Pamela, welcome to TRR! Tell us about yourself.

I'm a Colorado girl. I grew up in a mountain-crazy, climbing family. My dad taught mountaineering and rock-climbing, and I grew up IN the mountains. He would lure me along with promises of Hershey bars. I have pictures of me as a 2-year-old with pig tales following my father up trails and feeding chipmunks.

I'm the eldest of four with a sister and two brothers. I'm very close to my family. My father is an attorney, and my mother is a registered nurse. My sister lives in Sweden and works in the IT industry. One of my brother has writing aspirations and teaches English as a state university. The other works for Merrill Lynch. I have two sons, two nephews and a niece whom I cherish.

I left home as an exchange student when I was 17 and lived in Denmark with wonderful people, whom I also consider family. I fell in love with the country -- and a Dane -- and ended up staying there for about three years until I ran out of visa options. It was very hard for me to come home again, because I was leaving my friends behind, but I love Colorado, too. When I got back, I hadn't spoken English for so long people said I had an accent!

I went to college at CU-Boulder. Unlike most CU students, who major in skiing with a minor in drunken revelry, I majored in Classics -- Latin, Greek, ancient art and history. I loved it and had studied it in Denmark. I focused on archaeology as much as I could, and I eventually studied archaeology and art history in graduate school.

In the meantime, I got married and had two children -- both boys. Yes, I did this while going to college. Not sure why I thought it was a good idea, but it worked.

I was almost finished with my master's degree when I realized I was using college as a way to hide from my dream of being a writer. The longer I stayed in school the longer I could avoid actually sitting down and finding out whether I had the talent to write fiction.

I dropped out with just my thesis to go, prompting lots of people to tell my I was CRAZY. But all I've ever wanted to do was write fiction, so it made sense to me.

Shortly thereafter I got divorced and have been single since.

Are you coming to romance writing from another job?

After I dropped out of grad school, I went into journalism. I figured it would give me a chance to exercise my writing muscles. I've been a journalist for 10 years now and have written a weekly opinion column for that long. It has been a wild ride, but I've experienced a lot, everything from feeding and petting a 400-pound Bengal tiger to staying in jail as an inmate so I could report on jail conditions. I became the first woman editor at both papers I've worked at and have won several national and lots of state journalism awards. My team and I won the National Journalism Award for Public Service in 2000 and were feted at the National Press Club across from the White House.

I am still an editor, now at a different news paper. It is exhausting trying to combine fiction writing with journalism, and I plan to quit the day job as soon as my fiction career is stable enough to support me.

What led you to write romance?

By the time I was a pre-teen, I knew I wanted to become a novelist. My parents had a lot of books, and I read them whenever I could -- Ayn Rand, Dostoevsky, James Michener, Leon Uris, Jane Austin, Nancy Drew, whatever. I read everything.

When I was about 15, I discovered romances and feel head over heels. I gave up reading depressing classics and stuck with romance. My friends and I used to write and trade "love scenes." These love scenes usually involved us getting locked in the school after hours with the skinny boy of our dreams. Being alone in a junior high meant, of course, that the only logical thing to do was... Ahem. I had a crush on a boy named Mike Olson, so it was me and Mike Olson in the choir room. Things like that.

Tell us about your road to publication.

I started writing my first book, now titled SWEET RELEASE, right after I dropped out of grad school. I used my research skills from academia to do research for the novel. I spent a fair amount of time on research before writing an outline and then my first two chapters.

I had to rush to finish the chapters to enter them in Colorado Romance Writer's Heart of the Rockies contest. I didn't expect to place, let alone become a finalist. In fact, I won first place. I almost fainted! This was in 1994.

But about two months after I won -- I had about four chapters by then -- I fell while mountain climbing. I fell a total of 40 feet while climbing with my father and was badly injured. I had to be flown by helicopter to the hospital and spend years recovering. I still have pain from that accident every day. (I had a broken tibia, a ruptured quadriceps, a head injury, three broken ribs and more bruises than a math genius could count.)

The novel sat untouched or barely touched for a long, long time. In the middle of this, I got divorced. It was very hard to find time as a single mom and journalist for anything other than basic survival, especially with injuries and physical therapy, etc.

I almost gave up. Then one day I found a letter sitting on my keyboard. It was addressed to "Lady Pamela Clare" from Alec Kenleigh, my hero in SWEET RELEASE. It was dated April 20, 1730. I opened it and read how much my hero wanted me to tell his story and that of Cassie Blakewell, the woman he loved. Alec told me to trust myself and to believe that I could finish the book. He assured me he knew I could do it and told me that their story depended on me.

The letter was from my ex-husband, who, despite our differences, had reached out in the best way he could to encourage me to follow my dream. I cried my eyes out and went back to the hard business of writing whenever I could find time.

I finally finished the book in 2001. I got an agent pretty quickly -- I really didn't want to try to sell it without one. It took about a year before it sold, though it wasn't on the market the entire time. My agent had recommended some revisions, which I agreed to.

I was at work when the call came on June 10, 2002. My agent said, "I wanted to let you know Leisure has made a two-book offer. Call me if you want the details." IF? IF? I screamed at the top of my lungs -- and I couldn't figure out how to use the phone. It took about five minutes before I could quit shaking enough to dial her number.

When I held my book in my hands for the first time a few weeks ago, all I could do was cry. My entire life, everything I am, was poured into this book. It took everything I have to finish it, and now it's out. There is no feeling like this in the world.

What kind of research was involved for your first book?

I researched everything I could: clothing, underwear, fabrics, kitchen utensils, seasonal diet, historical events, historical people and their families, architecture, technology (how did they plant crops, make fabric, make cheese, get water out of a well), medicine, native flora and fauna, laws, the courts, transportation, horse body parts (I have a chart!), horse care, seasonal chores/farmwork, folklore, 18th-century songs and jokes, women's status, wines, desserts, art and literature of the age, pop culture..... and on and on and on.

I needed to see and feel their world three-dimensionally before I could write it. When I had it in my mind's eye, I knew I was ready to write.

Of interest relative to my first book: I translated my own Latin for that story. I took a couple of love poems by Catullus and placed them strategically in the story. I made Alec, my hero, adept at Latin and sat him down at a key moment to read the poems. "Odi et amo... I love and I hate." Easy to translate, but I milked the words to give them just the right shade of meaning. It takes up less than a paragraph of the story, but it felt so right to have it in there.

Also, it's not hard to see my art history and archaeology background in the story.

Tell us about your debut book.

My book tells the story of Alec Kenleigh, the wealthy heir to an English shipbuilding empire, and Cassie Blakewell, the daughter of a struggling Virginia plantation owner.

Cassie buys a gravely wounded convict to spare him the indignity of dying in chains, not knowing that he is truly a member of the English gentry who will survive to steal her heart.

Alec has been kidnapped, beaten nearly to death and given papers that claim he is Cole Braden, a convicted ravisher and defiler of women. He finds himself forced to live out another man's sentence -- 14 years of indentured servitude -- in the Colonies, far from his home. He knows the only way to regain his life is to prove his true identity. But there are those who conspire to thwart him, even to kill him.

Meanwhile, Cassie doesn't know what to think of the convict. His behavior seems to indicate that he is well-bred, no common criminal. What can she trust? Her mind, which warns her not to trust him? Or her heart, which tells her there is more to him than his papers declare?

Their desire for one another draws them together, heightens the risk they both face. If caught, Alec could be hanged and Cassie ostracized. And yet their desire for one another is the one thing neither of them can ignore.

Who are your influences as a writer?

I adored Kathleen Woodiwiss as a teen-ager. I read "Wolf and the Dove" and "Flame and the Flower." I devoured romances, and, truthfully, I didn't always look at the author's name. Only Kathleen's stand out for me from that time. Ironic now that I am an author.

In my 20s and now in my 30s, I have read lots of Patricia Potter, lots of Julie Garwood and Elizabeth Lowell. I love Maggie Osborne, too. My newest favorite author is Karen Marie Moning. (Oooh, Dageus! Why is there no possessed dark Druid in my life?)

What does your family think of having a romance author in their midst?

I asked them, and they said they'd have to get back to me on that.

My brother says the consensus seems to be "honored and astonished."

They've been wonderfully supportive. My sister and sister-in-law read my chapters as they come out of the computer and offer their feedback. One of my brothers helps me with plotting when I get stuck, and the other brother has been great about encouraging friends and even strangers to buy my book. "See this? My sister wrote it. Buy it."

They all give me buckets of moral support, which all authors need.

My two boys are understanding of the demands placed on me by writing, and I adore them. They've taken the household chores on their shoulders to free up time for me to write.

Tell us about plans for future books.

Right now I am finishing the sequel to SWEET RELEASE, titled CARNAL GIFT. It features Jamie, Cassie's grown-up little brother, as the hero, and Bríghid Ní Maelsechnaill, an Irish Catholic peasant maid, as the heroine.

Jamie is in Britain on official colony business when circumstances throw him together with Bríghid. She is given to him as a sexual gift by a corrupt English earl and former friend of Jamie's. Jamie must pretend to claim her in order to protect her from the earl, and his decision to do so endangers his mission -- and his life. Then he faces another dilemma: how to protect her from himself. The story is set in 1754, in the midst of the century which saw the harsh penal laws enacted upon Irish Catholics.

I hope to make this a trilogy and finish with another colonial, set just after the French and Indian War. I love this family, so it will be hard to stop. Just in case, I've made certain Cassie and Alec have lots of kids (though, given their passionate natures, they probably would have had lots of kids without my involvement).

Then I plan to write a contemporary or two and head back to historicals. I have an Irish medieval in mind and I would love to continue to explore both Colonial American and Irish/English settings. I would also dearly love to set a story or two in my beloved Denmark -- where Vikings come from. I have one contemporary and one Viking-era story in mind.

I think it's important to take a break from historicals once in a while by writing contemporaries. The research is pretty intensive, and I don't want to get burned out or find myself buried alive in index cards.

How can readers get in touch with you?

I love to hear from readers! I'm interested in the kinds of stories (time periods, etc.) readers like -- and, of course, I love reader feedback about my books.

I can be reached via e-mail at pamelclare@earthlink.net. I have a web site at www.pamelaclare.com, and currently have a contest going. Readers can sign my guest book for a chance to win a log cabin quilt handmade by me. (No I haven't made it yet! I thought I'd let the winner pick the colors.)

Pamela, thank you for joining us, and best of luck! Readers, we hope to soon have a review of Sweet Release in our Historical section.

April 14, 2003