…is the essence of every story an author writes.
October 22, 2024
Whenever I set out to write a novel, I always start with the words ‘What If?” I cannot speak for other authors, only myself, but I can imagine a couple of other authors who might have done just that.
For example, “What if a woman, whose home is nearly destroyed by an invading army, uses her feminine wiles to seduce a rogue of a man who she thinks can save her?” That just might have been the question Margaret Mitchell asked when she wrote Gone With The Wind.
Or, try this one, “What if a young orphan is invited to attend a school because he possesses skills and abilities he doesn’t realize he has? And then he enters a world where wonderful and frightening things happen to him?” This would be a very broad overview of Harry Potter’s world.
Over ten years ago, I posited the following ‘What If?”
‘What if’ a widow were to become a housemother for a sorority in the 1960’s?’
Since this really happened to my grandmother, Alma Beatrice DeVore, it wasn’t a big stretch to imagine that scenario. But beyond the fact that this was my grandmother’s career from her late forties and into her early sixties, the similarities to the world I’ve built for the Gamma Alpha Beta’s and the Delta Rho Chi’s ends there.
In ‘The Darling of Delta Rho Chi’ we meet Elise Ellingson (in tribute to my grandmother whose maiden name was Ellingson!), a 37 year old widow who finds the job of housemother daunting. Not only is Elise a widow, but she’s never been a mother and is ill-equipped to provide guidance and counsel to the young sorority women given to her care. Enter 18-year-old Riley Paxton, a handful of a girl whose behavior forces her father, Jack, to arrive on the scene to rescue his daughter from the rigid and dictatorial housemother.
None of that happened to my grandmother, who as far as I know, never got romantically involved with a parent nor did she have such a difficult charge in her house. All similarities to real life ended when I started to type the first lines of the story.
Writing a full length novel is one thing. Seeing it through multiple edits, deciding on a publisher, rewrites, perfecting the copy for the back cover, finding someone to bring your vision of the cover art to life, obsessing over the minutiae of a very brief pitch to grab potential readers’ interest on Amazon, and on and on and on, takes a level of dedication you only understand once you’ve done it.
Which brings me to this day. I am thrilled to report that ‘The Darling of Delta Rho Chi’ – the first of a four book series about the men and women who belong to the fictional Greek society world at the University of Washington – is a mere weeks away from birth!
Look for a link very soon on my blog. Who knows, with any luck, the books and the author just end up on the Infallible Wikipedia one day.
barbaradevore.com 