Historical Romance, Law and E-Publishing
An Interview with Author and Attorney Elise Dee Beraru
By Linda Morelli, GWN Historical Editor 

This month, I am pleased to introduce you to Elise Dee Beraru, a highly talented author whose historical romances are available in electronic books and trade paperbacks.  I have to admit, I admire any woman who can juggle the highly demanding job of attorney with a writing career. 

Elise is the author of the historical romances Remember My Love, published by Hard Shell Word Factory, and The Hero’s Best Friend, published by Awe-Struck E-Books.  Both books have received many awards and honors; Remember My Love received a 5 Star “Exceptional” rating from Affaire de Coeur and a 4 Star rating from Romantic Times.  Her latest release, The Hungry Heart, is scheduled for release this year, and The Bridesmaid From Another Planet is due for release in 2004.  Both books will be available from Awe-Struck E-Books/Earthling Press. 

Elise also is a “Winner of the eBook excellence Award” for her continued advocacy of electronic books and e-publishing authors.  Take it from me, she is a fascinating woman: Always busy, yet always willing to help others. 

Now, on to the interview…

 Linda: Please tell us something about yourself. 

Elise: What: no air of mystery? Okay--I was raised (if not born) on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, where I still live. I'm in my late 40's, never married. I have my own law practice in Beverly Hills, California, representing injured workers. My other creative outlets are quiltmaking, which I have been doing since 1981 and public speaking. I've been a member of Toastmasters International since 1978 and am a member of the Los Angeles Opera Speakers Bureau, making 12-20 speeches each year on opera-related subjects. I currently have 4 cats, all rescues.  

Linda: You have quite an intriguing background. Please tell us why you decided you wanted to write romance novels. Did any authors influence you and, if so, why? 

Elise: I've been reading romances since age 16 (when I discovered Barbara Cartland). In 1992, after reading novel after novel featuring heroines who all looked and sounded just about the same, I decided I could write one myself, featuring the kind of heroine with whom I could identify. 

My favorite authors when I started reading romance again in the late 1970's were Charlotte Bronte, Catherine Cookson and Anya Seton. I read a lot of Linda Lael Miller, Bertrice Small, Janelle Taylor, Katherine Sutcliffe, Catherine Coulter, Mary Jo Putney and Heather Graham (Shannon Drake) at the time I started writing. Linda Lael Miller's love scenes influenced me a lot and Heather Graham's style made me realize that writers can have distinctive voices that can transcend pseudonyms. I also adore the writing of Rosanne Bittner, Amanda Quick, Dara Joy, Rebecca Paisley, Thea Devine and Kate Douglas, although I came to all of them later. 

Linda: Did you have an agent to send out your first book? 

Elise: No. I have queried several agents without success, so I still go directly to the publishers. 

Linda: How long have you been writing? 

Elise: My first published piece was a four-line poem published when I was six years old. I wrote poetry and short stories all the way through grade school and high school; wrote one act plays and songs in high school and college. I tried to write a novel (a futuristic murder thriller set against the background of minor league baseball) in the 1980's, but it got nowhere. I began to write romance in 1992 and first sold in 1998. 

Linda: How do you go about developing your characters and plots? 

Elise: I do what Catherine Coulter calls "What if..." Something will inspire me, a premise, a historical fact or event, a work in another medium with a great skeleton. I'll say, "What if the gorgeous cover model types were the secondary characters?" or "What if my heroine were deaf?" or "What if the heroine's college roommate was an extraterrestrial?" Then I noodle around with characters and situations that develop out of the "what if."  

Sometimes a little fact will drive a story in another direction. I was reading Timelines of American History checking some other fact when I discovered the date of the first successful open knee surgery to repair a shattered patella. That one fact sent The Hero's Best Friend in a totally different direction than my original plan and caused what started out to be a satire to morph into a dramatic, sweeping and serious exploration into what makes a man a man and the value of friendship in the face of betrayal. 

Linda: Do you use an outline when writing and, if so, do your characters ever surprise you? 

Elise: Sometimes I will write a "working synopsis," telling the story in about twenty pages nobody but I will ever see. I figure I have to write about 20 pages of manuscript for every page of working synopsis to get a single title manuscript. (This is different from the summary synopsis I would submit with a query or submission, which is never more than ten pages and usually closer to six.) Other times I just sit down and write for a while until I figure out where the story is leading me. 

My characters surprise me all the time. They argue with me when I want them to do something that is against character. Often the second half of the finished manuscript bears little resemblance to my working synopsis. What also surprises me is when my more or less Beta heroes discover their inner Alpha. Who'd've figured? 

Linda: Who has been your favorite hero so far and why? Favorite heroine? Favorite couple? 

Elise: Do you mean my own books? My favorite hero is Sam Blake from The Hero's Best Friend. He's so very human and multi-dimensional and has a great character arc because he is forced to adapt to major, dramatic changes in his life and he discovers that he is really a hero himself--something he never expected to discover.   

My favorite heroine is in an unfinished, untitled manuscript set in the late 1920's. Rosalind Haynes is successful, secure, creative and independent, but faces a crisis when her industry is set on its head, threatening her independence and her career future. In the end her life will change completely through things that are not within her control and she will have to adapt or die. 

My favorite couple is Stephen Carroll and Susannah Stoddard, the secondary characters in Remember My Love. They were so much fun to write because they could fall in love without angst and act in perfect counterpoint to the rocky relationship between Blair and Adele. 

If you mean the books of others, my favorite hero is Aidan Tremayne of Linda Lael Miller's Forever and The Night. I have adored the reluctant vampire character ever since Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows. My favorite heroine is Betsy Taylor of Undead and Unwed, by MaryJanice Davidson. She kicks vampire butt and takes names. My favorite couple: well, any pair of Amanda Quick lovers. The assertive, eccentric bluestocking and the absent-minded genius with a mystery to solve always make for lovely sparks. 

Linda: What is your writing schedule like and, on average, how long does it take to complete a book? 

Elise: As you may guess, having a solo law practice is pretty time-consuming, so I've never been an every day writer. I write in bits and pieces as time permits, getting more focused as deadlines near. I seem to do well during "Book in a Week" challenges because I have a timetable to follow. 

I finished my first book in six months. Everything else has taken a lot longer because if I get stuck in one story I leave it and go to another one and work on it for a while. Since the books are unsold, there is no impetus to finish them in any specific time. If I actually wrote every day, chances are I could finish most first drafts in six to nine months. 

Linda: Have you ever suffered from Writer's Block and, if so, what do you do? 

Elise: I've been in a bad slump since the 9-11-2001 attacks. I wrote a screenplay adaptation of Remember My Love from November 1-12, 2001, but otherwise I haven't been able to write much of anything since then. What I've done this past year is make a lot of quilts (it didn't hurt that a cousin and two friends had new babies). I've run the World Romance Writers Book in a Week Challenge January 5-11, 2003, during which I pushed myself to get some writing done. Deadlines are the best slump solver I know, because I force myself to write through the block. 

Linda: Did you belong to any critique groups when you started? If so, do you find this helpful? 

Elise: My experience with critique groups has been unfortunate. I first started writing in a vacuum, not knowing any other writers in my area. The first critique group I joined consisted of two women who each were barely in Chapter 2 of traditional Regencies and I had two finished post-Civil War historicals that needed polishing. They needed different help than I did and it was a bad match for me. The second critique group I joined was a mixed group of writers, including short story and essayists, a poet, a would-be writer of series contemporary romance and a (male) writer of literary fiction. I ran into anti-romance bias, particularly from the literary novelist, after my first book came out and soon dropped out. Since then, I've just not found a group that suits my time, geographic and writing needs. But so many other people find critique groups helpful that I do recommend trying them. I've just always worked better alone. 

Linda: How do you go about researching your books? How much time do you spend on research before you begin writing the story? 

Elise: I write backwards. I start on the story and look up facts as I go along. My undergraduate degree is in History, so I have a lot of facts already stored in my brain. I also was a drama major in high school and junior college, so I have a lot of costume and language knowledge. I have a sizable basic reference library at home to check facts and use the Internet a lot. If all else fails, I go to the library. Since I don't place my characters amid actual events, I don't really need to know what Ulysses S. Grant ate for breakfast, but I do need to make sure Abe Lincoln isn't making any telephone calls.  

Linda: Although your books are available in trade paperback editions, they are also available as E-books. How do you like working with an E-book publisher? 

Elise: My trade paperbacks are from the same publishers who released my e-books. Both my publishers, Mary Wolf of Hard Shell Word Factory and Kathryn Struck and Dick Claassen of Awe-Struck E-Books are wonderful to work with. They respond promptly to communications, pay royalties promptly and don't make me wait an inordinate amount of time between submission and acceptance. They work very hard to find as many retail outlets as possible to sell our books. Also, they don't tie up any rights they don't plan to exploit. I have yet to sell to a large, traditional mass-market publisher, so I can't compare them, except for the long waits on submissions. 

Linda: What type of promotion do you do for your books? 

Elise: I enter published book contests, participate in group ads in the review magazines, send out promotional postcards and have advertising specialties to give out. I go to the Romantic Times Convention and sign up for any local signings that will accept small press authors even if I have to supply my own books. I will go just about anywhere in the Southern California area to speak about electronic publishing or romance fiction if it means I might sell a book or two. 

Linda: What do you like most and/or least about writing? 

Elise: I like creating new worlds (even within the historical romance context) and putting fascinating people in them. I love thinking up situations in which to put characters. I love creating wonderful heroes who aren't intimidated by strong, intelligent women. 

I have chronic low back trouble, plus bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome and basal joint arthritis in my right thumb, so writing is physically hard on my tailbone and hands. It's hard to be consistently creative when you have to take frequent breaks for physical stress. 

Linda: Your family must be very proud of you being a romance writer. What did they say when you got the call that you sold your first book? 

Elise: My brother is dyslexic and I'm not really close to my extended family. I doubt any of them have bought or read either of my books. My brother teases me about my "bodice busters," but that's the function of younger brothers, even when they're in their mid-40's, isn't it?  My friends, particularly my friends in Toastmasters, were much more enthusiastic. One of them, a former executive at a major studio, asked me to write a screenplay adaptation of Remember My Love and she is currently shopping it around Hollywood. 

Linda: What are you going to be writing next? 

Elise: I have to do revisions on The Hungry Heart, and finish book 2 of The Bridesmaid from Another Planet. After that, it depends on what I sell. I have a number of historicals in various states of completion, a fantasy proposal I just sent to a publisher and I'd like to try my hand at an erotic romance for the Romantica market. 

Linda: What advice do you have for new romance authors? 

Elise: Get to know the market and who publishes the books you like to read or want to write. My friend from my critique group thought she could write a short contemporary "caper" book without reading any Harlequin or Silhouette lines that would accept that type of story and book length. Don't follow her example.   

Decide why you want to write. There is merit in writing for the money, but there is also merit in writing for the art, even when the money isn't quite there. If you want to have a career writing four to five short contemporaries a year, go for it. If you want a career writing single title contemporary, historical or mainstream, go for it. If you want to write quirky books that break the rules, go for it, but realize you may not find yourself accepted by the mass market publishers and may have to go to the small press (print or electronic) publishers to make your sales--or even self-publish. 

Additionally, like any creative field, success in writing is often as much a matter of timing as talent. You won't sell books if you don't send queries to either agents or publishers. Look at J.K. Rowling. If there was ever an example of someone being in the right place at the right time with the right book, there she is!  

Don't wait for the book to be perfect before you start querying. If you sell, you'll probably have to make revisions anyway. Don't polish the life out of it by trying to conform to everyone else's opinion. Don't become ossified by "the rules." There are actually very few rules in romance beyond "one man, one woman" and a "happy ending." And some of the new women's fiction fields don't even require those constants. Also, you'll wait a long time for responses, during which time you can be polishing. 

Be open about revision requests, but you don't have to put your name on the editor's book. One flaw newer writers have is a tendency to write too much backstory in the first two chapters. If you're asked to delete the first two chapters, it's probably a very good idea.  

Don't worry about simultaneous submissions. Until a publisher offers you a contract, they have no say how you market. They don't want to get into a bidding auction because they want to pay as little as possible for your book. Always remember: this is a business and if you don't look out for yourself, nobody else will. 

Finally, don't sign a contract until you understand its terms. Make sure your rights have finite reversion periods. Make sure you know what rights you are signing away. Make sure you find out if the royalty rates you're being offered are within industry standards for your market and genre. Try not to sign away rights your publisher has no intention of exploiting. Be assertive; this is business. If necessary, pay an intellectual property attorney for a couple of hours of his/her time to make sure the contract is fair to you. The $500.00 you spend could save you tons of grief, aggravation and frustration. 

Linda:  That’s excellent advice, Elise.  Where do you see the romance genre going in the future? 

Elise: They took away my crystal ball when they licensed me to practice law. <grin> Seriously, the romance audience is growing older. Publishers need to find ways to bring in the younger readers. Chick Lit seems to be appealing, and Erotica/Romantica seems to be a huge seller. Romantic suspense is also growing, which to me is unfortunate because it's taking my favorite historical romance authors away. The other area that seems to be stronger than ever is the so-called "Inspirational" market, which is aimed at Evangelical Christians. I'm glad to see Romantic Comedy coming into fashion and growing, even into the historical and paranormal markets. 

One place I would like to see growth is in expansion of the historical genre to include the period from the death of Queen Victoria to the end of World War II. I know many historical readers won't read a book with telephones or automobiles in them, but there are a lot of fascinating romantic plots out there that would just work better if they could be set ten to twenty years later in time. I'd like to see U.S. settings come back into fashion. I'm as tired of British, Scottish and Irish settings as many other historical readers are. 

Linda: Is there anything you're working on that you would like your readers to know about? 

Elise: Did I mention my screenplay? Oh, yeah, I did. <grin> In addition to my newest historical, scheduled to come out in October 2003, I have a two book "Futuristic Women's Fiction" series with book one coming out in 2004 and book two about six months after that called The Bridesmaid from Another Planet. It's the saga of one woman's journey from UCLA to another galaxy--or am I being redundant? Beyond those I need to take a serious assessment of my unfinished manuscripts and see which ones have the most promise of salability and make plans to finish them.  

Linda: Thank you so much, Elise, for a great interview and some wonderful suggestions for our readers.  

To learn more about Elise Dee Beraru’s books, visit her website at: www.elisedeeberaru.com  

Linda Morelli
GWN Online Historical Editor
RomRiter@aol.com
www.lindamorelli.us