Author Q&A: Gayle Wilson
Author: Trish Milburn
Original Publication Date in Love Notes: November 2002

Q. If you could go back and do one thing differently in your career, what would it be?

A. I'm sure there are a hundred things I should have done differently, but the decisions I made were based on the best information I had at the time. I'm not going to second-guess them now. In other words, regrets won't get you anywhere.

Q. What do you think unpublished writers focus on more than they should?

A. The so-called "story" rules. I'm always reading on one loop or another what you can't do in category, and a lot of it I've done. As have a thousand other people. Another thing I see are writing or grammar rules — don't ever use passive voice, eliminate all instances of a certain word, never use a semicolon. I'm afraid that some of these rules get in the way of the emotion that is the heart of any romance novel. I know they can get in the way of telling your story.

Q. Is there any type of book you haven't written that you would like to?

A. A dozen. I'd love to write a mystery or a straight contemporary romance or a paranormal. I'd also love to write a really powerful short story. Or a collection of regional stories.

Q. Who are some of your favorite authors?

A. Oh, gosh! I have far too many to try to name them. My all-time favorite author was Dorothy Dunnett, who sadly passed away recently. I still have all her wonderful stories, thank goodness.

Q. Describe your publishing journey a bit. I know you were a high school English teacher. When were you able to quit that and write full-time? Did you miss teaching?

A. I wrote a short story in the 9th grade and then, more than 30 years later, I sat down and wrote a novel. I wrote no fiction whatsoever in between. I had no clue where to send the story, so I researched the market through my local library. I thought I'd written a Regency, but the house I sent it to told me it was a historical. The problem was it was only 75,000 words long. No one then was buying historicals at that length. I went back to the library for more research and discovered that the lowest word count was 95,000, the bottom of the range for Harlequin Historicals. I blithely added 20,000 to the end of my story and sent it off! I truly didn't know any better. HH requested revisions, but eventually they bought the book. Surprisingly, it went on to become a RITA finalist. 

I'd already had two books published and had two more sold when I realized I had enough years in the classroom to make a decent retirement. At about the same time, I figured out that I could make a living writing. I do miss the kids. I miss the fun of teaching, which is why I love giving writing workshops, I think. I don't miss the paper grading. I taught English, and I tried to do it right, so my students wrote a lot. I read everything they wrote. If it hadn't been for grading papers, I might have stuck with teaching a few more years.

Q. If you could change two things about the publishing business, what would they be?

A. Well, if I could wave my magic wand, I'd want things to be fair. The most talented and the hardest working writers would get the breaks and would be on the best-seller lists. The second thing I'd make happen would be that publishing houses would support their authors even through periods of low sales and personal crises.

If you weren't aiming at such pie in the sky changes, however, then I'd say I want better distribution for midlist and category authors. I'd also love to see editors who don't have too many authors and too many responsibilities.

Q. What are your feelings on self-promotion? Effective or not?

A. Probably not. Most authors can't afford the kind of promotion that puts books on the lists. The publishing houses can do that, but authors usually don't have that kind of money. Self-promotion makes us feel as if we have some control in a business over which we really have very little. Web sites and e-mail lists are the two things I've heard mentioned that might be cost-effective and do some good.

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Gayle Wilson is the RITA award-winning author of 29 Harlequin Intrigues and Harlequin Historicals. Her newest release is Rafe Sinclair's Revenge, a November Harlequin Intrigue in the new Phoenix Brotherhood series, an offshoot of the popular Men of Mystery series. Find out more at http://gaylewilson_author.tripod.com. 

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