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Our Interview with Rogenna Brewer (September 2004):

Q. What do you write? What publisher(s) do you write or have you written for?

Rogenna Brewer: I write from my military experience.  I was active duty Navy for 5 years, and have a 13 year association with the armed services, from JROTC, to a stint as a receptionist in a Navy Recruiting Office, through active duty where I served as a yeoman and a religious program specialist, and my time as a Navy wife. I've written four books for Harlequin Superromance.  I've received a couple of awards, mostly for my first book.  And my fourth book just landed on the Waldenbooks Romance Bestseller list. 

Q. Tell us a bit about your current/upcoming release(s).

RB: Women make up almost 15% of today's US Military and 7.5% of service men and women are single parents.  Imagine being a single parent deployed to a war zone.  That became the premise for my story, The SEAL's Baby.

THE SEAL’S BABY - A LITTLE SECRET (flash)
ROGENNA BREWER
Harlequin - Aug 2004
ISBN: 0-373-71223-5

Engineer, single mom, weekend warrior.

Hannah Stanton is all three—until she's called to active duty by the Navy.  Then she becomes a warrior full time.  But that means she has to leave her baby behind while she flies helicopters in support of the Navy SEAL team that includes Mike McCaffrey—her old friend and colleague who also happens to be the one-night stand she never told about her pregnancy.

Q: What year did you get "The Call"? 

RB: You mean the "email" <g>.  June 1998.  This was of course a late Friday afternoon email in--it seems the senior editor was trying to get a hold of me, but couldn't because call blocking somehow
made it impossible for a call from Canada to get through.  I was instructed to call on Monday as she was going to be out of the office for two weeks after that.  It was the longest weekend of my life.

I didn't dare let myself believe what it could mean.  Monday finally arrived, and I couldn't get through without a busy signal.  With the day slipping away I knew I wasn't going to last two weeks.  I called the editorial assistant.  She patched me through to the senior editor.  I got cut off.  Got through to the assistant again.  The senior editor took the call in her assistant's office and that's where our game of phone tag ended.

Lesson: TURN OFF your call blocking!

Q: How many years had you been writing before you got "The Call"?

RB: On and off throughout the '90's.  But I consider April '95 the beginning of my writing career because that's when I made the decision to put my butt in the chair and write every day.  Okay, so maybe not EVERYDAY, but I did realize that it was going to take consistency (something I'm still working on) to get published and stay published.

Q: Describe your first sale experience.

RB: That first sale excitement wears off pretty fast, at least it did for me.  The first person I told was the gal at the McDonald's drive up because I couldn't reach anyone else.  I bought the happy meal so I could get the beanie baby hippo named "happy".  I think my dog got a hold of that hippo because now that I think about it I don't see it around the office.  Then came the revision letter.  And the realization that I really don't know anything about writing a salable story <g>. 

But eventually that was followed by a whole lot of firsts...first cover, first time I held my book in my hand (and even read it), the first time I saw it in a store, my first booksigning, my first sale ribbon at conference, and my first publisher's party...that's all pretty cool.

Q. Is there anything you wish you had known/done before you made that first sale or subsequent sales?

RB: Oh, my gosh.  EVERYTHING.  I knew absolutely NOTHING.  But I think that's a bit like wishing for a 20 year-old body to go with this 40 year-old-brain.  With experience comes wisdom.  But here's my wish list...  I wish I had focused my writing goals more, instead of on the broader goal of just getting published.  I wish I had entered more contests and submitted more manuscripts--full manuscripts.  And here's the biggy...I wish I had made it less about the rules and more about the writing.

Q. What is the best piece of craft advice you can give an aspiring author?

RB: Voice is that elusive element that only you can bring to your story.  It's who you are, what you've seen and done, your imagination and education...  And how "you" put that all down on paper. 

Q.  What is the best piece of industry advice you can give an aspiring author?  

RB: Study the market, but don't write to the trends--they'll be over before you finish the book <g>. 

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