Romance Writers Weekly Blog Chat for September 8, 2015

Do you like to read romance novels? Wouldn’t you like to know more about your favorite authors? Well, you came to the right place! Join the writers of Romance Weekly as we go behind the scenes of our books and tell all…… About our writing of course! Every Tuesday we’ll all answer the same questions and after you’ve enjoyed the blog on this site, we’ll direct you to another. So come back often for a thrilling ride. Tell your friends and feel free to ask us questions in the comment box.

Welcome to this weeks Romance Writer Weekly blog hop. If you've arrived at my blog after having visited Tracey Gee  LOVExtra.com http://wp.me/p5uNdS-qM  then welcome, and I'm glad you're here. I'm sure Tracey had a really terrific answer to today's chat. If you haven't visited Tracey, then please hop back to her website once you've finished reading my blog.

What are chatting about today? Well, we've been asked the classic question by Susan Scott Shelley, http://www.susanscottshelley.com/#!her-blog/c1cod  ... "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner." No, we're not discussing the Sidney Poitier movie by that title. What Susan has suggested is that given the choice of any author in the world, either living or dead, who would we like to have to as a dinner guest?

I have to be honest and tell you what a difficult choice this was for me. I have so many favorites, it was hard to choose. But in the end, my all time favorite romance writer who had an exceptional flair for combining a wonderful mystery along with a satisfying romance was... Mary Stewart.

Maybe you're not familiar with Mary Stewart. So a little history is probably required. Mary was born Mary Florence Elinor Rainbow on September 17, 1916 in Sunderland, County Durham, England. Her husband was knighted in 1974 and she was granted the title of Lady at the same time. Always an avid story teller, Mary began writing in the early 1950's and her first book, "Madam, Will You Talk?" was an instant success.

Mary was the most popular during the late 1950's and into the 1980's and wrote over twenty-three novels, including children's books and poetry. One of her movies, 'The Moon-Spinners" was made into a movie by Disney.

My favorite book was "Five Coaches Waiting". I have a very old, very dog-eared copy of that book and I absolutely love it. I must have read "Five Coaches Waiting" at least thirty times, if not more, over the years. It was because of this book and others like it, that I fell in love with the romantic suspense genre.

There is a wonderful sentiment about Mary's writing style that I found on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stewart_%28novelist%29, and I'd like to re-quote it here. "She seamlessly combined the two genres, maintaining a full mystery while focusing on the courtship between two people, so that the process of solving the mystery 'helps to illuminate' the hero's personality—thereby helping the heroine to fall in love with him."  How true!

Sadly, Mary Stewart passed away on May 9, 2014. If I had had the chance to have Mary Stewart to dinner, I would love to have discussed her ideas for plotting and setting. She placed her novels in some very romantic and very real settings, and it seemed clear to me that she must have done a lot of traveling to Greece, Austria, Spain and France. Her descriptions of these locations are amazing, and many times the words created such strong visuals that I could see, smell and hear the words written on the pages. Her hero's were each unique, never perfect, but they always rose to the occasion when needed to help solve the mystery or subdue the villain. Her heroines were smart, strong willed and able to survive any of the unusual situations they found themselves in.

I think dinner wouldn't have been enough, and I would have probably invited Mary to spend the entire weekend. Wouldn't that would have been wonderful!

Now that you've heard all about my dinner guest, please hop over to A.S. Fenichel  http://asfenichel.net/blog    and read about who she's inviting to dinner! I'm sure it's someone terrific.

I hope to see you next time!

Warmly,
Mikki Cober