Interview with romance author Mary Patterson Thornburg

Today’s special guest author is Mary Patterson Thornburg to chat with me about her new paranormal romance, Luke Blackmon’s Rose.

During her virtual book tour, Mary will be giving away a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for your chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
Mary Patterson Thornburg has lived in California, Washington State, Montana, Indiana, and again, finally, in Montana. She was educated at Holy Names College, Montana State University, and Ball State University, where she then taught for many years. She’s been reading science fiction and fantasy since she was five, and when she began to write fiction it seemed only natural to write in those genres. Her literary heroes are Mary Shelley, who gave us all a metaphor for technology alienated from its creators; Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia E. Butler, inventors of worlds that shine their powerful searchlights on this one; and Stephen King, who persists, pleasingly, in being Stephen King.

Mary writes what some people call “science fantasy” (aka “fake science fiction) within as wide a range as possible, but almost always with a bit (or a lot) of romance.

Welcome, Mary. Please tell us about your current release.
To guard herself from the perils of her own sensuality, Rose married a man she didn’t love. Now, two years after his death, she’s not sure she can really love anyone. She’s not even sure she cares…

To achieve what he’d always known was his birthright, Luke had to struggle against tremendous odds. But when science discovered a way to access the past, a powerful bureaucracy found a way to use Luke. Now, torn from his own time, everything and everyone he knew, he can see no reason to go on living…

An instant of attraction, uninvited but inescapable, brings Luke and Rose together. Together, they discover the strength to love, the will to trust and hope. But will these things be enough to carry them over walls of suspicion, guilt, bigotry, and hate?

What inspired you to write this book?
A dream. Here’s an excerpt: “She closed the document and her current desktop image appeared: a black-and-white photo, studio portrait, formally arranged, of Luke Blackmon in a suit and tie sitting before an artfully draped cloth. It was one of the few photos she’d found of him smiling a real smile, not mugging as directed, not stretching his lips over grief or anger. He was young here, probably close to her age, and anything but formal. His eyes looked into hers, sleepy, mischievous, and incredibly sexy. Across the almost ninety years that stood like stone between them, she couldn’t help grinning back.”

Excerpt from Luke Blackmon’s Rose:
Later, lying next to him, she had awakened suddenly to find Luke drawing away from her, his body tense, his eyes wide and somehow empty in the light of the streetlamp across from their window.

“Who…are…you?” he said in a strange, thick-sounding voice.

She gasped, sharing for a moment his terror. “Rose?” she said uncertainly. “I’m Rose, sweetheart.”

His eyes became occupied again. He sighed mightily. “Oh, thank God. It was the dream,” he said. “Forgive me. Please.” That he would ask for forgiveness!

To keep from weeping, she caressed him gently and lovingly, until past and future and the world had shrunk, becoming only that hour and that bed, and they could lose themselves, for a little while, in each other.

What exciting project are you working on next?
I’m thinking hard about a sequel to Luke Blackmon’s Rose. I’m not quite ready to see all these characters in the rear-view mirror!

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Sometime in the 1990s – I can’t remember precisely – I told a friend that when my husband retired and we moved back to Montana I wanted to “try to be a writer.” “Have you written anything?” she asked. I told her I had. “Well, then,” she said, “you are a writer. Start believing it!” I started believing it.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
If thinking, musing, daydreaming, sitting in front of a blank page and staring into space, even reading, even dreaming dreams at night, are all parts of writing, then yes, I write pretty much full-time. I’m retired, widowed, and I live alone, so finding time to actually write write – that is, to sit down and put one word after another – isn’t a problem. Sometimes I even get up in the middle of the night and do that.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I wouldn’t call it an interesting quirk, more of a ridiculous nuisance, but no matter how many times I proofread, often out loud, there is always one blatant error (usually small, but still…) that does not appear until immediately after the story has been published.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I actually think I wanted to be a writer. It just took me a long time to get serious about it.

Anything additional that you want to share with the readers?
Yes. Thanks so much, my fellow readers, for being who you are – for knowing that one of the great pleasures of life, one that promises to last longer than any of life’s other pleasures, is the experience of opening a book and losing ourselves for a little while in that book’s world. It’s a pleasure that, compared with almost any other, allows us to see into the hearts and minds of our fellow Earthlings better than any psychology text, costs very little, and rewards with so much. As Emily Dickinson wrote: “How frugal is the Chariot/ That bears the Human Soul –”

Links:
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