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My debut book ACCORDING TO JANE won RWA's prestigious Golden Heart® Award for Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements!!
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A Selection of Interviews, Articles & Guest Posts: |
Barnes & Noble Review, short article, "The Long List" Chicago Lit: Women writing the next chapterBrant novel percolates with stories of middle-age suburban lives at the crossroadsNovember 14, 2010
BY KARA SPAK Staff Reporter/kspak@suntimes.com
The picture-perfect suburbs aren’t always what they seem to be, and that’s no less true in the communities ringing Chicago. In Friday Mornings at Nine, the second novel from award-winning local romance writer Marilyn Brant, we meet three middle-age women whose weekly coffee klatch in the mythical Chicago suburb of Glendale Grove sparks the trio to collectively question if they ended up with the right men. 
Marilyn Brant received support in writing Friday Mornings at Nine from her twice-monthly meetings in the northwest suburbs with fellow romance writers, who discuss and critique the work of their fellow authors. Where neighbors see healthy, wholesome families, the women struggle under the pressure of raising kids, sustaining a relationship with men who largely take them for granted and a fair amount of wondering what could have been. Tamara, one lonely mother of a singleton headed off to college, flirts with the neighbor over their fertile vegetable gardens. Jennifer exchanges racy e-mails with an ex-boyfriend before they reunite on their college campus under the thin guise of planning a reunion. And after years as a stay-at-home mom, Bridget discovers not just the independence of a part-time job at a dentist’s office but the sweet and sexy Dr. Luke, an Italian-food gourmand who lets her know when it comes to cannoli, “there’s no excuse for limp shells.” Brant, who lives in a northwest suburb, does meet often with friends for coffee and a chat. She is married with an 11-year-old son. But that’s about where the similarities end, she said. “I fabricated a lot of it,” Brant said. “I think almost everyone who has been in a long-term relationship at some point goes through a re-evaluation. You take stock and look at your life — did I make the right choice?” Facebook and Twitter are making it easier than ever to connect to the ones who got away, she said. “I’ve had people tell me I was really tempted by this or that we spent a lot of time texting,” she said. Brant is a former teacher and librarian who left the workplace to become a stay-at-home mom after her son was born. Leaving the workplace inadvertently kicked off her new career as a writer. “I was at home for the first time in my professional life dealing with a pretty new situation — motherhood,” she said. “I turned to reading — and particularly contemporary women’s fiction. I wanted to know how other women dealt with the things I was feeling.” She free-lanced articles in magazines about education and pregnancy and started reading Elizabeth Berg, Anita Shreve, Anne Tyler and Sue Miller. “All of those things together made me want to express the experiences I was having in a similar way,” she said. She wrote her entire first manuscript by hand. Her fifth book, According to Jane, was her first book published. Brant credits her involvement in the Chicago-North Romance Writers of America chapter with pushing her toward publication. The group meets twice a month, either in the Des Plaines library or the Arlington Heights Historical Society. The group of women — and one or two men — writes all types of romance, including young adult, science fiction, fantasy and paranormal, Brant said. They brings in monthly speakers to demonstrate how to authentically create certain, potentially romantic images, such as how to fence, shoot a weapon or drink tea in the 1800s. There are also discussions on how to find a literary agent and the current state of the romance publishing market. Most helpful to Brant is the feedback from other writers as they critique one another’s work. “Many of us consider that one of the reasons we became published writers,” she said. Brant is also a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She has admired Austen since high school. “I think the thing that resonates most is how well she understood human behavior,” Brant said. But just as there was no real-life Mr. Darcy for Austen, Brant said no one should assume the juicy details in Friday Mornings at Nine took place in her suburban home. “Obviously, I have a group of friends, I live in the suburbs, we get together and we have conversations,” she said. “We end up talking about really lighthearted stuff most of the time.” "The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business."
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