Interview with Margie Carrollby Renee Uitto Margie Carroll will have her first novel published next year. We caught up with her to ask about her writing career thus far. How did you become interested in writing romance novels? I had been building a PR consultancy specializing in international travel, and then life got in the way (hate that). Travel was out, I had a baby in diapers who needed me full-time. I decided to write a novel, something I’d always dreamed of. I did some research and learned that one-half of all novels sold are romance genres. I mentioned this fact to a friend, who introduced me to a neighbor, Marianne Shock, who is a founding member and past-president of RWA national, GDRWA and also Novelists, Inc. I bundled the baby up and walked to Marianne’s house on a snowy afternoon. She is a bundle of energy! She was wonderful and shared so much of her experience with me! She encouraged me to break in by writing a romance novel, and told me to join GDRWA right away. I took all of her advice. How long have you been writing? Since I learned my abc’s. In sixth grade, we had an assignment to write a short story, and I made mine up about a fictional soap opera called Love of Lord. Everybody laughed and clapped, and I was hooked. I kept writing short stories, and the class voted to cut their recess short by 10 minutes every Wednesday afternoon so I could read them aloud. Sometimes the neighboring classes would come to listen. I loved it and just kept on. I was on the staff of every school newspaper and literary magazine, right up through graduation from college, then went on to get a job doing financial reporting (pay was better). What genres of fiction do you read most? That’s hard! I read everything. I’m currently reading Tolstoy (the Oprah book club edition of Anna Karenina) and it’s brilliant. Do you think he’d be published in today’s world? Of all the genres though my tried and true favorite is romantic suspense (I packed Mary Higgins Clark to bring to the hospital in case I had long labor), followed by historicals, which I read when I was a young teen. Explain the genre “chick lit?” How has this emerged to the fiction scene in the past few years? Explain chick lit? Yikes! Honestly I didn’t know my book was chick lit till someone in my critique group said it was. Then I did some research to learn what that meant. I think women feel much freer to communicate their sense of humor, particularly irony, about life in general than men do. Good chick lit is just women their natural voice, witty and funny and intelligent. In the British Isles it’s called ‘taking the micky out’ of a situation. So I think it’s just a matter of time before chick-lit ceases to exist as a genre. All genres will be written in our unique voice, and chick-lit will no longer be limited to stories about young NYC women seeking the perfect job, the rent-controlled apartment, the man who will settle down. It’s already happening, with chick-lit mystery, chick-lit suspense, chick-lit Christian-inspired, whatever. Explain your writing schedule. How do you balance your career, motherhood and your writing? Most days it doesn’t feel balanced at all! During the two years when my daughter was two and three years old, I got up to write my first novel (THE WRITE MATCH, due out in June from Avalon) at 4 a.m. and wrote till she woke up at 7 a.m. Then I quit writing for the day. Once she turned three, she was a bit more independent. So I began to park her in front of the TV from breakfast till lunch so I could work. That has worked, and now that she goes to preschool three afternoons a week I can get back to work then also. I always thought I’d be the sort of mom to cook organic foods, ban TV, and use our time playing flashcards to teach her a foreign language or something. Guess again! If you stop by our place before 1 p.m., you’ll catch us in our PJ’s and the place is a wreck. But this is the best life for us. I get to stay at home instead of hopping planes overseas every week like I used to, and she gets a mom who taps all the time (that’s what she calls it). Life ain’t perfect, but it’s good. Do you work with a critique group? Please explain. No. I did, and I urge all beginning writers to join one. It’s a great way to keep going till you get a finished product because that is so hard to do. But in the end, nobody is a better judge of your work than you are. And nobody has the time or energy to fix it but you. So it’s crucial to learn to self-edit. Writing the first draft is great, but it’s only half the battle! Explain “the call” story. What were you thinking about when the editor called to say that your novel sold? When I saw the 212 area code I figured it was my old boss calling to gossip. When the caller turned out to be Orly Trieber from Avalon it was not a complete shock because I had broken a rule and called her two weeks earlier! I had been in a funk (it should have been my fourth wedding anniversary) and thought, darn, they’ve had it for five months, I’m calling! I had no name, so I cold-called (just like I had cold-pitched) and happened to get a very kind sounding person on the phone who asked the name of my book. I imagined she would put me on hold while she waded through mountains of manuscripts! But what she said was, ‘Oh, that’s mine. I just read that one.’ I think I knew from that moment. She then told me they’d get back to me. I had the presence of mind to ask her name and was so excited I took the rest of the day off to read magazines. Imagine how thrilled I was to see a piece in RWR that very day saying Orly Trieber had been added to the list of acquiring editors. So I was walking on air, and just hoping every day she’d call back. And then she did. What were your experiences when you did PR for the airlines? Did you meet any famous people? For ten years I was director of PR for British Airways in New York, with secondments to the London headquarters and frequent travel elsewhere, followed by two years on the luxury brand management team for Starwood Hotels. I had a blast! It was a lot of work. Phone calls round the clock, even Christmas night. Working every day of the week when necessary, till midnight Sunday nights, Saturday mornings, whatever. Say one wrong word to the press and you’re fired. But there were sunsets in the Serengeti, an audience in the Vatican, a formal dinner complete with strolling musicians on the Great Wall of China, scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, skiing the Swiss Alps, hot-tubbing in Aspen, I could go on. I worked hard and played hard. I’ve led a charmed life. I saw and met tons of people (Mayor Giuliani, U-2, Dame Margaret Thatcher, Donald Trump, Hulk Hogan, HRH Princess Ann, Liza Minetti, and many many others). The absolute highlight was being on the tarmac when Princess Diana first stepped off the Concorde to visit NY (in person she was absolutely glowing and beautiful, as you’d imagine). What I learned is anybody who works for a living is down to earth and easy to be with. They don’t put on airs. Only trophy wives and spoiled children put on airs! Please tell us about your experiences in New York. Did they provide you with ideas to write about? Yes. I was born and raised there and lived there most of my adult life. It’s the best place on earth. But I needed to get away from it to see things I had taken for granted about it, and it taught me that every place is special, every place can be a fantastic setting for a novel, if the author has a real appreciation for that place. I thought Dorien Kelly did a fantastic job with the fictional Royal Oak (another place I love) in her chick-lit novel. Where do you get ideas to write your novels? (music, books, other experiences?) I’ve only written two! Both were plot-driven. The next two are ideas about plots more than characters. All four are set in worlds I know very well, with people doing things I know a lot about. I guess you could do this with good research, but I’m not that confident. I need to stick to things I know firsthand. What advice would you give to new, unpublished authors? Write fiction every day. Don’t waste your time journaling (that’s crap). Craft a scene. Work some dialog. Do something you’ve been putting off because you’re afraid you can’t. Don’t edit it. Move forward. Don’t look back till you’ve written through the entire first draft, then revise, revise, revise, revise. Then polish.
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