Thea
Devine – “The Queen of Erotic Romance”
By
Linda Morelli, GWN Historical Editor
I
first met Thea Devine in 1995 at a luncheon, during which she spoke on the topic
of “Writing Sexy Without Writing Dirty.” Her discussion on how to write
erotic love scenes held us all captive, but then, she’s one of the hottest
writers in the industry. She’s the author of 18 steamy historical romances
(with many more to come), as well as novellas in Kensington Book’s USA Today
best-selling erotic historical romance anthologies, CAPTIVATED,
FASCINATED, and TAKEN BY SURPRISE.
I’ve
met her several times since that fateful day in 1995, and during the recent
Romance Writers of America Conference in New York City, I asked if she wouldn’t
mind doing an interview for my column. I was thrilled when she agreed, and you
might just learn something about writing sensual love scenes.
Now,
on to the interview…
Linda: Please tell us
something about yourself; i.e., when did you decide to become an author and how
long have you been writing?
Thea:
I've been writing since I was a child. I'm thinking you don't
"decide" to become a writer – the need to write decides for you.
But I started writing professionally in 1986, and my first book came out
in June 1987 – some details of which I talk about below. I've been
married 37 years to my husband John, who's an administrator in a prep school; we
live in Connecticut (which I'm loving, in spite being a died-in-the-wool
Brooklyn born city girl); we have two grown sons, two dogs and a cat; and my mom
just came to live with us, so things are jumping around here.
Linda: In addition to being
a fantastic author, you're also a professional manuscript reader. Can you tell
us a bit more about this side of your career?
Thea:
This was serendipity many,
many years ago. A friend of mine was asked if she would like to read for
this publishing house, and she declined and recommended me. Since then
I've read for four houses and an agent, and it's been a labor of love. For
one thing, it’s probably the purest moment an author can have in the
publishing world: someone who adores romance reading her work without
having to consider marketing, trends, niches, numbers, bestseller lists,
editorial input, or anything else, except story, setup, writing, voice. I
look for terrific writing, a distinctive voice, a great premise and super sex,
probably in that order.
Linda: Romantic Times
calls you "The Queen of Erotic Romance" and Affaire de Coeur,
"...the divine mistress of sensual writing..."
After reading your tremendous body of work, I know those accolades are
well-deserved. I love your novels
and eagerly look forward to each new release.
Could you please tell us why you decided to write "erotic"
romance novels?
Thea:
Well, I didn't decide to write erotic novels so much as I decided I was
going to write as explicitly as I wanted to as I was working on my first book.
I wasn't under contract; I had started a book for the same reasons
everyone does -- because I loved romance and thought I could write one.
There is a moment in that book, SHAMELESS DESIRE (Zebra Heartfire, June
1987) where the heroine is someplace she should not be. The hero has
cornered her, is furious, and wants to punish her with sexual intimidation.
If it went any further, I thought as I was writing the scene, she'd be a
victim and I'd have nowhere else to go. Now,
I've talked about this single most important moment in my writing life in
workshops and in articles, because in that moment, for reasons I have no idea
why sixteen years after the fact, I had the heroine stretch out her hand –
right between the hero's legs. Wham! The dynamic changed and turned
upside down. Suddenly, the heroine had some control. She could
affect him. She had power. She had parity in the sexual playing
field. She could exercise it or not, but it was her decision. And
this sensibility has impacted the way I've written every single book since.
Linda: Would you briefly
explain the difference between an erotic romance and a "sensual"
mainstream and/or category romance?
Thea:
I think erotic romance is its own entity – for me, there are certain
elements that are mandatory when I write my books – I call it the
"comfort zone." The reader knows we have made a tacit compact:
the story will center on one man, one woman; he'll never hurt her; there will be
no rape; no the-girl-can't-help-it sensibility; no negative visual images
(she's not on fire, he doesn't impale her); she has control; sex is consensual
and always motivated (no matter how fantastically); they wind up in the love or
on the cusp of it and the reader can infer that commitment and everything it
entails will follow. And then, within this framework, you can push the
boundaries of the graphic content because the reader has the reassurance of that
committed relationship overlay. I think every gradation of romance stems
from it; the only difference – for me – being the degree of sensuality in
the story, mainstream, contemporary or category.
Linda: You once said that
you "operate on the squirm factor – if you don't make the reader squirm,
you're not doing your job." Could you explain this further, please?
Thea:
Ah, the squirm factor; I knew it would come back to haunt me. This
is the most intriguing and challenging thing about writing this kind of book:
the language. There is no language for this kind of sensual writing.
At the time I began my career, I couldn't use four letter words,
pornographic words, or even anatomically correct words. And yet, I – we
who write the more erotic romance – were nevertheless describing that which
was virtually indescribable, putting our readers in bed with our hero and
heroine, making them see what we saw, feel what our characters felt, and react
as our characters reacted. All without four letter words. That's the
squirm factor: that the way we used those everyday words could evoke a visceral
response from the reader. That's pretty powerful. That's a revolution in
romance.
Linda: Whose point of view
do you like to use in sex scenes, and why?
Thea:
I go back and forth with point of view, and I couldn't tell you why or how
I do it. It's whatever feels right to do at the moment, who is doing what
to whom and what I want the reader to know. I don't allocate so many lines
of POV to him, so many to her. When I 'm writing a scene like that, I'm
"in" the scene and all I care about is conveying to the reader what
I'm seeing, what each character is feeling at the moment, and trying to make the
reader feel it too.
Linda: Do you have any
advice for our readers on describing the "clinical" parts of the
anatomy?
Thea:
I think this is a matter of what you are comfortable with and, as I
mentioned above, you need not even use those terms to get the point across.
I actually had been averse myself to using four letter words, and when I
finally had leeway to use them, I found it was pretty liberating to be able to
be more emphatic in situations where a character would be that emphatic.
So I think it's the author's good taste, what she is comfortable with, and
what seems appropriate for the moment. For those who aren't sure – well,
it’s just the author and her computer screen, and she can experiment with that
kind of writing and nobody ever has to see it; if she hates it, if she's not
comfortable with it – she can delete it and just make the decision this kind
of writing isn't for her.
Linda: Did any authors
influence you and, if so, how?
Thea:
Where does one start? Gone With the Wind; Elswyth Thane's
Williamsburg novels, Emilie Loring, Faith Baldwin, Kathleen Norris – now
everybody knows how old I am ...
Linda: <laughing> How
do you go about developing your characters and plots?
Thea:
Ideas are all around, as everyone knows. With SATISFACTION,
which I'm working on now, the nugget of the idea actually came from a scene in
an old movie – it was a lead character's actions toward the heroine whom he
ultimately abandons (but MY hero would never do that). And then I began
thinking about a story to surround that moment. I also wanted to write a
"linked" book, which I'd never done, and which would be a nice
challenge, so there are two brothers in this book, one an absolute rakehell, the
other, young brother, a brooding loner who will have his own book sometime in
2005.
Then, sometimes it's a little dot in history that seems like a place I could
drop in a story. In the research question below, I talk about some of the
topics I've used as backgrounds for previous novels, and they, in and of
themselves, were things that incited some of those story ideas.
Linda: Do you use an outline
when writing and, if so, do your characters ever surprise you?
Thea:
Outline. I need to do that for my proposals, and to crystallize the major
plot points. And really, what I'm telling the editor is how I'm getting from
here to there. She doesn't need to know every detail; she needs to know
what the basic conflict is and how I'm going to move the characters across the
landscape. What's even more helpful to me is making stream-of-conscious
lists: just sitting down and without even thinking, I start listing
possible plot points no matter how ridiculous they might be. I can do
pages and pages of this, and somewhere in there will be something I can use, or
a problem I worked out in a direction I hadn't thought of. Which surprises
me ... yes, the characters do do things that surprise me.
Linda: How do you go about
researching your books? How much time do you spend on research before you begin
writing the story?
Thea:
I spent a fair amount of time researching, although I do operate a lot on
need-to-know for the finer details. I, probably like every other historical
author, have stacks of research books where I find the over-arcing historical
context first, and then hone in to the details. So I've learned tons about
vampires (FOREVER KISS, SINFUL SECRETS), arcane religions and the
Victorian cult of the little girl (BEYOND DESIRE – reissue October ‘04);
operating rice plantations (DESIRED), Victorian sex clubs (SECRET
PLEASURES); magic and Ouija boards (DESIRE ME ONLY); diamonds
and mining South Africa (SATISFACTION, May ‘04, with sequel to come).
Linda: What type of
promotion do you do for your books?
Thea:
I have a website, www.theadevine.com,
which provides some promotional services, including chats, and I do magnets
(your readers can email me with their address and I'll send them out), and I try
to do the larger conferences because the thing I really love most is meeting the
readers face to face, giving a hug, and saying thank you in person for their
kindness, enthusiasm and support.
Linda: What do you like most
and/or least about writing?
Thea:
Doing it and doing it. Writing I mean. Some days it's like
pulling teeth. Other days I can shoot 20 pages and not be done and it's
like butter. It's exhilarating, it's like flying. It's like sex.
Linda: What are you going to
be writing next?
Thea:
As I mentioned above, I'm deep (!) into SATISFACTION, scheduled for
May ‘04 right now.
Linda: What advice do you
have for new romance authors?
Thea:
Write, write, write, write. Love your work. Trust yourself.
Be persistent. Rejections aren't personal. Love your work.
Write, write, write and write some more.
Linda: Where do you see the
romance genre going in the future?
Thea:
I don't like to forecast things like that. I think the most
important thing for readers and writers to know is that no matter what the trend
might seem to be, the one thing that doesn't change is publishing's voracious
appetite for great stories written in a distinctive writing voice. Every
bestseller list is proof of that.
Linda: Is there anything
you're working on that you would like your readers to know about?
Thea:
I'm working on a couple of contemporary women's fiction proposals, and a
mystery idea. I love writing contemporary – I've done a handful of
contemporary novellas for both Leisure and Kensington, and a Harlequin Blaze,
and I just loved doing them, and I want to do more. I'd be curious whether
readers would like that. Anyone who wants to contact me, I'd love to hear
from you: TheaDevine@AOL.com
Linda: Thank you so much,
Thea.
Thea:
Thank YOU for giving me this
opportunity.
So
there you have it, folks. If you
have any questions, you can write Thea directly.
And while you’re at it, visit her website at: www.theadevine.com.
Linda
Morelli
GWN
Historical Editor