Please welcome today's guest blogger, Sandra Leesmith, to The Roses of Prose.
One thing about the month of August is it is a great month to travel on vacation. Traveling is a wonderful opportunity to do research for writing that next novel swirling around in my head.
One thing about the month of August is it is a great month to travel on vacation. Traveling is a wonderful opportunity to do research for writing that next novel swirling around in my head.
In fact it was during a trip in Monument Valley, Arizona
that I began writing novels. That summer, my university professor at Arizona
State University assigned us to write a novel.
We were training for a program designed to improve student-writing
skills and as teachers were told if we were going to teach writing—we better
know writing. When we asked what we should write about the professor said,
“Write what you know.”
So here I was in “color country” surrounded by Native
American culture, history and ruins. It was a great opportunity to research my
first novel. Writing that romantic suspense novel was so much fun, I proceeded
to write several more and eventually became published. DREAM SONG was my first book written, but my third published. (I had to do a lot of revising-chuckle) In
fact I plan to republish that book since I have the rights back from Warner
Publishers, but I have more revisions to make.
Writing styles have changed a lot
Other books I’ve written involved research while traveling
as well. My husband and I won a trip to
New Orleans and while there we took a ten-day cruise up the Mississippi on a
river steamboat. Being a writer, I just had to interview the crew. And that is how I came up with the
information for CURRENT OF LOVE.
Readers tell me that they felt like they had been on the cruise after reading
this light and sweet romance.
Every August in the early eighties, the Coors Classic
bicycle race would pass by my mother’s house at Lake Tahoe. Watching the racers
pedal past stirred my storytelling juices and PRICE OF VICTORY evolved. My
husband joined a bicycle club that raced so I could get in on all the
pre-racing action. I met several women cyclists who helped me authenticate the
facts in this fun and sweet romance.
My next traveling adventure will happen this October. I know
it won’t include a hot August night, but Southern Spain can be like warm in
October. I am going specifically to research the latest novel swirling
around. My characters are from Spain and
are insisting I go there and see what their childhoods were like. Can’t refuse an offer like that.
So let me know what August vacations have inspired you to do
and your name will be put in for a drawing to Amazon. I also write children’s books using my
maiden name Sandy Wardman. You can choose one of those instead. Find the titles
on www.childrensbooksbysandy.com.
Bio: Sandra Leesmith writes romance designed
to warm the heart and make you smile. She has published with Harlequin, Warner,
Avalon and currently with Montlake Romance of Amazon Publishing. Sandra loves
to hike, read, bicycle and write. She lives in Arizona with her husband and two
dogs, a Labrador retriever and a toy poodle. During the hot summers she
and her husband travel throughout the United States in their motorhome where
she enjoys
