Kathleen Gilles Seidel Pays a Call!

by Mary Jo

I'll say this up front: Kathleen Gilles Seidel is a marvelous writer.  We are both members of the Washington Romance Writers chapter of RWA, so I've know her for many years.  At the WRW annual retreat, a slot would always be reserved for her to talk fascinatingly about some aspect of writing.  (She has a PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University, so she's really good at this sort of thing.) I've heard many of her thoughtful lectures and stories as well as being addicted to her writing.  So I feel very pleased that she's agreed to visit the Word Wenches today. 

Kathy has twice won RITAs for best contemporary romance of the year.  Her work is known for originality, wonderful keen observations about the human animal, and a delicious dry sense of humor.  She later moved from romance to women's fiction, and they're great, too.  (One of her books is entitled Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige. Who can resist that?)

What inspired me to invite Kathy at this point in time is that I saw that her novel Again is now available as an e-book, along with several of her other older titles.  Naturally I downloaded Again and read the story for the fifth or sixth time.  I also mentioned the book to the other Wenches, several of them read and adored it, and we all thought it would be a fine idea to invite Kathy to visit us.  

So--Kathy, could you tell us how you started writing romance?

KGS: In junior high I read my mother’s Emilie Lorings, in high school I read her Georgettes.  When I was in graduate school,  I read Our Mutual Friend and Daniel Deronda for the sole purpose of not being humiliated in class.  During those five years Harlequin Presents kept me in touch with why I loved to read.  

Graduate school left me with a kind of “gotcha” approach to the world – show how smart you are, how much the rest of the humanity is in need of your guidance on all matters.  With that mind-set, I wrote my first book.  Agents rejected it by writing “no” on the top of my cover letter.  They didn’t even waste a piece of their stationery on me. 

I was teaching at a community college at the time, and I really liked the students who were then called  “re-entry housewives.”  So I wrote my next book to them, going (as I have often said) from writing a book that was supposed to change people’s lives to one that would change their afternoons.  The book sold to Harlequin in six days counting mailing time.  

MJP: What are some of the themes and ideas that run through your novels?

KGS:  Someone else articulated my primary theme as being that the way to get to the future is through the past.  Notice that when you asked me about writing my first romance, I started  telling you about junior high.  

MJP: Several of your novels have historical content, so I wondered why you've never written historical romance?

KGS: You can blame Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I grew up on her books (there’s my past again), and the historical (for me) detail was minute, vivid, and accurate. I get hung up enough  on minutia when writing contemporaries; I would be paralyzed if I wrote an historical.  I would be a researcher, not a storyteller.

And yet when I am first imagining plot and characters,  my imagination feels so much freer when I am dealing with historical elements.  I feel less weighed down.  So keeping the historical material as something interpolated into a contemporary story lets me hold onto the freshness of that first blast of creativity.  

Basically my left brain is too well developed. I don’t think we can blame Laura Ingalls Wilder for that.  I came from a very left-brain family.

MJP: This brings me to Again, your RITA winning novel which takes place around a Regency era soap opera that is shot in Brooklyn.  The heroine is the head writer of the show, the hero is an actor, and the story is marvelous.  Do you have any idea how you came up with the concept?  And please, share any thoughts you have about the writing of the book and the characters!

KGS:  I was fascinated by the inner workings of soap operas and in the early days of working on the book,  I kept trying to come up with an idea for the soap.  The best I could do was a college town, which seemed desperately dreary.  Then suddenly making the show a Regency occurred to me. I have never in my life been so grateful for an idea.  

I loved loved, loved doing the story and characters for the soap. The contemporary hero was the challenge.  First, unrequited love is tricky to do.  It is hard to keep the one who loves from seeming like a victim.  I really had to focus on how he would keep his dignity. So, yes, I rereadThe Sun Also Rises for a dose of suffering with dignity.

The second problem was that the hero was content being a soap-opera actor.  He did not want to go to Hollywood, star in and direct a big-budget movie, and then win a million Oscars.  We expect our heroes to be aiming for the top, and soaps aren’t seen as the top of the acting profession. So I made him Canadian, completely comfortable with his own talents, not needing to dominate in the way conventionally American heroes do.    

MJP:  You're technically a hybrid author now, with more recent traditionally published books still in print and some of your backlist titles available as e-books.  What do you see for your publishing future?  Any chance that more of your backlist books will revert so you can e-pub them?  Might you publish new work independently?  I'd love to see what else you can come up with!

KGS:  I am a writer, not a publisher.  I know that trying to maintain that distinction is a career killer, but well, yeah . . . I did turn over four of my backlist titles to an independent publisher, and the only part of the process I enjoyed was proofreading the punctuation.  

MJP: You can now riff on anything that interests you, Kathy.

KGS: At the moment I am very interested in figuring out how to install a zipper in a spot where there is no seam.  I am thinking about folding in a box pleat and slashing the center of the underlay, then reinforcing below the zipper.  The extra fabric below the zipper would sort of work like a kick pleat.

Look, you asked.  

MJP: Kathy's books are notable for the excellent fabric and sewing details she sometimes includes. <G>

I asked Kathy if she would be willing to give away an e-book to someone who comments on this blog. Her reply:

KGS:  I actually know how to do this! I can give away one digital copy of each of the following: After All These Years, (once voted by Harlequin readers to be their all-time favorite Harlequin); Don't Forget to Smile (my mom’s favorite); Till the Stars Fall, and Again. 

MJP:  So there will be FOUR e-books given away to people who comment between now and Tuesday midnight!  Thanks so much for visiting us today, Kathy!

Mary Jo, adding that it's a fine idea to visit Kathy's webpage to read her wryly amusing blog, More Than Mr. Darcy

Comments

[Laura Boon]

Kathleen, I also come from a very left-brain family. In the past, I sometimes didn't feel left-brained enough for my family nor creative enough to be 'arty'. However, I've since learnt there is more than one way to skin a cat (with apologies to Mary Jo's moggies). I think both left and right brained people can be creative and/or academic/organised/financially astute etc. They are just different approaches to the same problem. However, Western education does reinforce left-brain thinking so I work on 'unlearning' some approaches.

[Quantum]

"Someone else articulated my primary theme as being that the way to get to the future is through the past"

This sounds as though a latent time slip novel could be about to materialise through that left brain perspective.I reckon that getting right and left brains to resonate is a path towards genius and superb entertainment for us readers.

KGS's books have been on my radar for a while now and the e-book format brings them to my reading threshold. If audio became available as well, with a good narrator (someone like Rosalind Landor would be perfect) then I would definitely take the plunge.

[Susan King]

Hi Kathy! What a great, fun interview (MJP for the questions and KGS for the answers)!

Thanks for visiting us - I've missed your wisdom. And I'm one who would encourage you to step out on to the straight-to-E platform to check that out, as some of us are doing (my next new will be e-pubbed). I'd love, love to read more KGS.
Best of luck with the zipper! :)

[Mary Jo Putney]

LOL, Laura! I'll keep the moggies off my computer today.

You're right about the right/left brain thing--there are many paths to creativity. And the things we do best we take for granted. ("You mean not everyone can tell stories? Oh.")

[Janga]

I am a long-time KGS fangirl. I bought all four of her ebooks last summer the minute I knew they were available and reread them all as soon as they downloaded to my Kindle. I love them all and agree that Again is amazing, but Till the Stars Fall is one of my top five all-time favorite contemporaries. I reread it every couple of years. It was the one I chose to review last July for my monthly column at The Romance Dish on old favorites that are now available in digital format. A new book from Ms. Seidel would be a dream come true, and I would love to see ebooks of her other Harlequin American Romances, particularly A Risk Worth Taking.

I am a right-brained thinker who drives my left-brained sister crazy when we work together on anything from planning a family-reunion to my writing an essay for a book she's editing.

[Andrea Penrose]

Wonderful interview, Kathy and Mary Jo! I've already bought a copy of "Again" as Mary Jo was raving about it on our private e-mail loop, and can't wait to dive in! And now I have a feeling that the rest of the list will quickly be added to the TBR pile.

But not even you will be able to teach me to sew!

[Kathy Seidel]

"Straight to E" involves such a commitment to marketing, etc. Back when I was young, hungry, and obsessed with my career, I would have jumped all over that, but now . . .

The zipper -- my daughter and her husband brought me a sarong back from their honeymoon in Bali. I do not spending a great deal of time lounging around the pool with a sarong wrapped around my bikini-clad hips so I turn the sarong in a faux-wrap maxi skirt. Adding vertical seams would have messed with the border print. So my solution to the zipper was to put a long dart in the center back, slash it open and install the zipper. It worked fine.

[Kathy Seidel]

I don't want to teach you to sew. I don't want to teach anyone to sew. (Unfortunately that included my daughters.) Sewing is my "me time." And unless you think you will love it, it doesn't make sense to learn. My mother sewed to save money, but fabric and patterns are so expensive now.

[Kathy Seidel]

I realize that AGAIN may be a better book, but AFTER ALL THESE YEARS and TILL THE STARS FALL are my personal favorites, primarily because I learned so much when I was writing them. When I started TILL THE STARS FALL, I certainly didn't have the technique that I had acquired while writing it. That may be why AGAIN pleases more people because everything I learned while writing TILL THE STARS FALL, I could put to use in AGAIN more effortlessly and gracefully.

[Kathy Seidel]

But don't you find the sex scenes odd to listen to in the audio versions. I will be standing over my kitchen sink peeling potatoes and then suddenly there is all this panting and heaving coming from the other side of the kitchen. (Originally I had written "peeling carrots" but then decided that that was a little too phallic. For the record, I don't peel potatoes.)

[Kathy Seidel]

And I miss your raiku treatments. I had a few during chemotherapy, but I don't think that the practitioner was very good.

[Kathy Seidel]

Then add menopause and oncology treatments to an overdeveloped left brain.

[Patricia Franzino]

I love this interview. I have not read Ms. Seidel's books, but I'm about to get everyone of them. The stories and characters sound great.

[Susan King]

Oh my, anytime, just let me know! I'm so sorry you went through that, though Reiki can help take the edge off things.

[Quantum]

On the contrary,I find that a good narrator can enhance the emotional input, effectively adding a new dimension to the reading experience. I mentioned Rosalyn Landor as she reads many of Mary Balogh's audio books and does it superbly well. Just listen to her describing the entanglement of Sydnam Butler and Anne Jewell in 'Simply Love'. A perfect accompaniment to boring kitchen chores ... I use headphones so that others don't have to listen. Kathy, Is there much panting and heaving in your romances? I'm sure that Landor would handle it with great discretion. LOL

Audio books are also perfect for long car journeys and for the visually impaired

[Margaretta Bir]

I have found Kathleen Gilles Seidel's books unique. There's never that "have I read this already" feeling. Two of my favorites "Please Remember This" and "Till the Stars Fall" are not set in NYC, on Cape Cod, or quaint New Orleans but out of the way places. Her characters always seem as real as their surroundings. They can be challenging, but well worth meeting and getting to know their stories.

[bn100]

interesting about the zipper

[Kareni]

Thanks for a fun interview, Ms. Seidel. I very much enjoyed Till the Stars Fall and have After All These Years waiting on my Kindle.

[Jeanette]

Well, about that left brain, right brain thing. It continues to pop up in my life as well, being left brained but a resource room teacher who had to think of right brained ways of learning. So many labeled with a learning disability are really very right brained pegs with a square hole learning environment. Now that I am retired, I indulge my left brain right here in River City, no I mean on the internet, with political debate. Did I say that? Among other things. One of the other things is following a favorite artist on line. Yesterday, he offered a trade of one of his paintings for his choice of anything someone else might offer. Be nice here. You might know one fan offered a L.L.Bean card which is something I might do. As I read through possible trades, I remembered that I make a mean rhubarb custard pie, a great Bumbleberry pie, both Huntsmen and elderberry jelly and I can find morel mushrooms to a surplus. Mary Jo is so right about what we take for granted. I was interested in the Kathy's reasoning behind the selection of a Canadian hero for "Again". I do spend SOME time on the internet and recently listened to the ending of Dean James Ryan's speech "Five Essential Questions In Life" to the graduating class in Harvard'd College of Education. He spoke of being able to answer the final question, "And did you get what you wanted out of life, even so?" And in reference to new teacher graduates the answer "Feeling beloved" was directed to helping their students "feel beloved" as an even more important accomplishment than test scores and academic achievements. Talk about valuing both the right and the left brain - the whole person. If we ask the right questions, we make our lives worthwhile. It's worth a listen at: https://www.facebook.com/HarvardEducation/ on the lower left of the page under video.

[Linnea]

Glad to meet a new writer to read....

[Kathy K]

I picked up 3 of your nook books based on the recommendations here and am really enjoying the first one, "Keep your mouth shut and wear Beige." As the mother of 2 sons I got this very advice for their weddings. But even more, I love Darcy's character. I love that she is an advanced practice nurse, as I am, and that you have portrayed her as very intelligent, not just someone who was not smart enough to be a doctor. Every bit of medical information that is woven in has been very accurate. Many times I am jarred by something described in books and just is not right. Thank you for taking the time to be accurate. I look forward to reading the rest of your list.

[LouisaCornell]

Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige - Lord, I know some MILs who could have used this advice!

LOVE this interview and I am looking forward to adding Kathy's books to my TBR Kindle! I haven't read any of Kathy's work which means this is a WIN for me already as I have a new author to glom! You had me at your sense of humor. I write historical, but I read contemporary when I want to take a break from Regency England AND working at Walmart!

[Mary Jo Putney]

Thank you for explaining! I was wondering. It sounds like you made a lovely skirt. You can even lounge in it if you like.

[Mary Jo Putney]

Kathy K--

Isn't KGS a brilliant researcher? And I love the path she chose for moving forward in her career. And I've wondered if Darcy and Mike might develop a new and different relationship when they share an RV together for a while. *G*

[Elaine]

I'm just writing here to say how much I love Kathy's books! I wish there were more of them. My fave is Again. I also loved Summer's End and the early Harlequin American books, Mirrors and Mistakes and When Love Isn't Enough. The characters and their issues feel so real. I think the only one of her books I don't own is Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige. I'm so glad that at least some of the books are now available as ebooks so more people can read and enjoy them.

[Cheap artificial grass]

i like this post, we visit again for more updates , thanks for sharing this article.

[Laura Boon]

Kathy and Mary Jo I heard something today I thought you might find interesting. Apparently women have more connections between the left and right hemispheres of their brains than me do. So maybe we're multi-hemisphered? The friend who told me this is a lawyer and not giving to making statements without having read the research to back himself up, so I take his word for it. He postulated that this was why women bought and read more books than men do. Hmm. Maybe someone will have to test that theory too :)

[Karen]

June is crazy and just saw this post but I want to say I love your books and reread regularly. I even have the old harlequin Americans. My paperbacks are so fragile now and it is nice to be able to pull up your books on my iPad whenever and wherever I am. I love all the details and stories within the stories -- Jill and her troubled mother or Emily wanting her embroidered tablecloth. Your books have given me many great afternoons. Thank you!