There’s a famous old New Yorker cartoon of a writer surrounded by dogs eating, sleeping, scratching themselves, etc. while he types away in one corner. In the doorway stands a woman—his wife? his slatternly muse?—saying forcefully, “Write about dogs!”
How does this apply to my current project, The Vanth? Well, I know something about love and sex, about fantasy and yearning. I know something about being a young woman (been there!), something about artists and professors. I know a little about traveling in Italy, about buying and cooking the local food, about Tarquinia and its painted tombs … About Etruscan warriors: not so much, but a little.
Thanks to my husband and his degrees in Classics, I know a bit about the art, culture and history of the Etruscans, the people who ruled much ofItalybefore the rise ofRome. Unlike most of the audience I hope to find for this romance, I know what a Vanth is—but prior knowledge is not necessary, I hope, to enjoying the book.
Emotion recollected in tranquility
As a young woman I spent far too much of my life agonizing about whether I was loved; how much I was loved; how to make him (the “him” of the moment) love me, or love me more, or love me the way I wanted to be loved; and if or when I would ever be truly loved. This is something I definitely know. I know a lot about how people can make things difficult for themselves by compulsively second-guessing themselves and their lovers. Luckily I am now very happily married, and so I can recollect all this seething emotion in the recommended tranquility.
Never mind the exotic locale, lovely as it may be; never mind time travel and all the paranormal elements; never mind even the sex scenes, both sweet and steamy: in a romance, tension is what it’s all about. Will the lovers find each other? And then, having found each other, will they be able to get past all the static in their brains, all the fears and doubts, both real and manufactured, that keep them from trusting each other? In a romance, no matter how steamy or dramatic, the answer is always finally YES. Sometimes it happens that way in real life, too.