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I'd like to introduce you to Mary Vine. She and I go back a decade at least. That's when we collaborated on a booth at a Flea Market to sell our books. We have been doing it for ten years now. While she dabbles in several different genres she was first published in contemporary romance. Paty: Why do you write Small Town Contemporary Romance?
Mary: I read both contemporary and historical books, but I pick up contemporary romance the most. I love romance and happy endings, something to take me away from the stresses of the day. A small-town setting where everyone knows each other is comforting, and there’s a warm and homey atmosphere that gives one a sense of belonging. Being more familiar with a contemporary setting made it easier to write my first, second, and third books. After that, I branched out into other genres.
Paty: Are your books sweet or spicy?
Mary: My books are sweet. When I was younger, I said my mother was alive, so I couldn’t write spicy. Then after she passed away, I said she’d roll over in her grave. But I’ve always found the ongoing pursuit between a man and a woman to be very sexy and I try to show that in my books.
Paty: I've noticed that you tend to put thought-provoking subjects in your stories. Why do you like to do that?
Mary: In my contemporary book, A Place to Land, the heroine’s Russian family came to the United States when she was a child. Uli struggled with the new customs and the language she didn’t understand in school. From ten years old she worked hard to establish herself in this country, far better than the rest of her family. They wanted her to hold on to their customs and marry a Russian boy at eighteen, but she worked herself through college and earned the chance to provide for herself and her family if all goes as planned in northeast Oregon.
Paty: Many of your books are set in Oregon, specifically NE Oregon. Why do you set so many of your books in this region?
Mary: While traveling around Oregon, I fell in love with the northeast area, for the beautiful pines, ghost towns and the gold mining history of the past. I’m drawn to the period just after the Civil War. I then proceeded to write a historical, and a time travel series taking the characters from the present to 1870 across the mining camps. Even my contemporary stories crossover to this area.
Paty: How did the plot idea for A Place to Land come to you?
Mary: Some years ago, I was living in a metropolitan area and a Russian family moved in directly across from me. They had several children, many of them girls. They hung onto their customs in dress, and way of life. I thought a lot about how hard it could be for a child to learn a new language at school as well as subjects. Also, my own Norwegian father had to learn English when he went to school.
Paty: I know we all like the characters we come up with but do you have a favorite character that you’ve written?
Mary: I love all of my characters for many reasons, but I’ll name Isabella Moore, the heroine in my historical Wanting Moore. She was raised with five brothers. To endure her rambunctious childhood, she learned to be as tough as the boys, which only leads to trouble.
Paty: Who are some of the authors you read who write contemporary romance?
Mary: I like small-town romances, whatever the genre. I liked Bonnie Dodge’s Goldie’s Daughter for romance in the gold mining era. I like Paty Jager’s Isabella Mumphrey Adventure series for fast-paced adventure. The Commander’s Desire by Jeanette Green for an example of the sexy pursuit between a man and a woman that I mentioned in question 2.
Paty: Just for fun – Tell us what is your favorite thing to do besides writing and reading?
Mary: We ended up buying more property in northeast Oregon. Our retirement plan has been to make many trips from Idaho over to our place on three acres along the Powder River. We have forest and old mining tailings, and an antique steam engine/train travels by on weekends in the summer. It’s a great place to kick back and read, write, or drive around the area.
A Place to Land
She isn't afraid of the big, bad wolf.
But he's a little concerned about her.
When Uli's impoverished family left Russia for America, she was only 10 years old. From that point on, she's been determined to make the American dream hers. When Headline Magazine offers the perfect story with which to launch her new writing career, Uli travels across Oregon to find out exactly how wolf and cowboy mix. As she finds her spirit guide in the wolf and her soul mate in the cattle rancher, a mysterious danger seems bent on finding her.
Movie-star handsome, Jackson Holt owns one of the largest ranches in eastern Oregon and, like most ranchers, is none too happy with wolves crossing over the Idaho border near his livestock. The last thing he needs is a semi-environmentalist, journalist wannabe dogging his footsteps. Sure, Uli may be bright and sexy, but her need to prove herself and help her family threaten to lead her into the kind of harm he can't protect her from−when all he wants to give her is...a place to land.
Mary Vine is an author, publisher, speaker and retired educator. She writes contemporary and historical romantic fiction, a time travel series, mystery, and inspirational children’s books. Mary, and her husband can usually be found in Southwest Idaho or Northeast Oregon.
You can contact her at: authormaryvine@gmail.com. Authormaryvine.com
Amazon author page: amazon.com/author/maryvine
6 comments:
Mary, I hadn't thought about small town romance in the same way you talked about it here. Thank you for sharing a different perspective with me.
"A Place to Land" is now on my tbr list. Enjoyed your blog post.
Thank you!
Thanks, Judith
I like that your heroine is an immigrant. We have many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants living in Oregon. I think A Place to Land is the first book story I've heard about that showcases these new Americans. I'm ordering A Place to Land.
Always fun to "meet" a new-to-me author. I lived in a community in Maine that had many Russians who immigrated to the area. They built a beautiful Russian church in the middle of this tiny town. The most fascinating to me, when we lived there, were the beautiful, tiny, vegetable gardens that centered around fruit trees in the middle of very small plots of land. I look forward to checking out your book!
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