Author Q&A: Celeste Bradley
Author: Trish Milburn
Original Publication Date in Love Notes: April 2003

Q: What aspect of craft have you struggled with most? How have you worked to overcome it?

A: Self discipline — to sit at the computer every single day and write until I have reached my quota of pages. I’m a creative person and there is no end to the ways I can sabotage my own schedule. I’m also a lazy person and would rather eat chocolate and watch Buffy on DVD than almost anything else in the world. But at 10 a.m. every weekday, I am supposed to be at my desk and I know it. If I’m not there, then I feel guilty. I may play hooky any way, but I will very virtuously feel guilty while I do. 

Seriously, the three best aids I’ve found are 1) to keep my work computer off the Internet (also preserving my work from the dreaded virus) and 2) to stock my office with snacks. Once I leave the office for a snack, it may be hours before I can whip myself back in there. Besides, chewing apparently promotes blood flow to my brain! Finally, 3) caller ID — and not answering if it isn’t my editor or my children’s school!

Q: If you could change one thing about the romance publishing business, what would it be?

A: The fact that so many wonderful writers can’t seem to get published, while so many not-so-hot writers somehow manage to. Wouldn’t it be lovely if the system ran on actual Merit, instead of Marketability and the ever-elusive Timing?

Q: What attracted you to the time period about which you write?

A: I’d like to believe that I could write in any time period (after sufficient research, of course) but I am particularly attracted to the historical because of the limited resources of women in the past and the creative, tenacious ways they got around the societal limitations imposed on them. I write Regency-set comedy-intrigues because they’re fun and marketable.

Q: What do you think unpublished authors spend too much time worrying about?

A: Rules against simultaneous submission. THERE ARE NO SUBMISSION POLICE! Besides, where you mail something is no one’s business but your own. Should it come down to a worst-case scenario, you may have two publishers interested in your work at once. Well then, apologize sweetly and call yourself up an agent, you lucky thing!

Q: Who are some of the romance authors you admire and why?

A: Amanda Quick (Jayne Ann Krentz) for turning me on to Regency-set hotties. Theresa Medieros for her exquisite prose. Elizabeth Bevarly for her two-for-one romance plots. Jennifer Crusie for her rich characterization and humor. Janet Evanovich for her sheer unadulterated guts.

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Celeste’s next release is The Pretender, the first in her Liars’ Club series from St. Martin’s Press, due out in June.

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