Authors' Referrals

 

From Kate's Writer's Crate…

 

The best storytellers ground readers in their fictional worlds—no matter how familiar or foreign—with specific details. Once given believable foundations, most readers will follow the plots and admire or distrust characters as the authors hope.

How much more fun when some of the specific details reference actual books, movies, music, TV shows, locations, and meals. If authors I love mention real details, I'm willing to check out their referrals.

        Here are some examples:

 

        In The Last Enemy, author Pauline Baird Jones places a stack of books on the nightstand of Dani Gwynne, a woman in the Witness Protection Program. When her room becomes a crime scene, two US Marshals catalog her reading material:

"Interesting mix. JD Robb, Tom Clancy, Tonya Huff, Alistair Maclean…Orson Scot Card…Louis L'Amour…the Bible…and Lord of the Rings…" (page 24)

                                        ***

        Jennifer Crusie uses movies, music, and food, especially Krispy Kreme donuts, as running themes in her novel Bet Me. The two leads, Min and Cal, end up at a revival movie theater showing Big Trouble in Little China. They also go out to dinner. Min so enjoys the Chicken Marsala, she is determined to make it herself. The many results are funny and disastrous as she tries to make it diet-friendly, too. Both of them love Elvis, but it's Costello for Cal and Presley for Min. Costello's "She" plays a part in the plot as does Cal's version of "Love Me Tender" which starts off as a snarky joke and ends as a declaration of sorts—this is a Chick Lit romance after all.

                                        ***

Kresley Cole uses The Amazing Race as a template in Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night, the third novel in her Immortals After Dark series. In this version, the tasks undertaken by vampires, werewolves, Valkyries, witches, and many other creatures are always dangerous, but the prize is worth the risk. The winner can go back in time and rescue two people they loved who died.   

In the series, one character loves Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs. Cole also references musical groups like Crazy Frog as ring tones.

                                        ***

The Golden Treasury by F. T. Palgrove is a collection of classic poems by Milton, Keats, etc., carried by numerous characters in some of the 56 charming romance novels written by Essie Summers. (See book review posted on 2/11/2013.) Robert Burns is often quoted from The Golden Treasury. I was pleased to find a pocket-sized version of it in my grandfather's library.

All of Summers' books are set in New Zealand, a place she describes so lovingly from the sheep stations, mountains, and lakes to the cities near the sea, all filled with such friendly people and delicious meals, that her readers dream of visiting there—including me. I gave four of her novels to a friend who traveled to New Zealand six months later. Several others on the tour were also drawn there by Summers' books—and everything she wrote about her home country was proven true.

 

Do you follow up on referrals made by your favorite authors?

 

 

Essie Summers' Books

By Kate Phillips
 

 

            Once I realized people wrote books—they did not just magically appear on my childhood bookshelves—I knew I wanted to be one of them, but no one I knew wrote for a living. As I had no idea how authors came to be, I looked to books for information and inspiration.

 

At a used bookstore, I came across No Orchids by Request and Sweet are the Ways by Essie Summers. These books are delightful stories about heroines who are writers, one at a newspaper and the other a copy editor and freelance writer until her first two books are published.

 

Through fictional and fortuitous fate, they each end up moving to cottages where they could write—my dream life! The newspaper writer is given a cottage by a family friend. The author buys her cottage. She also describes her writing routine and the dedication it takes to become published.

 

 

There are more writers in other Essie Summers' books: In Daughters of the Misty Gorges and So Comes Tomorrow the leads are all authors; in Season of Forgetfulness, he is the author, she works for a publishing firm; and in My Lady of the Fuchsias, she writes, he illustrates. Other books with writing characters include The Kindled Fire, Goblin Hill, Through All the Years, Where No Roads Go, and Beyond the Foothills (my favorite).

 

Extended families, including three or four generations, are central to these novels. A majority of the characters are voracious readers. Books are almost characters, too, sitting and stacked in most rooms. The adults read aloud to children in front of fireplaces and quote favorite writers in conversations. These are charming romances with enough reality and conflict to keep readers engaged.

 

Settings include working sheep stations, nearby lakes and mountains, picturesque villages, and cities like Christchurch. Essie Summers' beloved New Zealand becomes a travel destination for her readers.

 

Now I knew it was possible to be an author because even though these characters were not real, they lived writing lives as did Ms. Summers who wrote and jotted all her life, but, due to family responsibilities, was "late" to the publishing world. However, she still wrote 56 books starting when she was 45, as well as an autobiography, The Essie Summers' Story. She wrote for Mills & Boon starting in the 1950s then later for Harlequin.

 

Romance publishers have provided woman writers opportunities they never would have had otherwise. The early authors were well educated and good, solid writers. True, there are romance novels that are not well-written or well-plotted, but there are also a great many fantastic ones.

 

While romance novels are not held in high regard by some people, consider that women buy the majority of books and the majority of them can be classified as romances. It's not a genre to be overlooked or mocked.

 

As one Essie Summers' hero says to the heroine when he discovers she writes romances, "I don't know that I have anything against love."

 

I know I don't.

 

What novels helped you see how authors live and work?