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Welcome to our New Faces column! We're delighted to introduce some of the debut authors on your romance bookshelves, and this time we're visiting with Kathleen Eschenburg, whose first book is The Nightingale's Song from Harper Torch. Let's meet her. Kathleen, welcome to TRR! Tell us about yourself. I was born and raised in Virginia, took my BS degree from James Madison University before it was a university, and thought I'd spend my entire life living in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains teaching school and raising a family. Life, however, takes unexpected twists and turns. I fell in love with my own personal hero and moved to Maryland's Eastern Shore where I embarked upon those hectic years of raising a large family and tending the family business. Then Fate threw another curve ball and my husband died after a year of battling cancer. It took me a long time to get my feet back under me, and for that, my wonderful children get the credit. You look in the face of a toddler and know you have to find a way to go on. No choice. So I did, and now I find myself in a new, unexpected career. Are you coming to romance writing from another job? I spent twenty-five years in the hospitality industry, picking up the necessary skills on the fly. Operating a resort hotel as a family business means you must be prepared to do everything-from checking in the guest, to changing the sheets, to repairing the air conditioner at 2 am, to filing the quarterly tax reports and typing the W-2 forms. A sense of humor helps. After my husband's death, I sold the motel in Maryland and began building a small cabana-style resort on a stretch of Caribbean beach in Belize. Even now, I don't know if that endeavor was incredibly brave or incredibly foolish-and probably it was a little of both-but it most definitely was an Experience for me and the children! It was during the Belize years that I began writing and discovered the exhilaration in creating a fictional world. The Belize resort sold about the same time my first manuscript was picked up by HarperCollins and I've never looked back. Now when I'm up at 2 am it is not to fiddle with air conditioner compressors but to fiddle with intractable characters who insist upon doing it their way. What led you to write romance? Are you a longtime reader? Well, yes, I am a longtime reader. My grandmother was a wonderfully complex individual who had taught in a one room schoolhouse. She taught me how to read long before I ever hit a classroom; I can't remember ever being unable to read. But writing - no, I never dreamed of being a writer until after I'd completed my first manuscript. And then I stumbled onto the romance genre. In true confession style - I didn't know enough about writing or fiction marketing to make a conscious decision to write within a genre. However, I like a happy ending and love to bury myself in a good love story so that is what I wrote. Writers are encouraged to write what they know; I say write what you like to read and bring your knowledge of humanity to the crafting of character and situation. Tell us about your road to publication. My road to publication was fairly simple. Shortly after completing that first manuscript (not a romance, by the way) I discovered Compuserve's Writers Forum and RWA Online. I lurked there for awhile, absorbing this incredible array of knowledge, until I gathered enough courage to actually participate. I had come to the realization that I loved the challenge of writing fiction, but hadn't yet admitted to the dream of publication. One day I signed onto the forum and discovered a waiting message from Diana Gabaldon, offering her assistance if I ever decided to submit my work for publication. That lit the fire. I sent out queries to agents; Steven Axelrod responded with a request to read the complete manuscripts. He liked them, offered representation and then sold to Harper/Avon within a month. So, I've been writing for five years now and two of those years have been as a contracted writer. What kind of research was involved for The Nightingale's Song? Since I write historical romance, there is a lot of research involved, but that's no problem as I love doing the research. For the first book I needed a good underpinning in the experience of Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century, a working knowledge of the Klu Klux Klan, Reconstruction in Virginia, Civil War background for a Rebel cavalry officer and Union prison camps, the history of Pimlico Race Track -and I almost swooned with joy when I came across the little nugget that the clubhouse at Pimlico in the 1870s was painted violet. It is those kinds of details that make the fictive world come alive. It isn't really research, but I also read contemporaneous literature that my characters may have read and go searching for the right music to play on my car stereo as I'm ferrying kids to their various activities. For NIGHTINGALE that music was a combination of old Irish airs, Civil War ballads like LOREENA and AURA LEE, and over and over again, DANNY BOY and TENTING TONIGHT, the latter two pretty much summing up the psychology of my two main characters. I never play music when I'm writing, but by playing the right music when I'm away from writing due to the obligations of motherhood, I find it much easier to sink back into total immersion in the fictive world when the real life duties are set aside for writing time. Who are your influences as a writer? Any good writer is an influence, although sometimes it is daunting. I remember one time when I had read Barbara Kingsolver, followed by Tom Wolfe, followed by signing on to the Writers Forum and reading an excerpt from Diana Gabaldon's current work-in-progress. I almost hung up my spurs, thinking that no matter how hard I tried, I'd never be able to create that kind of magic in my craft. Fortunately for me, common sense prevailed (or pure stubbornness) and I kept going, striving to be the best I could be - which is not a bad goal to set for any endeavor. I love swashbuckling adventure stories so I'd have to name Dumas, Stevenson, Baroness Orczy, Diana Gabaldon and Dame Dorothy Dunnett as favorites. And I love Southern stories, so the list expands to include Mark Twain, Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, Ellen Glasgow and William Faulkner. Oh, and James Lee Burke-he can't write fast enough to suit me. As for the romance genre, my icons are LaVryle Spencer, Laura Kinsale and Judith Ivory/Judy Cuevas. What does your family think of having a romance author in their midst? My mother was the first person to encourage me to take writing seriously. My sister and brothers, and their spouses, are my most vocal fan club. But the honors go to my children, especially the two youngest who still live at home. I cannot tell you how many times they have cooked a meal or tossed in a tub of laundry while Mom wanders through some alternate landscape. When we made the first pilgrimage to a bookstore to see THE NIGHTINGALE'S SONG actually on the shelves, my youngest daughter got tears in her eyes. "You did it, Mom," she said. If that's not loving support, I don't know what is! Tell us about plans for future books. My next book is a prequel to THE NIGHTINGALE'S SONG and will be out in about a year. THE LAST CAVALIER is set in Virginia during the war years, 1861-1865, and follows Royce Kincaid (Gordon's older brother) as he enters into an arranged marriage on the eve of secession and then struggles to find the right way-the moral way-in a world gone mad with moral ambiguities. Royce and Annabelle's story is a passionate one-the passions of war and of love-but mostly it is a story of hope conquering fear. How can readers get in touch with you? I love hearing from readers! My web page is http:k-eschenburg.com and there is a link there to my email address: kathleen@k-eschenburg.com. Regular mail can be sent care of my publisher:
Publicity Dept. Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us! Readers, we have a of reviewThe Nightingale's Song in our historical section. January 8, 2002
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