Self-Taught Romance Author Reveals All!

By Ruth Logan Herne

I love romance.

I’ve loved romance from the time I was reading Cherry Ames and Nancy Drew and Sue Barton, Senior Nurse! Would Sue marry Les or Wade? I had to know!

Fast forward to a life with six kids, a husband and a job. Then Dave was laid off from his job, and his new job was half the pay. I was working two jobs with six kids, three in high school and three in elementary school and all the sports, dancing and clubs that go along with that scenario.

And a farm. Did I mention the farm???

I still loved romance, and I tried to write intermittently, but time escaped me. By the time my youngest kids were in high school, I set a plan. I’d write in the middle of the night, before everyone got up, and by the time my younger kids were in college, I was getting noticed.

I found a critique partner through RWA’s Faith, Hope and Love chapter.

I entered contests!

I got my ego slapped and my bootie handed to me because I was still telling too much and my plots were wandering.

I sucked in my gut, tucked my chin and edited. And every day I wrote. I wrote 1,000 words/day before anyone was up, and before I started my day job. I entered more contests, I edited and revised, and what do you know? I started winning a spot on editors’ desks by clinching a final in those contests.

But the contests brought me more than critiques and editors. They brought me a group of romance-writing contest divas who vied with me for wins and places and contracts. We formed a group “The Seekers,” and our goal was that we would pray each other into publication with royalty-paying publishers.

Some said it was impossible.

We didn’t listen.

Some said there wouldn’t be enough open spots in inspirational or Christian fiction for all of us in our lifetimes.

We kept writing. In June, 2009, I got the call from Senior Editor Melissa Endlich of Love Inspired Books/Harlequin. And by May of 2013, every one of these thirteen women, The Seekers, had gotten the call. We were all now published with royalty-paying publishers. A dream come true. In the mean time we started a blog to help aspiring authors, a blog called Seekerville, with one collective goal: to help people off Unpubbed Island and onto the mainland of publishing. It’s worked! We’ve helped dozens of folks make that voyage to the mainland, and in late February we celebrated more than 2 million page views with a party for the people who’ve helped us: the villagers we’ve had the pleasure of helping.

When I started this gig I had no money for writing classes. I had no time to jet off on retreats with mentors at hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars a pop, or to engage with online writing classes run by people who may or may not be helpful. But what I did have was the public library so I could read the kind of books I love to write, and study the best-selling authors of the time.  Nora Roberts. Linda Howard. Karen White. Deborah Smith. LaVyrle Spencer. And studying their work helped hone the writer I knew I could be.

Believe in yourself. Believe in your talent. Work hard, and don’t you quit! The dream is there, but only if you want it so bad that you can do what you need to achieve it. Learn to accept criticism and revisions. Learn to smile and nod, even if you don’t always agree. Learn to engage the reader with humor and touch them with poignancy.

Above all, write. Write, write, write. I was working two jobs, plus writing when I got the call. I left my part time job when book three was contracted, but I kept my full-time job for five full years. Why?

This is a dicey business. It takes time to build a readership and time to develop a speed for production and time to build the notice you want from publishers and editors. Hanging onto that day job was clutch because the writing money didn’t become a desperate need. It became the cushion to pay off loans and fix things that years of raising kids had broken! And it was worth every moment of those five years because now I write full-time… but I still work part-time, with young families. That keeps me in the know, in the groove, and in the spirit of what’s going on with today’s 20- and 30-somethings. And when you’re writing romance?

That’s huge!

I now have over ¾ million books sold, heading quickly to the one million spot. It’s been an amazing five years, and the work before the call is just as important as the work after the call! And if you love this biz like I do, you’ll understand that even on the bad days, when everything that can possibly go wrong does… you’re still working at the very best job in the world. 

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Multi-published, bestselling author Ruth Logan Herne is living her dream with over ¾ million books in print. A mother and grandmother, she lives on a small upstate New York farm with her husband, dogs, cats, chickens and a revolving door of small children and their parents in and out of the house. She can often be found hiding in a nook or cranny, scribbling away. Keep up with Ruth Logan Herne at ruthloganherne.com, on Facebook (ruthloganherne), on Twitter (@ruthloganherne), or on Pinterest (ruthyloganherne).

Renewed, Re-visited, Restored, Re-told

By Ruth Logan Herne

It’s all in the “spin”. Or, to hear Bill O’Reilly tell it, “The “spin” stops here.”

Told and retold. Every author is familiar with the saying, “There are no new stories, only old stories, re-visited.”

That’s true in a lot of ways, and when you look at the vast number of books now available, the prospect of being new and fresh seems daunting, but I’m here to tell you it’s not. And why not?

Because they’re not Y-O-U.

Every author is unique. Styles vary. Opinions cover a wide range. And just knowing that your vantage point of a story might be different from any other persons can give you the forward thrust needed. Crime scene interviews demonstrate this plainly. If you interview five different eye-witnesses, they’re going to give you five disparate stories and descriptions. Why? They’re all reporting on the exact same crime.

1.       Vantage point. We can only “see” what’s visible from our location, and that view is unique to us and our story.

2.       Experience. Each witness is an individual with life experiences (or lack thereof) that color their point of view. When you translate that into character, their perceptions will be based on (and follow) their personal history.

3.       Line of sight variations. What we “see” is not always what’s there. Our mind will fill in ‘blanks’, a lot like that word puzzle that travels the Internet, showing how the mind will subsidize for missing letters. So we may think we see something that doesn’t really occur. Your characters may make assumptions the same way, creating their own new layer of conflict.

4.       Hearing. Sound is an under-used sense in a lot of first-drafts, and the subtleties of what the characters hear… and how they perceive the sound… layer their characters and possibly the plot. Step outside your scenes and look, listen and learn, then make sure what you’ve written speaks to the reader in such a way as to command their attention with warmth, humor, pathos, etc. Draw them into the room your characters share.

5.       Emotional punch. Our five witnesses just saw a crime committed. Each one will be affected in different ways based on that person’s character/past/experience/youth, etc. As you explore the emotional punch of your story through your characters’ mindsets, you’ll deliver your own version of that same old tale…

Renewed. Re-visited. Restored. Re-told!

I love to write about small towns. A skeptic might think that every small-town-in-America story has been told. They’re wrong. You can look around the average small town for a week and find enough story fodder to develop a book or a series of books on the standard give-and-take of the inhabitants. The same is true in any genre. Don’t re-invent the wheel. It’s unnecessary. Just use your version of the wheel to get the job done.

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Ruth Logan Herne is a multi-published, award-winning author of a dozen 4 and 4.5 Star contemporary romance novels with Harlequin’s “Love Inspired Books” division, the Christian imprint of Harlequin Enterprises. Her latest novel, “Falling for the Lawman” is available in stores and online now. She loves small towns and the quirks therein! Born into poverty, Ruthy’s a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps kind of gal who loves God, her family, chocolate, dogs and coffee. You can find her on Facebook, visit her at ruthloganherne.com or her blog at www.ruthysplace.com or find encouragement for authors with Ruthy and her Seekerville friends at www.seekerville.blogspot.com, voted a Writers’ Digest 101 Best Website for Writers award-winner.