I Stand in Awe for a Moment

Writing is a very solitary experience. You sit all alone at a keyboard making word after word transfer from your mind to the screen. If you're really, really good at it, the final result evokes in a reader the same thing you were thinking when you tried to capture the essence. Even when an editor offers you a contract, you don't really know who's going to read it and whether they will like it.

Oh, of course your mother will read it. Your best friend. Your sister and your boyfriend. They're obligated to not only buy it and read it but love it. The thing you don't know is whether strangers will like it. And really, short of writing the best possible story you can write, there's nothing you can do about the strangers.

So yesterday, I stumble on this entry on a Romance Readers forum:

"Please help me identify this old series romance. I read this book in the mid to late 1980s, and all I remember is that the author's last name was Ashley. Maybe Rebecca Ashley? I liked it enough that I kept asking the store owner to look up her name to find out if she'd written anything else, but as far as I know, she wrote only that one book and was never heard from again. The story was about a heroine who spied on the hero's company because she needed money for a desperate cause (such as a grandmother who needed an operation). I think I liked it because the betrayal plot was handled better than most. By the way, I'm pretty sure it was one of the longer Silhouette lines -- Intimate Moments or Special Edition."

The thread continues to report that Amazon helped her find the book she was looking for. It's BITTERSWEET BETRAYAL, Silhouette Special Edition #556 by Suzanne Ashley.

That's me. If you look down a few posts, you can see the cover and my joking about poor Suzanne being in a coma now.

Fortunately, Anne found this blog and now knows that she can read my newer works at Loose Id and Cerridwen.

I cannot begin to describe my amazement that someone who read that book eighteen years ago still thinks about the story.

I have to say a huge thank you to my new friend Anne at All About Romance for brightening the day of a writer who was beginning to wonder whether any of this was worth it. It truly is.

Now I'm off to write a great book. Have a wonderful day.
Delia