Pat Tracy got her first taste of writing when at age 16 she penned a sequel to "Gone With the Wind."
"It was handwritten, and I reformed both of them," said Tracy of her first hero and heroine, Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. "Scarlett quit drinking and I made them wonderful parents."That was nearly 30 years ago. Tracy has since left Los Angeles to settle near rural Ucon, population 895, north of Idaho Falls. She's had three romance novels published by Silhouette Books. "The Flaming" is scheduled for release by Harlequin Historicals in April. Her books have been translated into Italian, French and Greek.
A divorced mother of three daughters, she works on an IBM-compatible computer from her gray-and-white home on Ucon Road. Her office walls are filled with inspirational posters, framed copies of her published books and photographs of herself and other romance writers.
An "I (heart) romance" bumper sticker is propped up on a desk.
Other shelves are filled with reference works such as "North American Wildlife," "Old Louisiana" and "Deadly Doses, A Writer's Guide to Poisons." A fat Webster's dictionary stands ready for use.
"This is the room I write in," she said proudly.
From that office she composes brief paragraphs for novels averaging just under 200 pages in length. Like magazines, they appear for four-week stints in supermarkets and bookstores.
She works six to eight hours a day when she's "really into a book." "Sherman's Surrender," the story of a small-town librarian and a young, ambitious businessman from the city, is out this month:
"After flinging open the closed door and charging into the room, she came to a screeching halt. Standing before her was an obviously naked, 6-foot man wearing only a chagrined expression and a pair of Priscilla curtains wrapped around his hips," Tracy wrote.
Passion, she explained, is the driving force behind her novels.
"If you write a love story without tapping into that, it's a lie," Tracy said.
Her first two novels were set in Idaho, but her ideas for plots and characters come from her imagination, she said - and from those around her. Her 11-year-old daughter, for example, recently mentioned that if she were old enough to drive, she would follow people to see where they go. Tracy said the comment could materialize into a plot.
"Maybe about two girls following someone and maybe being in the wrong place at the wrong time," she said.
Although romance novelists have some leeway in molding their plots and characters, they also write for a specific "line" of romance, each with clearly defined characteristics. Tracy's novels to date have been designated "traditional romances" by Silhouette.
"Men and women don't make love until they're married in this line," she explained. "People who buy the books know what they want."
Other categories do allow characters to have sex before marriage; some even encourage writers to delve into uncomfortable subjects, such as the death of children.
But all romance novels include strong women, family values and a man and woman who both conflict with and need each other, Tracy said. Editors and writers describe the last characteristic as the "push-pull" in the novel.
"That's the only thing you can count on," she said. "You have to feel conflict and show how right they are for each other."
Tracy concedes even she snubbed romances before she devoured her first novel from the genre during a trip several years ago with her family. She found herself with nothing to read and bought "A Corporate Affair" in a grocery store.
"I grabbed it and I felt very decadent and silly," she said. "But it was a very good read, a very vivid way of writing. I read the book and I knew I was going to get published."
One reason romance novels get ripped apart by literary critics is because 99 percent of them are written by women and don't tackle "serious" subjects, she said.
"I kind of think it's almost an anti-woman bias. These are books written by women about women," she said. "They deal with the soft side of society. I think that trivializes them in some intellectuals' minds. It's not man's work, so it's not important."
It's unfair criticism, Tracy believes, and she's not concerned that romance novels always have a happy ending.
"I think romance is a celebration of life," she said. "There is a darker side, and you need that to get the contrast. But darkness is always vanquished."