Queen of romance 

Rosemary Rogers Interview


from Rendezvousing with Contemporary Writers
Copyright Hank Nuwer
Excerpt below

Author Rosemary Rogers' unlikely success story began when the one-time secretary decided to send an unsolicited novel manuscript to Avon Books. That first smash success, Sweet Savage Love, a novel of intrigue set in Mexico, made her a household name. Her success was the result of hard work and patience. She had revised Sweet Savage Love no fewer than twenty times in twenty-seven years. Her dark Ceylonese looks won her a place in the Richard Avedon photo volume (see below photo) of Beautiful Women. Her other books include Jewel of My Heart, Savage Desire, The Crowdpleasers, Dark Fires and Reckless Encounters.

Rosemary Rogers


NUWER: When did you start writing?

ROGERS: I started when I was ten years old. I was doing little one-page things on the back of an old calendar my dad had.  One side had pictures but the other was blank. I could only print at the time, but not very well. I started writing short stories about animals.

NUWER: What kind of animals?

ROGERS: Oh, I remember one about a crocodile, one about a dog, one about a bull--animals that I saw around there.

NUWER: When did you start to write fiction?

ROGERS: When I was twelve years old I started writing novels and short stories. My first novel, Sweet Savage Love, was actually based on one of the early novels that I wrote when I was twelve years old.

NUWER: Did you pick up the book again while you were married [the first time]?

ROGERS: I kept writing. I never stopped. It was my safety belt. For me writing has been a wonderful world. When I am upset, when i am tired, hungry, whatever, I get into my own fantasy world.

NUWER: The world I work in [as an interviewer] is a fantasy world. I go everyday to interview people I've never met. My fantasy world is the real world in which I don't know anybody.

ROGERS: My god, that would scare the hell out of me.

NUWER: I love it, but back to your book--you never sent it in back then?

ROGERS: No, I didn't have the confidence, and I didn't know how to go about it.

NUWER: How does Rosemary Rogers make it through the day?

ROGERS: I usually stay in bed for an hour after I wake up 'cause that's my half-awake/half asleep time when I visualize a lot of scenes in my head--even dialogue. I think about problems that I have to resolve. It's like free association, a stream of consciousness. Then I get up and do my yoga, tody up, lie in a hot tub, decide what I want to cook--I like to cook, you know--and listen to music. Then I'll feel like doing research, pull those boooks open, and start. I just write when I feel like writing. I stopped writing this morning at about five-thirty when it started getting light.

NUWER: Who are some of the authors that you admire?

ROGERS: I like Judith Krantz; I mean, I loved Scruples. The first time I read Scruples, I got an advance copy and set up all night reading it. I thought, hey, this baby writes the kind of book which I really like to read.


NUWER: Regarding the sexual part of your writing, do you find the same things turn on men as turn on women? Or do you think very different sorts of things excite men and women?

ROGERS: That's hard to tell. I think men like sexual descriptions that are a little more explicit, clinically explicit. Women prefer, on the whole, a slight glossing over and an emphasis on tenderness--the romantic angle--something in the head.

NUWER: Viva magazine folded and Playgirl is not doing well. Do women stay away from explicit nudity in photographs?

ROGERS: I used to get Playgirl when it first came out. The reason I got it--and the reason the women at the office [I worked in] giggled over it--was because we thought we were getting even with the guys. They had Playboy: OK, now it's our turn. The guys in the office used to go around saying, "That's disgusting. Why do you want to look at that?" But after a while, it got boring. I never did subscribe to it. Then I quit [reading it]. I thought, Oh, shoot, why do I want to see all this for? I guess a woman can get turned on by something really erotic, but not clinical. Pornography turns me off, if anything.

NUWER: How about violence, since it plays such an important part in your book?

ROGERS: I don't like violence. I think there's too much violence and in movies. All that I hate. I get physically sick if I see a very explicit scene of somebody with their throat slit in a motion picture. I want to throw up. But the violence in my books seems to be different. For one thing, those were violent times that I write about. For another thing, I tried to underplay the violence. There is a scene in Sweet Savage Love where [the heroine] sticks a knife in a guy's throat--but he deserved it. He had raped her, abused her, and treated her like an object. But that scene, too, was just a few lines, and then I cut it off.

NUWER: Do you find that writing an erotic scene is exciting?

ROGERS: Yes, because I get lost in it. It is a turn-on, visually, when it is a love scene.

NUWER: From a writer's point of view, what goes into the making of a good love scene?

ROGERS: Everything I do is very visual. I'm seeing it in the screen of my mind. It's a matter of translating it from the visual medium into the written word.

NUWER: Do you have advice for writers who want to write novels like yours?

ROGERS: ...You can't say, Well, one of these days I want to sit down and write that book. You have to do it.  The other thing I would say is be ruthless. I mean, you have to cut. I cut out scenes, chapters, that I dearly loved because, looking back, they didn't fit. I know they were samples of good writing, but I had to take [them] out 'cause there was no way I could make it fit.

NUWER: How do you start a novel?

ROGERS: With an idea normally. Then the idea spreads to a character because I see everything visually-the mind-movie thing. I know exactly what my characters are going to look like, and then I have to decide where to  start it. I begin from there.

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