GottaWriteNetwork would like to welcome award-winning author Rowena Cherry. Ms. Cherry is the author of the Science Fiction romance Forced Mate.
Serena: Thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions.I would like to start by asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself. Looking at your bio on your website, you've lived an amazing life so far. What made you choose to write?
Ms. Cherry: Why I write…Words and meanings have always fascinated me. I have always written to amuse myself. It's an amazing feeling to think that my writing amuses others, too!
When I was seven or eight, I discovered writing. I transcribed the pop songs of the day. I wrote the most terrible doggerel of my own-usually derivative and vaguely sexually coercive, though I had no idea what "You're going to be mine, meant.
Looking back, I am horribly embarrassed to think that I showed these efforts to female relatives and maiden teachers at school.
When I was at university, my ideal was to stay in academe forever, earn a masters and then a doctorate in literature, and psychoanalyze minor Shakespearean characters.
I could not afford to stay on for a fifth year, which is probably a good thing. So, I looked for a teaching post and ended up teaching in a British boarding school in Dorset. After about four or five years, I moved to London first to tutor part-time and further my education, then to teach older students. Then, I married, and we moved to Germany.
I've always written letters to family and friends...stream of consciousness material, on what I was feeling, seeing, currently amused over. After I'd sent a long Christmassy poem about winter birdlife in the Taunus mountains, a publisher friend of my husband's -albeit a publisher of automotive magazines with nothing whatsoever to do with New York paperbacks!-told me that I ought to write professionally.
Eventually, I decided to take his advice.
Serena: Are you working as well as writing, or are you able to write as your full time job?
Ms. Cherry: Neither. Perhaps I am not as efficient as other authors…The "perhaps may be self indulgent. There's no doubt about it. I am not efficient with my time.
I am a full time wife, and became a mother relatively late in life. My small family is a priority. Though my child attends school, I had no idea how much is involved in being a schoolchilds' parent. Even if there is no "soccer -and there is!- there's always another form to fill in, another newsletter to read, homework to supervise, a school outing for which parent chaperones are needed…. Also, for the last two years I have taught chess to six and seven year olds, one morning a week. I shall probably volunteer again.
The other European habit I've never been able to break is cooking dinner from scratch. That takes another hour or so out of my day that could be spent writing.
Serena: How long have you been writing?
Ms. Cherry: Eleven or twelve years.
Serena: Do you have a special secret ritual you do before writing, like candles or music?
Ms. Cherry: If it were a secret, would I tell you? No. (Smiling). Truthfully, I do not have a special ritual. If I've a scene in my head, I'll get up at 3 a.m. and write it. If the right turn of phrase occurs to me as I'm driving, I'll pull over at the nearest safe spot and scrawl on the back of my shopping list.
Serena: How did you find out that your book was accepted, a call or a letter...email?How did you feel? What celebrating did you do?
Ms. Cherry: In the case of FORCED MATE --which I sold twice, first e-rights to an e-publisher, and later the paperback rights to DORCHESTER as a result of a nationwide contest success-- telephone calls.
With MATING NET, emails.
For INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL, which is with an agent, I anticipate emails.
I feel delight and awe, every time. I celebrate with a high five (handslap). You see, I am a cautious type. I don't consider my literary chickens can be counted until the first royalty check arrives, although, Dorchester did pay me an advance with my contract, and banking that was a wonderful feeling.
I'll never know how many copies the e-publisher sold, or how much they should have paid me and did not.
Serena: Can you please tell us a bit about Forced Mate? There are two versions out there, the e-book and the print, what's the difference? Is there one?
Ms. Cherry: Thank you for asking. I found it very interesting to "wear two hats if you will pardon another cliché. I sold both the e-version and the paperback version within months of each other, and worked with different editors, being careful not to share either editor's requests with the other.
I tell you, sometimes it was tempting. Neither book is as good as it could have been, IMHO if I'd put all the editors' brilliant comments together.
The original e-version's editor targeted FORCED MATE for the sci-fi romance audience, and for readers of e-books. I don't have an e-book reader, and I am very nervous of the technology of downloading files, so this was all new to me.
Alicia Condon of Dorchester Publishing needed to polish FORCED MATE for a mass market, paperback audience including -we hoped-- readers who might not have picked up a futuristic before, let alone science fiction.
Basically, the differences that make one version of FORCED MATE a Love Spell futuristic and the other a (soft) sci-fi romance are small details, and do not change the overall story. It is whether or not one uses words like "astrophysics; whether or not one discusses the fact that there is yeast in urine (in the context of recycling cuisine and deep space bread); whether or not one mentions the fact that all breeds of dog evolved from wolves, and speculates that the same thing could happen with bipeds…. That sort of thing.
I should also like to mention that I got my e- and POD rights back after the original e-publisher went out of business. Now, the e-version is self published and available from my website www.rowenacherry.com and from www.ebookisle.com and from www.mystiquebooks.com.
This revised, self-published version has an excerpt from MATING NET at the back.
Serena: The characters in Forced Mate are extremely strong personalities. How did you come up with them? Do they 'talk' to you? Are they in charge of what happens, or are you?
Ms. Cherry: Thank you for saying so...If I won't disappoint you too much by saying so, I think the only character who ‘talked to me was Tarrant-Arragon’s grandfather, the Emperor Djohn-Kronos (MATING NET) who refused to be the villain I wanted him to be.
One day, I'm going to have to write Djohn-Kronos a Third Time Lucky in Love story, but of course he can never marry this lucky female. It would muck up the official family tree-which readers can find at www.rowenacherry.com/familytree/
A psychic tells me that I am a "pantser and that my characters do talk to me. I don't know. I don't sit at my desk and indulge in a little chat with a name on the screen or a collage of hunky torsos.
Imagine it:
"All right, Blue Hunk. We're at page 100 of the manuscript. You've got your clothes off. You've got her clothes off. Do you think it's about time you had a love scene with that awkward female you're supposed to be mating with at some point in this book?"
(Blue Hunk does not answer)
"No? Then what funny/sexy/heroic deeds are we going to do this chapter…?"
On the other hand, I loathe writing outlines before I start, so maybe I simply don't understand how a character talks. Or perhaps I'm too pigheaded to listen, or to admit that I listen.
As for how I come up with them: All my characters are composites. Most are made up of at least three people I've met or literary characters I've studied. The English mercenary, Grievous, for instance is part proud ex-military Dorset janitor, part Enobarbus (Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra), part six-foot-nine inch SAS ex-boyfriend whom I used to think of as OO6.9.
Serena: What made you choose sci-fi as one of the main topics in your book? What drew you to writing romance?
Ms. Cherry: What a fabulous question! In fact, I did have a hard time figuring out whether I wanted to write romantic science fiction, or science fiction romance. (If the sci-fi romance is soft enough, it gets called Futuristic.)
The last line of FORCED MATE is what decided the issue. In a romance, the hero and heroine save the world (or whatever), and then they overcome whatever inner turmoil has stopped them from declaring their everlasting love for each other. In a science fiction, they get the romantic business out of the way … then they save the world.
Back in 1997 I entered the Chesapeake Romance Writers of America Chapter's Last Line contest. My last line was awarded "Most Poignant Last Line."
I wasn't about to change an award winning last line, so that settled it. FORCED MATE was a romance.
As for why sci-fi entered the scheme of thing at all, FORCED MATE had to be some degree of sci-fi because I wanted Tarrant-Arragon to be the ultimate hero. I wanted him to be a god and an Emperor's heir, and I wanted a clash of cultures between my hero and heroine.
Since I am a former teacher of History (as well as English) I didn't want to take liberties with real historical figures. I felt no such inhibitions about Darth Vader types... or indeed in expanding broadly on Erich von Daeniken's theory that all our ancient gods and mythological heroes were aliens. Or the late Francis Crick's proposal that extraterrestrials planted the seeds of life on earth.
Serena: Could you tell us about any other books you have in the works?
Ms. Cherry: MATING NET is a short story, just over 10,000 words. I heard yesterday that an e-publisher has it scheduled to come out in the first week of October.
Here's an excerpt of my blurb
The next full length book is tentatively titled INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL,which is another chess title. It is another alien Djinn romance, with an Earth-educated hero who tries rock star courtship tactics to soothe the savage breast of the angry lady-Djinn with whom he is marooned on an otherwise idyllic deserted island.
She is something of a fashionista, so is appalled to find herself having to wear his long, white T-shirt, and to take her turn at digging latrines….and matters get worse when she realizes how much one must suffer to be conventionally beautiful on a desert island without toiletries.
The hero has a bioluminescent tattoo on his penis (which, being bioluminescent, lights up under certain conditions… but not in an operating theater) and it will get him into a lot of trouble if the wrong female from his past sees it.
Ms. Cherry: Very true. Also both versions are obtainable at: Mystique Books. Or, if readers would like to check out excerpts, my interactive Djinn family tree, my newsletter, reviews, and jigsaw puzzles of half naked hunks, they should visit my website first at www.rowenacherry.com.
Thank you very much indeed for reading this!
--Serena Polheber
Rowena Cherry makes the right move with Forced Mate
