Award winning author, Charlene Raddon

On my blog today is award winning author of five historical romance novels, Charlene Raddon. 

Pay special attention to the contest at the end of this post, Charlene is giving away two of her books.

I've had the pleasure of reading Charlene's TO HAVE AND TO HOLD and I fell in love with her characters, Tempest Whitney and Buck Maddox. This book will take you on a whirlwind of emotions as the two protagonists battle with their impending feelings for one another. There is a lot of action in this novel too and you won't be disappointed! 

Welcome, Charlene please tell us about your books and the process it took to get there.
 

First, let me thank Kat for hosting me today. I’m thrilled to be here.

Every author is asked enumerable times where they get their ideas for their stories. My entire writing career began with a dream. Not the dream of becoming a writer. I didn’t seriously consider doing that until sometime after I began my first novel. No, it was a dream that started me writing. So vivid, so compelling, was this dream that I got up, dragged out a portable typewriter (pre-computer days) and began to type.

Oh, it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. That book took nine years to write because I was also learning how to write as I went along. How to get a character across a room and back without being repetitive seemed a big challenge in those days.

            That first book, a time travel when no one was buying them, sat in a box on a shelf for over

twenty years. But now—now that I know how to write, or think I do—the box is open and I’m re-editing the story. Time Weaver is the title and you will see it listed on Amazon.com one of these days. An editor told me this book was too unusual to sell as a first book. She suggested I write a less unique romance, get it published and after a few more books I might be able to sell Time Weaver. So I wrote a book I called Brianna, about a woman who fakes her own murder to escape an abusive marriage. She joins a wagon train for Oregon and hires a guide to pose as her brother. Naturally she and the guide fall in love. Brianna was a Golden Heart Finalist and was published under the title, Tender Touch.

           

My most successful book, Forever Mine, began when I visited a lighthouse Forever Mine was born on the Oregon Coast and saw a bridal photo of a keeper and his wife who were married there. Neither looked happy, but she appeared absolutely forlorn. I thought about what that area of the country

would have been like in the waning days of the nineteenth century, what a chore it would have been simply to get to the lighthouse from the nearest town, nine miles away, when there were no roads. What if the bride and groom had never even met before their wedding day? And so Forever Mine was born.

         
Taming Jenna, my first book to be published, back in 1964, is another story. My critique group and I were having lunch after a meeting and I said to one of the members I knew had a quirky sense of humor, to tell me what my next book should be about. Without hesitating she said, write about a woman who has to find a man and the only way she can identify him is by a scar on his bottom. The result was a lady Pinkerton detective who finds herself at odds with a bounty hunter after she pulls a gun on him and makes him drop his drawers. That was a fun story to write.

  

          To Have and To Hold didn’t start with an idea; it started with a request. I had sent a proposal to my editor at Zebra Books, which he didn’t care for. Instead he asked me to write about a widow with a couple of children and a drifter. Oddly enough, this book is probably my best written and my favorite. I love my tough, sassy heroine and my kind-hearted hero, not to mention little Angel and baby Ethan who refuses to keep his diaper on. I set the story in a fascinating canyon in Utah called Nine Mile Canyon (though in the book, I call it Deception Canyon). High sandstone walls, ancient Anasazi Indian ruins and petroglyphs, remote ranches and tales of lost treasures are what Nine Mile is about and I used all these in my story.

 

            June of 2013 will see the release of a sequel to To Have and To Hold, entitled The Scent of Roses.

            Ideas for novels come from many sources and what they are doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the writer is inspired by an idea that carries her through to the end of the tale and creates a vivid, compelling read. I like to believe this is what I’ve done in my books.

            Please leave a comment and your contact information for a chance to win a copy of To Have and To Hold now as well as The Scent of Roses, when the latter comes out.

 

Charlene Raddon is the award-winning author of five historical romance novels set in the American West and has been writing for over thirty years. Her books were published in paperback by Zebra Books, and are now being released as e-books by Tirgearr Publishing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Links:

http://www.charleneraddon.com

Blog: http://tinyurl.com/bmhtjto

Charlene on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/d23zo6l

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/d9v6h56

Find Charlene’s books here: Amazon.com