When I complained of being bored the summer before 7th grade, my mother (who worked at a boookstore at the time) handed me a stripped copy of Victoria Holt's The Shivering Sands--and I was hooked. I became a voracious reader and an aspiring author, bringing home stacks of books from the library every single week. The next year, I did a school report on Ms. Holt and wrote to her asking for information. In reply, she sent me an autographed photo and a lovely two-page hand-written letter in which she encouraged me to follow my writing dreams. Sadly, both the photo and the letter were lost over many moves, but my writing dreams remained.
At 14, I tried to write my first two romances. The first was about a federal agent masquerading as a bank robber, and a smart-mouthed bank customer who drove a custom baby blue Trans Am named Shark. The "robber" stole Shark as his getaway vehicle and the heroine, Nicki, dove in beside him. That was as far as I got--I could never see beyond their flying down the highway bickering as they were chased by bad guys.
The second was a hot mess of an erotic Gothic paranormal involving an eighteen-year-old governess and the sixteen-year-old eldest son of the house, who made quite inappropriate advances toward her via astral projection while she slept. I wrote 100 pages front and back--IN PENCIL--before I hit that I HATE point in the story and shoved it under my bed. When I retrieved it two years later, the lead was so smeared I couldn't read it. The End.
After that, I set my dream aside to address the more practical matters in life--matters like eating and putting a roof over my head. It took finding my own hero to reignite my passion for romance writing. More than 25 years after my last attempt, I bought a used laptop on eBay and wrote my first erotic romance. My latest release Samhain release, Amorous Overnight, was #1 on Amazon's sci-fi bestseller list.
Mr Robin and I have been married for more than twenty years; we live on a farm in rural Nebraska and have three wonderful kids. I love to hear from readers, so don't be timid about dropping me a line at robin@robinlrotham.com or robin_rotham@yahoo.com!
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