Joining me today is Emily Mims, a romance author I met at a San Antonio Romance Authors chapter meeting several years ago. Author of thirty four romance novels, Emily Mims combined her writing career with a career in public education until leaving the classroom to write full time. The mother of two sons and grandmother of six, she and her husband Charles live in central Texas but frequently visit grandchildren in eastern Tennessee and Georgia. She plays the piano, organ, dulcimer, and ukulele and belongs to two performing bands. She says, “I love to write romances because I believe in them. Romance happened to me and it can happen to any woman—if she’ll just let it.”
SS: Can you share a bit about your background?
EM: I grew up in San Antonio and was a teacher by trade. I’ve been married to the same man for nearly fifty years and raised two boys.
SS: Have you always been driven to write? Or did you begin writing in response to a particular stimulus?
EM: No, I haven’t always been driven to write. In fact, I took a creative writing course in college and was told by my professors to go back to the science department. I wrote my first book on a dare. I had thrown a romance across the floor and declared I could do better. My husband Charles dared me to do so…resulting in Portrait of my Love, which came out in 1983.
SS: Look at that cover! Times sure have changed! What literary pilgrimages have you made?
EM: Our recent trip to New England turned into one. We visited the Alcott Home, Emerson’s home, Thoreau’s cabin (admittedly a replica), Emily Dickinson’s home, Robert Frost’s house and one of Longfellow’s residences, as well as The House of Seven Gables. In addition, I visited Pilgrim Hall Museum and saw a 1610 copy of a book written by my ninth great-grandfather John Robinson justifying the Separatists’ desire to leave the English church. We bought so many books we had to find a UPS store to ship them all home!
SS: Who do you consider to be your biggest and best mentor and/or inspiration?
EM: Apparently my husband is, as well as being my muse. My editors have always loved my heroes. Years ago, my editor Lydia Paglio asked me where I got them and I admitted that I didn’t know. Then she met Charles on a trip to New York. At the end of the evening, she put her hand on my arm and said, “Now I know where you’re getting them.” She nodded her head toward Charles. “You’re writing about him.”
SS: That’s so sweet, Emily. I am doomed to write about the one I haven’t found yet, or actually the one who got away many years ago. Now on to your writing process. Do you setting daily writing goals? If so, what are they? How do you deal with failure to meet these goals?
EM: I do not have a word count goal. If I can, I like to write an entire scene or section at one time or in one sitting. This would be a long paragraph describing a detailed plot. However, after a time my brain gets tired. I quit at that point even if I’m not as far as I’d hoped to be. If I don’t, it comes out garbage.
SS: I’m the same way. If the muse comes fine; if not, fine. Are you looking to entertain or illuminate?
EM: I’m strictly an entertainer! If a woman can sit down, prop her feet up and forget the crap her day has been for a couple of hours, I did my job.
SS: Do you write with an imaginary reader in mind? If so, tell as a little about that person.
EM: A lot of writers imagine their readers to be single women looking for romance. I in turn imagine my reader a thirty or forty something (or older) with a family and a lot of responsibility who needs a mental break from a chaotic life.
SS: Do you believe you write the kind of book you’d want to read?
EM: I make a point of it.
SS: What are you currently reading?
EM: Hard to say-I read a book almost every day!
SS: I’m not quite that prolific a reader, but I’ve hit 166 this year; my all-time record was 276. Tell me, what was the first book you fell in love with?
EM: Victoria Holt’s Mistress of Mellyn.
SS: Name a classic you feel guilty about never having read.
EM: Pride and Prejudice
SS: What writer would you put on the Mount Rushmore of great writers?
EM: As far as literary writers, I will leave that to the experts. As far as purely entertaining reads, Nora Roberts is my all-time favorite.
SS: What is your most recent book? In twenty-five words or less, tell me why your book should be a reader should start your book next.
EM: Wade’s Dangerous Debut is a real departure for me. It’s the third book in the Durango St. Theatre series and my first gay romance. The story is particularly touching in that one of my heroes is scarred on the outside and the other on the inside and seeing how their love heals both sets of scars.
SS: The cover model on Wade is positively HOT. It’s a shame he belongs to Owen. Can you share with us a bit about the moment when the idea for your novel first popped into your head? Did the idea come to you all at once, or did different pieces of the story come to you over time?
EM: I was at my tenth high school reunion. One of my friends was three sheets to the wind. She looked at me and said, “You know, when we were in school, all I ever thought of you as was smart. Emily, you’re pretty!” And Amy Walsh was born—a woman who could only see herself as a brain and didn’t realize how much else she had to offer. (It didn’t hurt that she fell in love with a sexy photographer much like the one I’m married to…)
SS: Where and when is your book set? How did you decide on the setting? The timeframe?
EM: The book is part of the Durango Street Theatre series and is set right her in San Antonio. After a ten book series set in Eastern Tennessee, I was ready to write some diverse characters and local culture, like tacos and the Riverwalk. It’s a contemporary and spans a four month time frame.
SS: How do you feel about the relationship between love and marriage?
EM: For me it has been closely entwined. I met Charles when I crashed his twenty-second birthday party but didn’t see him again for 2 months, when we showed up for the same field trip to Mexico City. He asked me to smuggle some film across the border—I agreed. He retrieved his film and took me out for the first time on Friday. He proposed on Tuesday and I said ‘yes’. We married a year later and will celebrate our fiftieth in 2021! Which is maybe why I can write the genre successfully. I got my own happily ever after and firmly believe there is one out there for every woman.
SS: Do you think political statements belong in romance? Would you write a novel that was a political tract?
EM: Yes and no. Mostly no. But I have tackled political issues a couple of times. In Daughter of Valor, my character is running for Congress and is faced with ethical questions around accepting campaign contributions from Big Oil. Noelle involves particularly corrosive racism.
SS: What more do you think can be done to encourage diversity in romance?
EM: Writers need to be encouraged to drop the stereotypes and write about people. It also helps if the books are set in a region that is diverse. So far, my cast of characters in the Durango Street Theatre series is about half Hispanic, because that’s San Antonio!
SS: Your favorite guilty pleasure:
EM: It’s not really guilty—Charles and I belong to a ukulele performing group, and we make music all over San Antonio.
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An excerpt from Wade’s Dangerous Debut:
Wade stood in the doorway dressed in a tuxedo and holding an oversized, delicious smelling pizza box and a six-pack of Corona. He wasn’t smiling and had a determined expression on his face. “What are you doing here? Surely you don’t think I want to go out with you again,” Owen ground out.
“I’m sure you don’t. That’s not why I came over tonight. I need to talk to you. I came bearing food and beer to bribe you into letting me in.” Damn. Owen’s stomach growled. The nuked hot dog he ate for supper hadn’t gone far.
“I don’t want to talk to you.” His stomach growled even louder.
Wade looked at it and laughed. “But you would love this pizza, wouldn’t you? The price of this mushroom and pepperoni delight, and the adult libations that go with it, is that you have to listen to me for a few minutes. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Why would I want to listen to a chickenshit like you?”
Wade’s face hardened. “Because you’re as big a damned chickenshit as I am. Now, do you let me in, or do I leave your stomach growling and take this home and eat it by myself?” Chickenshit. Him? The pissant had to be kidding.
Owen’s back went up. “Fine. Come in. I’d love to hear where in the world you get off calling me a chickenshit.”
“Be happy to oblige.” Wade skirted around Owen and headed for the kitchen. “Where’re your plates?”
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An excerpt from Maggie’s Starring Role:
He leaned forward with an unreadable expression. “Don’t get your hopes up about the grant. The only reason I came today was because the Rileys insisted. I have no intention of letting those people award their grant to the Durango.” She caught a smirk starting to cross his face before he schooled it into impassivity.
The rustling coming from the other office stopped. Maggie willed herself not to look up at the gap at the top of the temporary wall. “May I ask why? Don’t we meet the parameters of the grant?” she asked, feigning confusion.
“Actually, you do. If things were different, I would be happy to see them award the grant to the theater. But with things the way they are, I intend to see that they send the grant another direction. I’m sure you understand.”
Maggie’s heart sank as she looked at him. So the grant was lost because of his antipathy toward her. He really was going to take his anger with her out on the whole theater. Damn him, she thought hotly. He was a prick. Some things never change. The grant might be gone, but he wasn’t going to get away with a stunt like this. She’d be damned if she let him walk out the door with no repercussions. He was going to explain himself to everyone at the Durango and the chips could fall where they may. She had nothing to lose. “No, I’m afraid I don’t understand. If we meet the parameters of the grant, why are you so determined that it go elsewhere?”
“Because of your association with the theater,” he said, his voice calm and his expression cold. “I absolutely refuse to work with you. You are directly responsible for my father’s death and I will not work with you, have anything to do with you, or award the grant to the theater that employs you.”
“So let me be clear. You’re mad at me, so you’re willing to take it out on everyone here at the Durango, despite the wonderful proposal, and even though we meet the parameters and need the money desperately. Do I have that right?”
“I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes. You have that right.” He leaned forward. “Karma’s a bitch, isn’t she?”
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Emily’s newest books, Maggie’s Starring Role and Wade’s Dangerous Debut, as well as her older novels, are available through:
