"Ay me! For aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smoothe."
—William Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night's Dream
"If I had as many affairs as you fellows claim,
I'd be speaking to you today from a
jar in the Harvard Medical School."
—Frank Sinatra,
Life magazine, 1965
Once upon a time ...
... there was a girl named Margaret Kelly, who longed to grow up, leave her New Jersey home, and become a Famous Author in New York.
Of the three hopes, the leaving home part often ranked right up there at Number One.
Very often. Exceedingly often. Depressingly often.
And one day Maggie—now known only to her mother and her shrink, Doctor Bob, as Margaret—achieved two of the big three.
She grew up.
She left home.
The Famous Author part didn't naturally follow.
Maggie began her fiction-writing career in Manhattan as Alicia Tate Evans, employing her mother's first name, her brother's first name, and her father's first name, all to make up what she thought would be a whiz-bang, romantic-sounding pseudonym. Maybe even an important name, one with the power to impress the hell out of publishers and hint that maybe she'd majored in English Literature or Quantum Physics, or something, and would thus be Taken Seriously and given promotion and her own twenty-four copy dump in the front of the chain stores.
After all, publishers, by and large, have to be told you're marketable, and worthy, and all that good stuff—they can't seem to figure that out on their own just by looking at your work. If you'd slept with Brad Pitt, you were in. If you'd murdered your lover, you were in. If you'd scaled Everest in your skivvies, you were in.
But if you were just an average person from an average background, had average looks, an average bust size, an average head of brown hair, and you sat down and wrote a good book? Even a bordering-on-great book? Well, that was iffy ...
Maggie knew all of this. She'd joined a writers group, We Are Romance (WAR—something nobody considered when christening the group), and she'd heard the horror stories. The quality of the work was important. Sort of. But, hey, can you sing, dance, or conjugate verbs in Ancient Greek? Give us something we can promote.
So Maggie gave them Alicia Tate Evans.
The idea that her parents and brother would be grateful, even proud, might possibly have entered into this decision just a tad, but it wasn't as if Maggie was sucking up to the family that never really understood her.
Much.
Anyway, the name was just perfect for Maggie's historical romance novels that would soon top the New York Times bestseller list on a regular basis.
Six published novels later, the NYT wasn't even in sight, and her mother and brother, less than flattered to have their names on "those trashy books" had not become Maggie's biggest fans.
Her dad was okay with it, but Evan Kelly was okay with most everything ... nobody yelled at him if he just nodded, agreed with every word his wife said, and otherwise kept his mouth shut. Evan Kelly had earned his master's degree in Wimp, probably by the first anniversary of his marriage to Alicia Tate.
Maggie worried, a lot, that she was the female Evan Kelly, especially when her mother continually asked her why she didn't write a real book and she couldn't figure out a snappy answer. Hence Doctor Bob's presence in her life.
But back to Maggie and her great critical reviews, lame titles picked by committee (and maybe by the UPS guy who'd wandered through the office in his spiffy brown shorts and was asked for input), on the cheap cover art, lousy print runs, nonexistent publisher support, mediocre sell-throughs and—my, what a shock!—serious lack of name recognition after those half-dozen novels.
It came to pass after those half-dozen historical romances, with her career not exactly taking off like the proverbial rocket, that Maggie found herself cut loose from her publishing house, Toland Books.
Alicia Tate Evans was dead in the water. Good-bye, good luck, don't let the door hit you in the fanny on the way out.
This left Maggie depressed. And broke. With no prospects.
All things being equal, and Maggie prepared to garbage can surf rather than crawl back to New Jersey and the "I told you so, Margaret" marathon bound to follow, she had herself a major pity party that included two half gallons of chocolate ice cream and three, yes, three, jars of real chocolate fudge topping.
She then sat down (first opening the button on her suddenly too-tight jeans), to reinvent herself.
She gave a moment's thought to renaming herself Erin Maureen, for her two sisters, but Erin, at the least, would probably sue.
And then, inspiration struck. Near the end of the third day of fierce concentration, Maggie Kelly became Cleo Dooley. She became Cleo Dooley instead of, say, Maggie Kelly, because she'd done some market research online while riding her chocolate high, and she'd concluded that a remarkable number of NYT authors had Os in their names.
Os also looked good on a book cover.
And think of chocolate, for pity's sake. Popular? Definitely. So notice the Os: Ch-O-c-O-late. Two of them, in that one wonderful word and three in the phrase "O-ne w-O-nderful w-O-rd," but that was probably pushing it.
In any case, enough said. Os, obviously, were the way to go.
All that was left to do now was to write the perfect book, and she'd be back in the game she'd been, even though published, mostly watching from the sidelines in the low-rent district, the dreaded mid-list.
She needed a foolproof hook, something that would grab the readers right out of the box.
Historicals. Historicals worked. But sex also worked—her online market research told her that sex worked even better than historicals.
Not to mention that you didn't have to figure out new ways to say, "He reached for the foil packet," every time you put an English Regency Era hero and heroine in bed. There were many perks in writing historical romance, but to Maggie, this one pretty well topped the list: the lack of the "oh, yuck, again?" factor.
And series books. Man, create a popular series, and you're home free.
A mystery series? Yes! But an historical mystery series, because Maggie knew more about Regency Era England than most sane people would think useful.
A sexy historical mystery series?
Whacka-whacka! Eureka! Don't you love it when a plan comes together! Pass the ch-O-c-O-late, Cle-O!
This was good. This was workable. Even d-O-able ... um, doable. She was soon going to have to stop counting Os, or she might need professional help—more professional help than she was already getting with Doctor Bob (more Os!), or would, until she depleted her savings.
Ah, but the perfect series needs the perfect hero.
God. Doesn't everyone?
There was, luckily, another jar of chocolate fudge topping inspiration in the fridge.
With a teaspoon loaded with cold chocolate fudge firmly upside down in her mouth, Maggie sat down and went about creating Alexandre Blake, the Viscount Saint Just.
The perfect hero.
Everything she'd ever longed-for, lusted after in her daydreams, sighed over since hitting puberty, all wrapped up in one gorgeous hunk of man.
So where had all the heroes gone?
To the movies?
Maggie had a thing for old movies. She also had a pitiful social life, which explained why she had so much Saturday night time for old movies on cable. There definitely was no dearth of heroes in those old movies.