ROSEMARY ROGERS INSPIRED ME TO WRITE ROMANCE

by Mimi Logsdon

What female author inspired you to write Romance?

When I first read this question I instantly thought of all the women of the world who would immediately name Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Wolff or Mary Anne Evans aka George Elliot as their inspirations.  Although I am an Austen devotee, she was not my inspiration.  The female author that inspired me to write romance is Rosemary Rogers.

Rogers is one of the innovators of the sexy romance novel, along with Kathleen Woodiwiss who released The Wolf and The Dove in 1972.  Rogers, as far as I’m concerned, invented the romance series in 1974 with her Legend of Morgan-Challenger Series.   My older sister handed me my first romance novel at the age of 15 and warned me not to let my parents catch me reading it.  To this day I have my copy of Wildest Heart on my bookshelf.  I was so taken by the romantic story that I swore I’d name my first born female child Rowena, after the heroine.  After that first book, I moved on to Sweet Savage Love and became addicted to romance novels.  Rogers led me to Victoria Holt and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss novels. 

 I remember reading one of Rogers’ novels riding the train home from school in Manhattan to the Bronx, and crying hysterically while reading a chapter where the hero was tied to a tree and beaten in front of a suffering heartbroken heroine.  It didn’t dawn on me that I was making a spectacle of myself until a woman tapped me and asked if I was alright.  Now when I look back on it, I was so overwhelmed by the story I wasn’t even embarrassed.  The same year I discovered her novels, I also experienced my first love and heartbreak which resulted in my need to write romance.  At the age of 15, I could never be as brazen as Judy Blume was with Forever, but because of Rosemary Rogers I was definitely inspired. 

What female literary figure do I admire most?

It’s too hard to choose just one.  At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss, I have two, one old and one new.  My number one female literary figure is Lady Rowena Dangerfield because she introduced me to, and fueled my love for the romance novel heroine, during a time when they were considered cheesy and irrelevant.  What I really love about Rowena is her headstrong, independence and her ability to travel faraway by herself to find a new life. I always believed there was a great big world, far from our apartment in the Kingsbridge section of The Bronx and I wanted to experience it.  She traveled from India to England to New Mexico, which sounded so exotic to me at the time.  I connected with Rowena because she dared to be different, to want a different life and to experience the wild unconventional side of life.  She also dared to love a half-bred rambling man.  She defied convention during a time when such behavior was shunned. I identified with that. In point, she wanted more than what a woman was allowed to want. That’s exactly what I wanted.  I love a heroine who marches to a completely different drum and has no regrets.

My second literary figure is Blue Bailey.  She was created in 1995 by RITA Award and Lifetime Award winner Susan Elizabeth Phillips.  I simply adore this literary figure.  She’s a tough as nails artist whose mom was too busy saving the world with her political activism to have raised Blue.  After being shuffled to relatives and friends, Blue grew up learning that the only person she could depend on is herself.  She develops an emotional shield because her heart has been broken way too many times.  But, a chance meeting with a famous quarterback while walking down a highway in a beaver suit not only tests her fears of abandonment, but opens her heart, tears down her walls and proves that you can find that one person that will never abandon you.  The badass chick in biker boots and black clothing learns how to wear pink.  Who couldn’t love a heroine named Blue Bailey?♥

Mimi Logsdon has been writing romance stories since her teens and loves the Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Paranormal genres. She has worked in the media industry for over 25 years, and currently works at HBO, Inc. She lives in New York with her husband and pets. One of them, an eccentric cat named George she features in her current romance series, "Immortals In New York."