Vivian Vaughan: Contrast and Community

Western romance writer Vivian Vaughan loves the unexpected Texas — the contrast between the forests of east Texas and the arid landscape of popular imagination. She relishes the letters of a 19th century New York matron who reported with great relief that her Texas relations did indeed dress for dinner, even if their shirts were a bit dingy. The story makes such a good counterpoint to the Shakespearean sonnets written by Vaughan’s great-grandfather, the Texas Ranger.

Vaughan’s romances reflect her home state’s surprising diversity. They also reveal a finely honed understanding of the impact community and family can make on the love between a man and a woman. Shortly before the release of Catch a Wild Heart, Crescent Blues talked to Vaughan about contrasts, community and what it takes to capture the infinite riches of Texas in the pages of a little book.

Crescent Blues: You didn’t start your writing career until after your children were grown. How do you feel your late start affected your writing?

Vivian Vaughan: My immediate thought is that it left me with fewer years to pursue my career. Aside from that, I hope I’ve been able to bring to my stories a broader sense of the many factors involved in making relationships work. From another perspective — my own perspective — my writing career began years before Zebra published my first book in 1987. A writer friend, Dona Vaughn (no relation), and I used to joke about holding a workshop for writers titled “Suddenly, twenty-five years later” A lengthy learning and struggling period is fairly common among writers in general.

What are the pluses and minuses?

Other than years lost, I see only pluses. Every year we live we learn more about life. By midlife a person ‘s thinking and ability to assess situations generally comes from a broader base of experiences. This can only help in writing fiction. As far as writing goes, I feel that the years I spent trying to learn to write everything from dramas to mysteries to children’s stories helped make me a better technician. Studying and working in various genres also broadened my outlook and approach to storytelling. Since I didn’t come to my career with a background in either writing or reading romance novels, I tend to look at my books in a general way, as simply stories. If there’s a minus in all this, it would be here, of course. Unschooled in romance novel conventions, I have sometimes used too heavy or too light a hand.

What impact (if any) do you feel starting later had on the stories you tell and the way you tell them?

By midlife a person’s perspective on and experiences with romance are obviously different from the perspective and experiences of someone in her twenties or thirties. I was 48 when I wrote my first romance novel. I had been married 28 years to the same man. My sons were in college. I feel that the most obvious impact starting my career later has had on my stories is in the way the romance between the hero and heroine is always impacted by a whole community of relationships — parents, siblings, townspeople, coworkers, and of course children. In my novella “A Wish to Build a Dream On” (St. Martin’s anthology Cherished Love, 1997) not only the heroine’s young son, but also every member of the trail drive crew have a hand at matchmaking. Another case is the hero’s daughter in Chance of a Lifetime.

Children play a major role in the action and romances of several of your books. What inspired you to bring them to center stage?

Perhaps, like we discussed earlier, the perspective of writing romance from the vantage of midlife after I had spent many years as a mother, aunt, den mother, 4-H leader, you name it. Beyond that, in historic times families were larger. Children were everyplace.

From a writing standpoint, children offer several advantages in creating fiction. As characters children are like other people, except their various stages of maturation are more distinct. A child’s perception of right and wrong, fear and security, trust and distrust is guided by innocence, inhibition, and lack of experience and knowledge, all of which differs at every stage. Children have great imaginations that have yet to be squashed; they tell secrets, make judgments based on their innocence and on raw emotions like joy, sorrow, loss, pain, and generally cause havoc.

They’re great tools for the writer, and a lot of fun to use in stories. And of course since children are so vulnerable, a writer can characterize an adult character by the way he or she acts and reacts to a child.

How do you get into the mind of a child like Keturah, in Chance of a Lifetime, for example? What experiences or research do you draw upon?

Keturah’s character, like that of an adult character, begins with the favorite writer’s question, “What if?” What if a child saw her mother murdered? Could she learn to trust the type of people who killed her? What if she then fears losing her father to such a person? How would she react? I’ve certainly never known anyone who had such a disastrous childhood, but we’ve all read about children in developing and war-torn nations. My characters are survivors, so I read biographies of people who are survivors. Journals of the settling of the West provide situations and people that can be combined to create characters.

One of the basic requirements for fiction writers is, I think, an innate curiosity about why people do the things they do. For many years I have studied “arm-chair psychology,” meaning that I read all the self-help books that come along. They really help when delving into the minds of (i.e., in creating motivations for) children and adults.

Can you tell Crescent Blues readers a little bit about your new book, Catch a Wild Heart? Doesn’t it feature some of the characters from Chance of Lifetime?

Most of the major characters from Chance of a Lifetime play pivotal roles in Catch a Wild Heart, the second book in The Tremaynes of Apache Wells series. (Let me hasten to say that each book stands alone; you don’t have to have read one to enjoy the other.) The first book, Chance of a Lifetime, was the love story of Sabrina Bolton and Tremayne.

Set ten years later in 1878, Catch a Wild Heart features Keturah (Tremayne’s half-Apache daughter) as the heroine and Blake Carmichael, son of Tremayne’s archenemy, as the hero. Blake has come to the Fort Davis area to work with his father, whom he knew only slightly while growing up in Washington, D.C.

Keturah, meanwhile, has wanted little to do with her father since he married Sabrina, although she has subconsciously patterned her life after his, becoming skilled at tracking, shooting, riding. Also like her father was before he met Sabrina, Keturah is a loner, trusting no one. She feels she belongs in neither the white world nor the Apache world.

Keturah and Blake meet when she rescues him along with her half brother and his best friend from a band of Comancheros. Blake and Keturah are drawn to each other by passion and nothing else, they believe, until they realize that in spite of their vast differences, they share a past that marked them and in the final analysis heals and unites them.

Were the books always planned as part of a series, or did Keturah’s book grow from writing Chance of a Lifetime?

In a way Keturah’s book came first. My agent suggested that I create a “kingdom” somewhere in Texas in which to set a series of books. I decided to use the breathtaking Davis Mountains west of the Pecos River.

Before I had much of an idea for the books, my husband and I attended a gallery showing for Penni Anne Cross, a Wyoming artist who paints Native American women. Her latest work at that time, The Bounty Hunter, was of a beautiful, sexy woman, striding down a canyon that looked a lot like the Davis Mountains. She wore a filmy sort of garment, crossed bandoleers, and led two rider-less horses. I knew I would write a book about her. When I figured out who she was in my story (Keturah is not a bounty hunter.), I knew the first Tremayne book should be about her father.

The psychology of your characters plays a key role in your books and stories. What do you like most about getting so deeply into so many people’s heads?

In a sense every character is a part of myself; I know my characters better than I do most, if not all, my friends. I may even know them better than I know myself. Every time I create a character I learn something about myself and about life.

Has this ever presented any problems either in terms of writing or when you need to emerge from the writing fog?

Like most writers I feel a real letdown after I finish and mail a manuscript. I try to spend that day cleaning my office, packing up and storing research material, outlines, drafts, and notes from that book. It’s a giddy but somber day. I’ve never analyzed this before, but it’s sort of like when a child goes off to college and you know you’ll see him or her again, but you also know it will never, ever be quite the same. I hate reading my books, because there are always so many things I want to change. Even so, I eagerly look forward to correcting galleys, because it gives me a chance to revisit my story and characters.

Who do you feel were your most compelling characters? What did you find so special about these characters?

I love my characters. I can’t think of one I don’t truly love. But Trace Garrett in my second book, Texas Twilight (Zebra, 1987) is my favorite hero, simply because he is so much like the men I grew up with — the ranchers who were dedicated to their land and to making things work in the face of adversity and never complaining about it. Trace loves Clara with all his heart and had loved her for years, but the one thing that stood out about him was that in the final analysis he knew and she knew that he could never give up ranching for her.

My favorite heroine is Serita Cortinas from Texas Gamble (Zebra, 1990), probably for the same reason. Her strength came from her ancestral lands, and she was willing to do anything to save her ranch.

Do your readers agree, or do they have their own favorites?

I think of all my characters, readers have loved Giddeon Duval (also Texas Gamble) the most. He was an adventurous sea captain who loved the sea the same way Serita loved her land. When he lost his ship of illegal cargo in the Gulf of Mexico, he immediately struck up a card game to win enough to salvage it; instead of money, however, he won Serita’s ranch from her desperate father.

Texas Gamble was the first of the Texas Star Trilogy; the second book in the trilogy, Texas Dawn took place on the Texas Gulf Coast (location of the Cortinas’ ranch) during the Civil War. Giddeon (now father of the heroine) and cohorts ran the Union blockade, and I decided he should die in one of the battles. My husband argued with me about that. He said readers would never forgive me if I killed Giddeon.

We compromised and I had his leg shot off — below the knee, as my husband insisted, so he could wear a peg leg. I was really glad. Readers who learned this story agreed that they would never have read me again if I’d killed Giddeon. As things turned out, he made a fabulous (and romantic) grandfather in the third book, when his granddaughter salvaged his ship and saved the ranch yet again.

Which comes first for you, character or plot? How does a story grow from there?

There is no one answer for this, except to say that since most of my stories have been series, I’ve known going in whose story I was telling. Beyond that, I often begin with a time and place; I then investigate (research!) to learn who lived there during that period, what they were doing, etc.

One book in the Jarrett Family Sagas (Secret Surrender) began with a scene that flashed through my mind a year or two before I wrote the book. In it the heroine stands on the steps of a dilapidated old boarding house shouting at a man walking up her path: “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I hop into bed with you again, Rubal Jarrett.” To which the man replies, “Wait a minute, ma’am. There’s been some mistake. I’m Jubal Jarrett, not that no-‘count brother of mine.”

When it came time to write the book, I had to decide where to set the story. I chose East Texas because I’d never written a book set in that part of the state. One visit and I fell in love with the magnificent forests; I researched history, customs, occupations, and legends, and decided to have the story revolve around a series of timber theft cases. (That’s when a thief comes in at night or while the owner is away, clear cuts the land, and sells the timber.) My hero was a Texas Ranger, so that worked beautifully.

After that, to create the conflicts between hero and heroine I played the game of what if. What if the mother of the fatherless family has died, leaving the heroine to provide for her younger siblings by running a boarding house in this East Texas timber town? (In the eighteen hundreds a single woman would tarnish her reputation by boarding single men.) What if as a consequence the local Ladies’ Aid Society is threatening to place her siblings in foster homes to get them away from this wanton sister? What if the only way out seems to be to marry the local banker who has generously offered for her hand in spite of her lack of virtue, a man she doesn’t love?

What if into this rides the hero, and thinking him his brother, in spite of her dreadful need, she tries to throw him out. But what if he has the one thing she knows she cannot keep the children without cash for his room and board? It takes a lot longer than this, but basically that’s the beginning of story creation. In a sense, this is a process whereby character and plot emerge together.

How much do you control your characters and vice versa?

If anything controls character, it’s the story, because what you are telling is a slice of a particular character’s life. Author Dona Vaughn puts it this way: “If you plan your characters well enough they can’t change the story, for it is their story.”

Texas Gamble, mentioned earlier, is an example of how I tried to control my characters once, but the story wouldn’t let me. Toward the end of the first draft my outline read: Hero kills villain. I didn’t know how it would happen; I didn’t care how it would happen. When I worked up the outline I knew only that at that point the villain’s story would come to an end; he would have to be taken care of somehow.

Well, I tried for a week to write that scene; every morning I sat down and wrote it a different way, but it never worked. I could never make the hero killing the villain believable, not even to myself!

Then I realized something.

From the first page throughout the story the heroine had been shouting, “I could kill Oliver Burton (villain)!” The villain was doing everything he could to take her Spanish land grant ranch. He was a threat to everything she held dear — and she (and I, as the writer) had promised the reader by her continuing rejoinders that she would dispatch the villain. So she had to do it. When I sat down again to write the scene with Serita in charge, it worked beautifully.

When and where does research enter the picture?

As soon as I settle on a setting (location and time period) and the focus of the story (such as timber theft in Secret Surrender), I begin research. Before I can start writing a story I must have a feel of the place; I must know who lives there and why the major characters are there. In most cases at least one of the two major characters is new to the area. This allows the author to present information about the story and setting without having local characters sound redundant or stupid.

You’re a sixth generation Texan. How much do you use family history and tradition in your work?

Vivian Vaughan: I use a lot of family stories and legends. An example is from my first book, Heart’s Desire (Zebra, 1987). The heroine assumes responsibility for the community’s medical needs. At one point I needed her to deliver a baby, but of course it had to be a difficult birth. Preliminary research turned up nothing, so I asked my mother, who told me the story of a cousin’s birth, which was indeed difficult and which I used almost verbatim as she’d told me.

Does having so much family background make your research harder or easier?

I’d have to say easier, since I’ve always been interested in family stories. That interest has expanded to other families’ histories and history of the settlement of the West, in general.

You’ve mentioned elsewhere that your great grandfather, a Texas Ranger, wrote sonnets. Any chance we could persuade you to share some of his poetry with Crescent Blues readers?

The sonnets were actually letters written by my great grandfather, James L. Parchman, Texas Ranger, to his wife Julia A. Stutesman Parchman while he was away on Ranger duty. One of them seems especially appropriate for this interview, since we’ve discussed my beginning a romance writing career at mid life. If you’ll indulge me, with the permission of my family (Arnold/Parchman Family Letters) here is “To the One Most Dear:”

Oh, no not even when first we loved
Was thou as now thou art.
Thy beauty then my senses moved,
But now thy virtues bind my heart.
What was but passion’s sigh before
Has since been turned to reason’s vow,
And though I then might love thee more
Trust one, I love thee better now.
Although my heart in earlier youth
Might kindle with wild desire,
Believe one, it has gained in truth
Much more than it has lost in fire.
The flame now warms my inmost core
That there but sparkled once my love,
And though I seemed to love thee more
Yet oh I love thee better now.

James L. Parchman, About 1900
[See Editor’s note below.]

Do you prefer to use real locations in your stories, or would you rather create your own settings?

I would rather use composites of several locations. I strive to be accurate as to the landscape, the communities, the people. But I like to set my own community, ranch, or what have you down in the middle of a real place. My first four books, the Silver Creek Stories, were set in Menard County, Texas where I grew up. Everyone there knew the books were set in Menard; I used local legends and tall tales and a lot of actual history, but by calling it Silver Creek instead of Menard, I gave myself leeway to create things and not have people question the facts, where fiction was intended.

What are some of your favorite settings? Do they remain constant over time?

I fall in love with everyplace I write about! Usually my favorite setting, like my favorite story, is the current project. Fort Davis, Texas (setting of the Tremaynes of Apache Wells), is one of my husband’s and my all-time favorite places. We go there a couple of times a year, stay in a state-run lodge in the mountains, and ride through the beautiful hills in our pickup, with a CD of Yanni’s Reflections in Passion ringing in our ears and throbbing through our veins.

Is it the landscape or the history that fascinates you most?

A combination, I think. In Fort Davis, for instance, when I look at the hills I see all the history I’ve read about happening there. Also, I see my stories unfold there, the characters riding through the canyons, running across the parade ground, trudging up the road that separates the fort from the town. Every time I look at Sleeping Lion Mountain, I see its beauty, but I also see Tremayne charging down that cliff on his black stallion, almost running down Sabrina in her outrageous green silk gown. History, they say, repeats itself the world over. Yet nothing ever happens in exactly the same way from one place to another, because the land shapes the people, just as the people shape the land.

Your first book was a western that soon became rewritten as a western romance. Did you always want to write westerns? If not, what caused you to change your mind?

In a word, family. Both my grandfathers died when I was very young. I grew up hearing stories about them, but never felt like I really knew them. Then one day when I was in my mid-twenties, I think, I found an old Western novel my mother had sent her father while she was away from the ranch at boarding school. For some reason I felt that by reading a book she had chosen especially for him, I would learn who my grandfather really was. Whether or not that was true, from that time on I was hooked on Western literature and history.

Which Western writers influenced you the most? Which non-western writers had a similar or greater impact?

I’ll divide the Western writers into two groups — living and not. Of the latter Eugene Manlove Rhodes, author of the classic Western novel, Paso Por Aqui, and several other novellas; and Louis L’Amour, whose books I read and reread many years ago in an attempt to escape from city life into the fantasy Western lands.

But we have many wonderful Western authors living and writing today, and their books have had a major influence on the direction of my career: Elmer Kelton, Mike Blakely, M. David Wilkinson. Probably my all-time favorite historical novel is A Time in the Sun by Jane Barry — a thrilling western story, love story, and an extremely accurate and poignant recounting of the US Army’s wars to take Arizona from the Apache.

As for non-Western writers who have influenced my writing, there are many. In college I fell in love with writing through reading Hemingway’s prose — so simple, yet so complicated. Contemporary non-Western writers who have influenced my style and career while providing me with endless hours of entertainment: Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, Dick Francis, and the wonderful Southern short stories of Mary Hood. Today the majority of my reading time is spent on non-fiction, research for works in progress.

What role did movies and television play in shaping your fiction? How much of what you do is homage and how much is an attempt to correct misperceptions and inaccuracies?

Although I attended all the old Saturday afternoon Westerns, I honestly don’t think they influenced my writing, other than in a technical sense — pace and structure. In fact, I grew up preferring the musicals — Singing in the Rain, Showboat, The Merry Widow.

Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we realize that the misperceptions and inaccuracies were many and yes, I guess I do try to set things straight. Not to be politically correct, but to show the other side, the other reality of life in the Old West, where in Eugene Manlove Rhodes’ words there have always been “good men and true.” Basically, I see the novelist’s one and only mandate as being to entertain. My writing has been influenced more by music than movies. I love all the old Western ballads, as well as the ballads sung by Marty Robbins, some of Johnny Cash’s work, and Rodney Crowell.

Do you find any particular theme — cowboys and ranches; expanding frontiers; the interaction of Anglo, Hispanic and Native American cultures — more compelling than another? Or do you want to write stories about them all?

I find all the above extremely compelling! Cowboys and ranches are simply a part of who I am. Expanding frontiers offer a novelist, historical or contemporary, exciting possibilities. We may not have great parcels of land left to explore, but we still have a lot of uncharted business of the mind and of the heart.

The interaction of Anglo, Hispanic, Native American, and other cultures is to me the single most important issue before the world today. Whatever I write, whether historical or contemporary, whether set on a ranch or in a great world city, one of the themes will be the celebration of our world’s diversity. It is our greatest asset as a nation and as a people. And celebrating it, or should I say capitalizing on the benefits of celebrating it, is our greatest challenge.

How much do you feel your family and personal background shaped these interests?

My family history led me to a love of all things Western. My mother taught me to that there was a huge world to explore. I’ve lived in the city (Houston area) since 1964, always with the plan to return to the ranch as soon as my husband retired from NASA. That was four years ago, and we have just moved into a high-rise apartment in Houston, Texas.

All our friends and family think we should hate it. But we don’t. We can still go to the ranch, and to Fort Davis, and to places as yet unknown to us to research books, but for our everyday living, we now choose the city. I read not long ago that America’s cities are our new West — our new frontier, where persons of all persuasions can live side by side, yet achieve a sense of anonymity; where a man or woman can be free to express themselves — or hide themselves — without the scrutiny prevalent in small towns.

I don’t advocate dropping out as a desirable way of life, nor do I deny the wonderful advantages of living in a small-town. Human relationships are vital, and unless we look out for each other, we’ll all be in trouble. But freedom to celebrate the diversity of life is also valuable.

Have you ever drawn a story directly from personal experiences?

No. I live far too ordinary a life to use for fiction. I consider myself privileged to live vicariously through my characters, who lead much more exciting lives than I do!

Do your friends and family see themselves in your books?

They think they do, especially the men!

How much of that is real, and how much is wishful thinking?

Occasionally I may have used a heavy hand when borrowing characteristics from a cousin or friend. In a more straightforward way, however, I often name minor character after friends. I didn’t realize how important this was to them, until at one friend’s funeral, her husband introduced me to the mourners as the writer who had made him and his wife famous. That was lovely.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

‘m sure you’ve heard the old adage, a writer writes. I don’t think many people who write fiction, choose to write; it just happens. That’s what we do. The book market today is in a state of upheaval, and few writers know what their futures hold. Although I had planned the Tremaynes of Apache Wells as a four-book series, it now is apparent that there will be only two stories. My next projects will very likely be outside the realm of romance novels.

Presently, I’m working on several projects: a “Women of the West” novel; a contemporary novel set in urban Texas; a few nonfiction book ideas, and a Western adventure novel to be written with my husband, as J. R. Vaughan. Although I may be leaving romance writing, I will never stop writing about love! Nor will I ever forget the readers who have loved my books and have graciously written over the years to tell me so! I love you every one.

Jean Marie Ward

In addition to editing Crescent Blues, Jean Marie Ward writes for a number of Web-based and print magazines, including Science Fiction Weekly. She is the author of Illumina: the Art of Jean Pierre Targete (Paper Tiger) and several short stories, including “Most Dead Bodies in a Confined Space” in Strange Pleasures 2 (Prime Books). Her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Teri Smith, is scheduled to be released by Samhain Publishing in late 2006..

Readers react

In your interview with Vivian Vaughan, she speaks of a sonnet written by her great grandfather, Texas Ranger James L. Parchman, to his wife — circa 1900. She then reprints the poem saying its “with the permission” of her family.

Perhaps, instead, she should have sought the permission of Thomas Moore’s family. You see, it was Moore who wrote that sonnet sixty years before the romantic (and obviously well-read) Texas Ranger put his pen to paper.

Maybe, in her next interview, Ms. Vaughan can reference one of her great grandfather’s other sonnets. I heard he once wrote a nice one to an ex-girlfriend that begins, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

Dave Jenkins

Dear Dave,

Jean Marie passed along your observation on “my great-grandfather’s poetry” and her very proper response to the situation. Please know that as a writer I take this extremely seriously. Although I am truly embarrassed that I trusted family lore without a thought to researching the validity of it, I will not use that as an excuse for an error of this magnitude. And I shall alert other family members immediately.

As to your final paragraph, I am uncertain of the tone you intended. By way of response may I say that I have not seen any of the other sonnets, therefore cannot speak to the content or authorship of them. I have not promoted, nor will I ever again promote, the authorship of a piece of writing that I personally have not verified.

My family will laugh this off. I am the one whose credibility is on the line here, and I sincerely apologize for the error. On a personal and historic note, this situation substantiates the often-made claim that many of the rough-and-tumble men who rode the West were well read. I have no way of knowing whether my Grandfather Parchman carried a volume of Thomas Moore’s poetry and copied especially meaningful passages for his wife or whether he had memorized them beforehand. Although I would bet on the former, my paternal grandmother, Mr. Parchman’s daughter, memorized poetry all her life and kept her mind active by reciting verses well into her later years. At her 88th birthday party, she stood, assisted by my father and a first-cousin, and recited in full Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour.” To my knowledge she never claimed authorship of the poems she recited. I know for certain that she is shaking her finger at me!

Dave, thank you for calling Jean Marie’s attention to this grave matter. I sincerely apologize to you, to Jean Marie, and to all our readers.

Most sincerely,

Vivian Jane Vaughan