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liwappily _Ever After
ome days, Jan
Greenberg does
her own laun-
dry. She walks
the dog. She
cleans. She goes
to the grocery
store.
But don't be
fooled by appear-
ances. This is not
:just any other
• mortal.
When she sits
down at her computer,
Jan Greenberg enters a
completely different
realm. Here, there's no
• new dishwashing liquid
bursting with cleaning
power, no embarrassing
static cling, no need for
Weight Watchers.
Instead, it is a world of
Camillas and Lady
Brittanys and Lord
Phillips, of intrigue and
suspense, of damsels and
dashing men, true love
and stories that — sigh
— always end happily
ever after.
Jan Greenberg, of
West Bloomfield, is a
romance writer. The
author of 10 books, she
writes under the pseudo-
nym Jill Gregory. Her
most recent work, pub-
lished this month by
Dell, is Forever After, the
story of a feisty maiden
named Camilla and the
handsome, bold lord
whose heart she wins.
Mrs. Greenberg's career
began in Chicago, where
she was born and raised.
Twelve years ago, she
settled in West Bloom-
field with her husband
and daughter.
As a child, "I wanted to
be an English teacher,"
she says. "I never actual-
ly thought I could be a
writer; those were people
who lived far away on
some mountaintop, not
ordinary people."
But after she read a
few romances, she real-
ized, "I can do that." It
was the late 1970s, just
as the romance novel
industry was coming into
its heyday.
Before then, romance
novels were essentially
short books with about
as much personality as
overcooked spaghetti —
little mystery, no
intrigue, predictable
plots. Then people like
Danielle Steele came
along.
Today,
romances
account for some 70 per-
cent of all books sold,
and the Romance Writers
of America organization
boasts 6,200 members.
Mrs. Greenberg decid-
ed she wanted to set her
first book during the
American Revolution.
The work began at her
local library.
"I read books on ship
building (which features
prominently in the story)
and about the Revolu-
tion," she says. Then she
wrote two drafts of what
would become
Two
Distant Shores — includ-
ing one version in long-
hand. (Today, she uses
only a word processor.)
Once the novel was
complete, Mrs. Green-
berg returned to the
library, where she looked
at guides like The
Writer's Market. The
next step was sending
her book out.
In what those in the
industry would consider
a minor miracle, Two
Distant Shores was
accepted by the second
publisher who saw it.
Though always confident
the book would sell, Mrs.
Greenberg was surprised
by the news.
"I was flying," is the
way she puts it. (Or, in
the language of the
genre: breathless, she
sat on her elegant couch
and began to take it all
in. "Could it be?" she
gasped, knowing that her
life would, from this
moment forward, change
irrevocably and forever.)
Mrs. Greenberg doesn't
have her head up in the
clouds any longer. She
has an agent, an acute
sense of what makes a
successful book (her
Wayward Heart was on
the New York Times
best-seller list) and a
work ethic that would
please Karl Marx him-
self. The actual writing
of a romance, she
explains, is anything but
romantic.
First comes the synop-
sis. Inevitably, it will
feature Character A
(let's call her Lydia) and
Character B (let's call
him Ridge). Everyone
knows that Lydia and
Ridge are eventually
going to get together, but
first the path of true love
must run a rocky course.
That Ridge + Lydia +
problems + happy ending
= a romance novel,
though, is putting it
too simply. "You
absolutely need a
good story to tell, a
moving plot that's
entertaining with
well-developed charac-
ters," Mrs. Greenberg
says. Flexibility
is a must, too.
A writer may
start out think-
ing Ridge and
Lydia will marry
in Tahiti, "but lots of
times your characters
will take you in a differ-
ent direction," Mrs.
Greenberg says.
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