as Kathleen Korbel. I believe that the main thing that characterizes both that and my latest work is the strong heroine. She's in a different time period and facing different challenges, but she meets them head-on. She's the person I hope I would be in that situation.  And it has a hero I think worthy of my heroine, who doesn't just love her(madly), but respects her.

4.  What was the biggest mistake you made when you first began writing?

 Oh, I made them all. The two that are probably most common were beginning my book three chapters before it really began(I know you've heard it. "This book really starts at the beginning of chapter three, or four. The rest is backstory). I rewrote the opening of the first manuscript I attempted twelve times, until I'd whittled away all that excess exposition, and the book started with the action. The second mistake was that I didn't research enough about publishing before sending my stuff out there. I sent my proposals to the wrong houses, the wrong editors and in the wrong form. There was no RWA near me when I started, and so I was winging it on my own. It didn't take too many terse rejection letters to figure it out.
 

5.  Which of your characters is your favorite, and why?

  Oh, lord. There have been so many, and I can't even remember all their names. But I tend to love the characters in my most recent works the best, simply because they're fresh and alive, having just stepped out onto the page. And while I love Olivia, who I think is one of my most complex heroines, in fact, I just finished the second book in the trilogy, NEVER A GENTLEMAN, about Olivia's friend Grace Fairchild, and right now Grace is my favorite. She is a plain woman. Not the typical romance 'she is transformed into a beauty by a new hairstyle and dress' plain. Fatally and unrelievedly plain. The daughter of a general who's spent her life following the drum, she finds herself coerced  into an untenable marriage with dilettante Diccan Hilliard. She has such quiet courage, loyalty, and, yes, grace. And a surprising sense of humor(at least to me). (Pat note--Huzzah! A plain heroine, finally! Thank you, thank you...)

6.  Which book, if any, was the most difficult for you to write, and why?

All of my suspenses, because although they are also character-driven, they are much more plot intensive. Considering the fact that I only have a vestigial left brain, wherein the linear plot lives, it is much more difficult, especially the middle of the book, which I call, "laying out clues, picking up clues, deciphering clues," which by necessity all has to be done with a certain amount of linear logic.
 

7.  What do you consider key elements of a great story?

Compelling characters caught in a compelling conflict (hmm. I seem to be having an alliterative moment). As Susan Elizabeth Phillips says, create characters you want to root for and put them into terrible trouble.

8.  Are there any trends you hope to see in romance in the next few years?

I love light, frothy romance. But there was a long time when that was all we got. I hope that the industry will support more of a  mix, so that we can also enjoy the more complex, deeper emotional books as well. (I'm sure that's not because that's what I write). After all, romance is a smörgåsbord. Don't limit us only to deviled eggs. (hear ye, hear ye, o gods of fate!--Pat)
 
9.  What is the best part about being a writer?  The most frustrating?

 Are you kidding? Do you know what my job is? I daydream for a living. And then, when I come up with an idea, I get to go learn about something I don't know, be it Tactical EMS (yes, I am trained to be a SWAT medic) or Waterloo.  And I've been able to travel to great places and learn things most tourists don't know, because I can say, "I'm an author, and I'm researching....". It continues to amaze me how generous people are with information and time.

The most frustrating? I think it's that nobody really understands what I do every day but another writer. Even my husband, who gives me unconditional support, really can't get his head around the fact that I often spend days just wandering aimlessly as words chase around in my head. Once he came home from work. "What did you do today?" he asked.
I was feeling full of myself. "I know why the bad guy did what he did!" I crowed.
He nodded. "What else did you do?"
My face fell. "That took me six weeks!"

When I called my critique partner Karyn Witmer-Gow and told her, her answer was. "Let's drink!"

So let's drink to creativity and writers and new books by giving away an autographed copy of Barely a Lady to a randomly drawn commenter. Does anyone have questions for Eileen while she's here?