Carolyn Brown

I started my first book in 1973 when my third child was born and wouldn't sleep at night. So she watched the fish in the aquarium and I wrote. Twenty years and enough rejection slips to wall paper the White House, I finally managed to sell a book but it wasn't that first one. That one set under the bed for 40 years and only came out last year--The Lilac Bouquet--and I'd had more than 80 books published before I finally got that one right!!

Let's see, I was a seamstress and worked in a fabric store. I managed a 50 apartment complex, did some teacher's aid work, worked at a newspaper and wrote an award winning humorous column for 14 years, but the most important job I had was being mother to three kids.

Quiet! Plain and simple. I have an office in my house and that's my ideal place to write.

At any holiday when our family all gets together, there's about 40-50 of us. All I have to do is sit in the corner and watch...and come away with enough ideas to keep me busy for years.

I LOVE small towns. They have a heart beat and pulse of their own. It's a place where everyone knows everyone and don't mind tattling.

Happy, Texas is a real place out in the Texas panhandle. It's a tiny little town in the midst of huge ranches. I'd always wanted to write a series set out there where the dirt and sky meet way on out there on the horizon. When I approached my editor with the idea, she loved it. The rest is history.

The debut book in my newest series, The Longhorn Canyon series--Cowboy Bold--just came out May 29. It's set in Sunset, Texas and right now we're planning five books in the series, but it could stretch out to a couple more.

I believe the first line in a book is super important. A reader will pick up a book from the shelf and look at the cover. If that holds his/her interest then they'll turn it over and look at the back for the blurb. If that looks good they'll open the book and read that first paragraph. It's probably about the most important paragraph an author can write. I spend a lot of time coming up with just the right first page and sometimes redo it multiple times until it absolutely feels right.

My women's fiction (The Sometimes Sisters, The Lilac Bouquet, etc.) are stand alone books but my cowboys are series. I love writing both because it gives me diversity.

Everyone I see or hear can become a trait in a character. Sometimes one of my characters is a combination of half a dozen people. For instance, Agnes in The Yellow Rose Beauty Shop, has characteristics of one of my elderly friends who passed away several years ago, my daughter, my mother and a lady who I admired.

My characters tell me their stories, and I simply write them. If the male POV is important today, that's what I write. If the female POV is in the spotlight, then I write that.

Nora Roberts once said at an RWA conference that we should write every single day. You can always redo something that's badly written, but if you have nothing written, then you've wasted precious time. My own philosophy is WRITE, don't WHINE! You can't sell something if you don't write it so don't go around whining with excuses why you haven't finished that book.

My grandmother preached that if you love what you are doing, whether it's sitting in the Oval Office of the White House, or it's digging ditches for the county, then you are a success. With that in mind I'm a success because I love writing. I like to think that it hasn't affected me all that much. I still get excited when I sign a new contract, when a new book comes out, and when I see a cover for the first time. I hope that I never take any of this great privilege for granted.

I'm working on a women's fiction titled The Perfect Dress and when that is finished I'll go right to work on Cowboy Rebel, the fourth book in the Longhorn Canyon Series.