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Fall in Love with Romance WW: How did you find those first few readers?
WW: First of all, congratulations on the River’s Sigh series. Eight books! They must have quite a following by now. EB: My hope was that it would grow book by book, and I’m lucky that seems to be what happened. WW: I noticed that Greenridge is actually your fictionalized home town. Has anyone identified with a character? EB: Funny, someone told me she had been upset about what a friend was going through, when she realized she was talking about a character in one of my books! She said, “Yeah, they just feel like friends to me!” WW: Wow. What a great compliment. EB: That was, yeah. It was my favourite. I remember it very well. WW: What inspired you to write romance? EB: Well, one of the things is that there is such a voracious appetite in romance readers. They tend to read all over the board and they tend to read at least a book a week, or sometimes multiple books a week. It’s a struggle for every writer, regardless of genre, trying to find those first few readers. I think your chances of growing your readers through word of mouth are greater with romance because there are so many people who read it. Interestingly, many people never say they read romance. But sales don’t lie— people read it.
EB: The number one technique is the newsletter. It’s just the very best way to connect with someone who has already expressed interest in hearing about your next book. Every other author I talk to says exactly the same thing. Sometimes people feel intimidated by one more thing to do, but I think of it as, Wow, I have people who actually want to hear from me every month. WW: Can you recommend any resources to help emerging writers learn about writing romance? EB: The FBCW has always been a great resource for writers of all genres. Also most cities and even quite a few small towns have writers’ groups. Online there’s a wealth of romance writing organizations like Romance Divas. If you have questions, they’ve got a really good forum. I made lots of really helpful connections that way. Romance Writers of America has a chapter alive and well in Vancouver. On the Island I can’t say enough good things about Vancouver Island Romance Authors, VIRA for short, and they are a great group—super knowledgeable, super friendly. And, for anybody wanting to jump in and start their own book, if you plug “how to write a romance” into your internet browser, you’ll get tons of good information. What I did is I looked up a romance publisher and used their writing guidelines as my “how to write my first romance.” It was totally different than anything I’d done before—I just winged it, trying to incorporate the things they said romance books should have. It was super fun to do and I thought it was pretty good. So I sent it to them. I heard back in less than forty-eight hours. That’s the quickest return I’ve ever had on a query! So that’s another way, and it would work for any genre. Find a publisher and see what they’re specifically looking for in a book and use that as a writing prompt. WW: That’s such good advice. Such a good idea. Thank you very much, Ev. It’s been wonderful talking to you. 2020 Volume III ︱ WORDWORKS 13
