Muse Wednesday — Jackie Weger

This Muse Wednesday’s guest blogger is Jackie Weger who has had a long career in publishing, first in print and now in e-books!  Let’s see what inspired her to write romance and keeps her writing in the genre to this day!

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Books that I love to read have elements of nature in them, a storm, a river, a lake, a creek, an estuary. My favorite all time romance book is The African Queen by C. S. Forester.  Written by a man and published in 1935, and billed as an adventure, it nonetheless is a love story that takes place in the primeval African Jungle. When you hear African Queen you see Charlie Allnutt and Rose Sayer, the most unlikely pair of lovers a writer could conceive. Little cockney Charlie—he fidgets, he drinks, he smokes. And Rose, her missionary brother’s spinster housekeeper, finds herself thinking for herself for the first time in her life. The goal is not to fall in love but to traverse the Ulanga to reach the Lake to destroy the Konigin Luise that patrols the Lake so that the English can make short work of the German problem. But, they do fall in love. They do have sex on the hard wooden slats in the African Queen—the little boat that could.

Both Charlie Allnutt and Rose Sayer inspire me when I sit down to begin a romance novel. Before I type the first word, I reread the African Queen. The book is in tatters now and held together with rubber bands. It reminds me that one goal, simple or difficult, can carry a book. It reminds me that a hero does not have to be GQ or golden to win the heroine’s heart. Flawed, vulnerable, boring ordinary people with ordinary jobs or no job at all, can and do fall in love. Love makes them hopeful, beautiful and happy.

Fast forward from 1935 to the Twenty-First Century. Forester could never have conceived an e-book reader, nor could I when I first began writing romance novels in the 1980’s. I adore e-books. I actually started my writing career writing non-fiction for trade magazines. An article I submitted to Texas Highways about blue claw crabbing along the Texas gulf coast happened to have a paragraph about the mating habits of crabs. I interviewed a marine scientist for the facts. Oh my. The editor of Texas Highways called me in a huff and told me to “take out the sex. Who wants to read about the sex life of a crab? You wanna write about sex? Write a romance!”

Sounded good to me.

Bio:

Jackie Weger is the author of nineteen romance novels. She recently revived her writing career producing novels for Liquid Silver Books. Her first e-book, No Perfect Secret was released July 2012. Her second e-book, Beyond Fate, is scheduled for release December 03, 2012. Weger lives in Hockley, Texas. She divides her time between Hockley, Isla Taboga and pueblo el Cacao in a Panamanian Rainforest. Says Weger: “I am so in love with e-books. I can’t get enough. I write an hour a day and read for the next twelve.” Weger’s books are also available on Amazon.com. Jackie’s web site.