Today's Special - - Rebecca Paisley

We are delighted to welcome Rebecca Paisley to The Romance Dish today. Rebecca is a former Air Force brat who now lives in the North Carolina woods. She writes charming historical romance with heroines who defy all the 'rules' of the genre. Her books have landed her on the Publisher's Weekly Bestseller list and the Romance Writers of America's Honor Roll.  She's also been a RITA finalist and won both the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award and Career Achievement Award. Rebecca's books are currently being reissued by Amber House Books. Find more information about Rebecca and her books at her website and connect online with her at Facebook.  

Rebecca also mentioned to me that this is her first blog appearance so let's all give her a very warm welcome!

Welcome, Rebecca!  It’s a pleasure to host you today.  Being a long-time historical romance reader, I’m not sure how I managed to miss your books during their first go-around but I’m grateful to Teresa Medeiros for introducing me to them now.  I haven’t read THE BAREFOOT BRIDE yet but DIAMONDS AND DREAMS kept me up reading way past my bedtime the other night and left me thoroughly charmed.  Will you please share with readers what they can expect from these two books?

I’m charmed that you’re charmed!  And I do mean that.  Even after having published a myriad of novels and novellas, it’s still a bit astonishing to me when readers say they have enjoyed my stories.  I mean, it’s really an extremely wonderful thing, the opportunity to place your musings into another person’s hands.  That person can hug your story or throw it down.  I’m always nervous over the process because I’m sometimes not able to temper some of the more outrageous ideas that come to me.  I try to keep an extensive variety of personal tastes in mind while I think and write, but my imagination is more of a separate entity rather than a part of me.  It looks like a swirling ball of glitter to me, really, and sometimes I have to chase it all over everywhere, strain to see it in really dark times, or shove it off my pillow so I can have a precious bit of sleep.

DIAMONDS AND DREAMS, THE BAREFOOT BRIDE, and all my other stories are about how completely powerful love is when allowed even a fraction of a chance.  There is so much hurt in the world, so many emotionally wounded people.  Personal feelings are sometimes difficult to name, much less soothe.  Some people have thick skins and can soldier on, giving no outward sign of their pain.  Not me.  Good Lord, just look at me in the wrong way and I grieve myself to pieces.  Like, with wailing and face buried in the crook of an elbow.  And locking myself away in a shell until I can bear to come out.  It’s ridiculous, but I don’t know how to be any other way.  And I think that that side of me is what led me to begin writing as a child.  I’ve never known what else to do with so many feelings. 

So they’re books now.  Sometimes the feelings are in people, sometimes they’re in a setting, and sometimes I just sort of dance around them and trust the reader to sense that they’re there.  And then I set to work devising ways that Love can find and hold them.  This is serious stuff and could become too sad.  And who wants to read pages and pages of sorrow?  That’s when my imagination comes hurling around like a disco ball on steroids.  It loves to laugh, my imagination does, and its sense of fun presents itself in dialogue and specific situations.  And outward appearances as well.  Humor brings such beautiful healing. Outlandish humor causes the bursts of merriment so needed by both real people and story people.  And it works best when it’s unexpected.  The lead-up I use for that humor is subtle.  In this way, I am able to smack the reader suddenly so s/he hesitates for an instant, unsure where the sadness went. And then I hope the reader will feel that burst of laughter that is so important to the kind of stories I write.  It’s a manipulation of emotion, and it works because Real Life also toys with our emotions.  As an author, I merely embellish and “bigger” what readers are already very capable of feeling.                  

That burst of laughter is certainly present in DIAMONDS AND DREAMS and I was delighted by it!

Goldie – the heroine of Diamonds and Dreams - is not the type of heroine most people would expect when picking up a Regency romance.  What inspired you to write this type of character?  By the way, I found her to be an absolutely delightful breath of fresh air!

                Out of tortuous desperation, I patterned Goldie Mae after my own self.  I had been trying to come up with ideas for my third book when my editor at Avon Books called to ask if I could have the book done in 90 days.  Avon needed to fill an empty slot in their schedule right away.  Before that call I had had about 8 months to write my book.  I was hysterical with fear, a thousand percent sure I could not do it.  But because I am bereft of the ability to say no and due in no small measure to the capricious nature of my imagination, I said I would have the book done in the 90 days.  And then I stared at my blank computer screen for over a week, and I didn’t even eat during those scary days.  Before Avon’s request, I had already decided the book would be set in England and feature an American heroine.  That’s about all I knew.  So how in the dang world was I going to characterize the story people and think of a plot that would carry the book for almost 500 pages?  I hadn’t even completely researched England and British ways!

                Imagination took me firmly in hand, and Goldie became a heroine who knew nothing about England or the British people.  Because I didn’t know about England or British people.  It’s the only thing that made sense to me.  To use my own ignorance!  I wrote down and pondered every naïve thought I’d ever harbored concerning English royalty, aristocracy, traditions, manners of speaking, ways of dressing, etc…  And all those really dumb notions I had went into Goldie.  Some of them came from my childhood.  I used to think that English money was counted in pounds.  Literally.  You weighed your money to see how much you had, see.  And I had it in my mind that dukes probably turned their noses up at a lot of things, which led to Goldie’s belief that dukes most certainly sniffed a lot.  I sprinkled things like that throughout the story both to characterize Goldie and to make the hero’s life miserable.  I do love to create heroines who sorely try their men’s patience. 

                And I have this wild curly hair that I’ve spent half my life trying to tame, to no avail.  So Goldie had to have that hair too.  And I’m not tall.  My feet don’t touch the ground when I sit in most chairs, so Goldie had to be little too.  And I possess a deep love for very quirky people, so Goldie’s many stories about the people she knew in America were, for the most part, people I know.  I get my feelings hurt easily, so Goldie’s feelings mirrored my own.  Then I put this little Goldie Mae in a plot that would showcase her ignorance and tender emotions, and I gave her a hero who wasn’t sure what to do with her.
 

                Never forgetting my own childish beliefs about England and British people and ways – and allowing my imagination to do what it would - I wrote the book in 90 days.

If that's what happens when you write a book in 90 days, I think you should do it more often! 

One of the things that I most enjoyed about Diamonds and Dreams is that it made me laugh. Why is humor an important part of your writing?   What are the things in life that make you laugh?

As I said before, I do rely on humor to hold on to my reader.  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like to laugh.  And I find the most humor in people and situations that are exceptionally odd.  I work very hard to create heroines who are not normal.  I don’t like conventional things, and I have always been drawn to people who don’t even realize how unique and funny they are.  One time my realtor aunt got a call from a man named Irk who wanted to sell his house.  It wasn’t until he signed his name on something that she realized his name was ERIC and that his very southern drawl had made his name sound like IRK.  See how something so simple can be so hilarious?  THAT is what I look for and weave through my stories.  Humor like that is everywhere, all around us.  Some people might not notice it until it bashes them on the head.  I like to do that kind of bashing.  It makes ME laugh.  And sometimes the fun things come from situations rather than characters.  In A BASKET OF WISHES my heroine is a fairy.  She shifts to about the size of a thumb when she runs out of energy.  In one scene, she shrinks in front of her hero, who is in bed.  In the next moment we see her tiny self doing a sort of Irish jig on her hero’s . . . Umm, well, near the part of him that makes him male.  His gasp of surprise and the look of disbelief on his face made ME laugh.  I just couldn’t imagine such a sight, really.  A tiny fairy tap dancing on a man’s parts.  Even though I was writing the scene myself, I was laughing because it was just so preposterous. I love it when that happens.  It’s serendipity at its finest.    

Are there plans to reissue any of your other previously published books - specifically A BASKET OF WISHES?  After the visual you've given us, I'll be downloading this book the moment it's released! 

                Yes!  My new publisher, Amber House Books, is bringing out my backlist!  I’m excited unto death.  I have found so many of my loyal readers, and I am now discovering a lot of new readers too!  It’s almost like the books have never been published before and are just now being released, brand spanking new.  It just tickles me to pieces that my stories are still making people laugh.  And cry.  You have to have a few tears in order for the laughter to feel so totally wonderful, y’know?

Yes, I do know.  I do a lot of both!  

You and I share a love of animals, a love clearly also shared by your DIAMONDS AND DREAMS heroine.  Please tell us about the animals who share your home and the role they play both in your life and your writing.

                I don’t ever remember not having animals.  My first was a black cat named Spooky.  Original, huh?  Most all of the animals I have owned or known have somehow made their way into my books.  Goldie Mae’s horse, Dammit, was a real horse belonging to my uncle.  Dammit was his name.  Itchie Bon, Goldie’s mutt, was a poodle we had when I was little.  Nehemiah, a cat you will meet in RAINBOWS AND RAPTURE, was a real cat.  He had a billion nicknames.  So, of course, in the book he has a billion nicknames too, which annoys the hell out of the hero, Santiago Zamora.  I wouldn’t be happy without animals surrounding me.  And so I can’t be happy if they aren’t in my books either.  They are real characters with real personalities.  I do so hope readers are touched by my story animals, just as I hope they and other people do what they can to help real animals in Real Life.  This is a subject so dear to my heart that I can hardly write about it without tearing up a bit.  Having been involved in Animal Rescue for many years, I have seen the worst and the best of mankind regarding animals.  I want to believe that MOST people possess the kind of goodness needed to protect animals, all animals.  The message to spay and neuter and ADOPT is more widespread than it used to be, but we still have a long way to go in the fight for critters.  No kind gesture, however small, goes unnoticed by a needy animal.  And God bless every person who has ever helped a little beast.  Or even a big beast or a finned or winged one.  Ha!  My son used to gather up earthworms that had been washed away in rainstorms.  He’d find them on the street and bury them back into the ground.  I used to tell him we wouldn’t have any dirt without the worms.  From worms to elephants . . . they are all precious.       

Many of us have our comfort reads, those books or authors to whom we turn when our spirits need a lift.  Who are your “comfort read” authors?

                Comfort books are those that make me laugh.  I want to be entertained in an amusing way.  When the writing fever is upon me, though, I cannot read fiction because I am so afraid I will copy another author’s words or thoughts without meaning to.  And sometimes another author’s brilliance will make me feel like the worst writer in the world.  Then I can’t write at all.  I read a lot of history books.  Research books.  Sometimes I use the research in a future project, and sometimes I just like to think about it.  I found a bit of true trivia once that turned one of my books around.  A very long time ago, this man was trying to turn metal into gold, but he only ended up creating a substance that glowed in the dark.  I read that and tucked it away to think about another time.  About a year or so later I needed that exact bit of trivia to write myself out of a corner in MOONLIGHT AND MAGIC.  It worked so well that a lot of readers thought I’d made it up.  But it was a true thing!   

One of the reasons I enjoy reading historical romance is that it allows me to step away from the challenges of everyday life and lose myself in another place and time.  If you could step into the shoes of any fictional character who would you choose and why?

                I would definitely be a maiden from long ago and far away.  My house is filled with paintings of maidens, most all of them painted by Pre-Raphaelite artists.  I have life-sized knights in armor in my home, and I have medieval-looking dresses I love to wear.  I like to pull my hair into this golden snood I bought online.  I don’t care for things that are really contemporary.  I love old things.  Antique furniture, “ancient” jewelry I make myself, and even rocks I come upon.  I found a little rock buried in the wall of the Colosseum in Rome some years ago.  I didn’t try to tear down the wall to get it; it was already loose and kind of falling out.  I love that rock.  I love imagining all the things it has seen since its wall was first built.  Any centuries-old maiden would suit me quite well!  My friends and family like to poke fun at me over my days of yore clothing and furnishings and other notions, but so far I have not been swayed to change what I love the most.

According to your Amazon bio, you’re currently working on a new book.  Are you at a point where you can share anything with readers? 

                I actually have 3 books started, but I finally decided which one to finish first.  There are many, many animals in the story.  And lots of mystery and magic.  I can’t explain too much of the book because then I will feel as though I have already written it.  But suffice it to say this story is making me very happy, and I hope it will do the same for readers.  It is fanciful, but it is also a dream that I have hoped is true since I was a little girl.  In my book it is very true, and that’s what makes me so happy! 

Thank you so much for visiting with us today, Rebecca.  Would you like to ask our readers a question?

                I’m so happy to be here with y’all.  I’ve really enjoyed answering your questions and, while answering them, I even thought of a new book idea!  I’ll have to dedicate that book to The Romance Dish when I finish writing it.  J  Thank you so much for that!

Thank you, Rebecca!  

                For readers:  Has anything magical ever happened to you?  If so, what was it?

One randomly chosen person leaving a comment on today's post will receive signed copies of The Barefoot Bride and Diamonds and Dreams.  (U.S. addresses only)