Theresa outside her home
Hi! My name is Theresa Ragan and I decided I wanted to write a romance novel about fourteen years ago. It has been a long, hard yet fascinating journey. One of my main motivations in the beginning was to prove to myself that determination and preseverance really do make a difference when it comes to setting goals and following dreams. Since then, many people have reminded me that a very small percentage of people actually manage to see their books published. Reminders like that only serve to make me write faster and work harder. I am still chasing the dream and I am confident that it will happen. I love the stories I write and I want to share them with others. It’s not only ego that pushes me to see my books on the shelves at the local bookstores, it’s also my dream to entertain readers. I have always loved telling stories and escaping into other’s stories. I love reading John Grisham, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver, Susan E. Phillips, Rachel Gibson, Lisa Gardner, Dan Brown, and many others. I love being swept away into the lives of characters, caring about what will happen to them, rooting for them to grow and learn, eager to see how things will turn out. I love a good book.
I read my first romance novel sixteen years ago. I loved the escapism and the happy ever after. I felt satisfied after I read the last page and set the book down. I decided to write my own medieval time travel and ended up spending the next five years writing a book while also researching medieval times. The research was almost as fun as writing the book. I had a 40-page outline when I was finished. My sister took me to a writer she knew and the woman told me that I didn’t have a story yet, but I did have an outline. I just needed to turn the outline into a book. So I did. And then I sent the first 75 pages of the 420 page book to Harlequin for a critique. That’s when I learned about point of view and plotting. I also learned about RWA from a friend. I found the number for the Sacramento Chapter of RWA and I ended up talking with a real honest-to-god author, Patti Berg, who had just published her first book at the time. I went on to meet and critique with many wonderful writers/authors. Two of my critique partners were published within that first year. Everybody left me in the dust, so to speak. I was writing every day and I was setting deadlines, but getting my books published felt like an impossible dream. Was I writing in the right genre? I began to doubt my muse and my goals. Was I wasting my time? It was difficult to balance raising four kids and write at the same time, mostly because I needed to concentrate when I wrote. I needed quiet and that’s something I didn’t have back then. I wrote two medieval time travels before I finally signed with my first agent. She was a wonderful person but my books weren’t selling and so after four years together we parted ways. My kids were getting older now and my oldest son finished college and moved out. I started writing romantic comedy and by then I had dozens of partials and two more finished novels. I began winning contests. I worked with one editor on revising my medieval time travel, but she moved to another publishing house and that was the end of that. After I wrote my second romantic suspense, I began to get nibbles from editors and this book finaled in RWA’s prestigious Golden Heart Contest for unpublished writers, giving me a total of Six Golden Heart finals in five years. I knew readers were connecting with my stories, but why not the editors? What was missing? Talent? Luck? I had determination and perseverance. I still do.
One thing I’ve learned over the past fourteen years is that I LOVE writing and that I’m not going to give up persuing publication. Some say they write for the sheer joy of writing. I write because I love it, too, but I am never going to stop knocking on the doors to the publishers in New York. I will not give up. I want to see my books on the shelves downtown. I want to do book signings and answer e-mails from my fans. Okay, maybe it is about ego, but I do love writing and I want to provide readers with a few hours of escapism. I want them to set the book down and feel satisfied. I want to give someone else that same pleasure so many authors have given me. And I won’t give up until I’ve done exactly that.