Today Mama Writers welcomes a very special guest, suspense and romance author, Roxanne St. Claire. Roxanne is a fabulously talented author, mom, and to be honest, she’s one of my idols. Once I read one of her books, I needed to go out and get her entire backlist. If you haven’t read Roxanne yet, you are missing out! She’s addictive.

Roxanne St. Claire is a bestselling, award winning author of twenty-three novels of suspense and romance.  She currently writes a popular romantic suspense series called “The Bullet Catchers” that features the adventures of an elite cadre of bodyguards and security professionals, published by Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books.  In addition to the RITA Award, the highest honor in romance publishing, her books have won numerous industry awards, including the National Reader’s Choice Award, the Daphne du Maurier for best romantic suspense, the HOLT Medallion, the Maggie, Booksellers Best, Book Buyers Best, several Awards of Excellence, the Aspen Gold and the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence.

In 2008, readers enjoyed the first “Bullet Catcher Trilogy” featuring three connected stories titled First You Run, Then You Hide and Now You Die.  This year, Bullet Catcher fans can enjoy back-to-back excitement when Hunt Her Down and Make Her Pay are released in September and October, 2009.

ROXANNE ST. CLAIRE

Hello Mama Writers and thank you so much for the warm and friendly welcome.  I’m honored to guest at this new site, and thrilled to be among that small portion of the population that knows you can write an entire scene in the running time of The Wizard of Oz.

I have worked from home since the day my first child was born, fifteen and a half years ago (which -gasp! – means we are months from a driver’s license).  I wasn’t a writer back then, but I revamped a PR career into a successful marketing consulting business and set up shop with a month-old infant in a cradle next to my desk.  I never returned to a normal nine-to-five lifestyle, and have become a bit of an expert on working with children in the house.

When my daughter turned two and my son six, my business was at its peak.  I had a lovely British woman come to my house every day at 8:00 and stay until 5:00 as their nanny.  One day, my daughter asked me for a “tomahto” on her sandwich.  I just looked at her, stunned.  Someone else was raising my children, and, after years of infertility before conceiving them, the absolute wrongness of that hit me like a five pound tomAYto over the head.  I gave up my business to be a full time mom and nurture my own children…and a secret fantasy of becoming a published author.  By then, I had finished my first manuscript, joined the Romance Writers of America, and the dream of a writing career had grabbed me by the throat and would not let go.

Those first few years, the discipline I’d learned as a business owner carried me through.  I wrote while my children slept (and, naturally, that second one stopped taking naps at fifteen months) and spent many hours on the playroom floor with a Barbie doll in one hand (giving her a backstory and conflict, of course) and the Writer’s Digest Guide to Agents in the other.  So many rejections rolled in that my family expected me to return from a trip to the mailbox in tears. But the kids made it to school age, and my fantasy became reality when I sold my first book to Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books in 2002.  My children are now 15 and 11, and my wall of covers has twenty-two books on display, with more coming this year.  Lots of things have grown over the years in this house.

My life as a writer and mom is so intertwined that I rarely separate the two.  I can write a love scene with Sponge Bob and Patrick squawking in the background.  I can nurse a child through the flu and my book through a deadline on the same week.  I can take a trip to a conference knowing my kids won’t be traumatized by my week-long absence because they are comforted by my daily presence – even if some days it seems like they only see the back of my head. I go to a Little League game and get a story idea, read twenty-five galley pages during one ballet class, and get five new readers just chatting with moms after school.

The years and books (and kids!) have taught me many lessons along the way.  To mothers of children both young and teenaged, I recommend you have the following on hand when writing with kids in the house:

A door. Or at least “a sacred place” where you can gather research, work on the computer, write with some measure of privacy.  This is not to say the closed door can’t be knocked upon by the family, but only for a good reason.  Not to ask “Can I have a Pop Tart?” but to tell me “I’m bleeding.  Bad.”  If the door is left open (and I do as often as I can, when not writing ‘fresh pages’) then they can come in, but I ask that they don’t make a demand until I’ve stopped typing.  (Or that sentence will never get finished as I hear it in my head.)  My daughter calls it “waiting for your fingers to take a breath.”

Two uninterrupted hours a day. Yes.  You do have them.  You do.  How about before they wake up?  I hear you groan, but trust me, this is doable.  When my daughter was three, I listened to a tape by the Great and Powerful Uber-success Debbie Macomber.  She said that everyone has two hours in a day.  Hah, said I.  Sure, I have two hours at 9:30 at night, and just enough energy to pour wine and try not to dribble it down my chin.  But Debbie suggests getting up two hours before your children, which, in my case, was 4:45 AM.  Are you kidding me?  I am a morning person, but not a Middle of the Night person!

How badly do you want it, asks sweet little diabolical goal-setting bestselling goddess Debbie Macomber on her tape.  Bad, I answered her.  I want it so darn bad.  So I set the alarm. Over the course of a week or two, I shifted my body clock and became a morning writer, surprised by how fertile and active my imagination was at that hour.  I wrote the book that became my first sale, TROPICAL GETAWAY, in the two hours before sunrise over the course of about five months.

Realistic expectations. Remember the first few weeks when you had a newborn at home?  That’s when I learned to set realistic expectations about what I would accomplish in a day:  shower (forget blow-dry) and empty the dishwasher.  If I got that much done, it was a success.  The same is true about writing.  Set a realistic page count, and make yourself a calendar to figure how long it would take to produce a book at, say, three pages a day.  (Not long, really.  Think about it:  that’s 60 pages a month, skipping weekends.  You could write the whole book in six months.  Before the sun comes up.)  Know how much you can do and don’t make goals that set you up for failure.  (And plan on sickness, sleepless nights, and the unexpected.  They are kids, remember.)

Rules. As every work-from-home professional knows, you have to have rules.  Don’t knock unless there’s fire or blood.  Don’t answer the phone designated as “Mom’s work line.”  When that phone rings, there is to be no yelling in the house.  I once overheard my son, about five at the time and I was still in PR, instruct a friend of our simple guidelines:  “No screaming when Mommy’s on a client.”  I was not surprised that child’s mother never sent her son over again.

Support from loved ones. Yeah, that would be the man you married, your mother, your best friend.  They need to know how much this means to you, just as your school friends need to understand this is your job.  I admit I have the ultimate secret weapon – a husband who shops and cooks.  There is, somewhere in your life, one big job that you can hand over to someone else, even if you have to pay for it. A teenaged girl in the neighborhood can be a godsend for folding laundry and playing with the little ones after school, and every other week cleaning services cost about as much as two dinners at a decent restaurant.  The biggest thing is getting your close circle of family to understand that you are working and you can’t do it all.

And, guess what?  When the kids get older, they can help, especially with the marketing programs that require hours of stuffing bookmarks into envelopes. They can also pick up the chores that take you away from writing.  They might not like it, but…

Balance. You can’t – and shouldn’t  — work constantly.  This has always been a challenge fore me, especially with the lure of the internet and email and easy access to my computer.  You must find time to exercise, play, shop, relax, see movies, read books, connect with your husband and children.  This is called Filling the Well, and you need it.  Also, I strongly recommend having a community (not just on line, although that helps) of writers, mothers or not, because the more you write the more you want to talk about it in the shorthand that only other writers will understand.  Like, did your H/H get the HEA in your WIP or was she TSTL?

A sense of humor and a dose of patience. This is a crazy way to live, and if you can’t laugh about the ups and downs and frustrations and celebrations, then you will lose the joy of writing.  And once it goes away, it’s hard to get it back.  Keep laughing, maintain a stash of chocolate, have an understanding friend just a phone call away.  And when all else fails, pop in Dorothy and the gang.  Word of advice from a seasoned Oz-watcher:  as soon as you hear “I’m melting!” you can probably only write one more page.

To celebrate the new blog, I’m giving away books!!!  Drop a comment and let us know your best trick of the mama writing trade or what essential lesson you can share about this fun and crazy life.  THREE winners will get a copy of any one of the Bullet Catcher books (or their choice from my backlist).  Visit my website at www.roxannestclaire.com and pick a title (and Bullet Catcher!) that appeals to you…then drop a comment below!  I’ll stop in all day to answer questions, share ideas, and play with the mama writers!

Thanks again for the invitation to participate in this brilliant new community!

Rocki

Check out Roxanne’s Romantic Suspense Trilogy

The Bullet Catchers

Trained to protect. Able to kill. Willing to die. And drop-dead gorgeous.