Five Questions with Leslie Ray

by Julie Tetel Andresen | September 7, 2015 |

Five Questions Series

I love connecting with and learning from other writers and bloggers online. This is the third post in my new series, interviewing some of the intelligent and thoughtful romance writers who share about their craft. Today’s guest is Leslie Ray, an author of contemporary romance novels, including the soon-to-be-published book RUN TO ME.

You fell in love with books when you picked up Pride and Prejudice for the first time. What attracted you to that book? How has Jane Austen impacted the way you write or the way you view the romance genre?

Leslie Ray: I don’t have the most traditional path to becoming a writer. As a kid, I actually hated to read. Crazy, I know. Normally, an author’s bio starts out with how they loved books as a child or how they remember summer days reading beneath a willow tree. Well, it wasn’t until I picked up Pride and Prejudice at the age of twenty that I fell in love with books.

To be honest, the only reason I ever took it off the shelf was because it was the only book out of my husband’s Easton Press leather bound collection that I knew was a love story. At the time, the group of women I worked with were always talking about the books they were reading. They would go on and on about the stories and characters, and then pass them around to each other when they finished. I knew I loved a good romantic comedy – Sweet Home Alabama still holds the spot as my all time favorite movie – but reading? It sounded so…boring.

By the time I finished Pride and Prejudice, my heart had been won. I found myself missing Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth. I had become so lost in their story, their world that I didn’t want it to end. As to how Jane Austen has impacted my writing…well, I owe it all to her. Her novel was the catalyst for my entire writing career.

You said that the characters of your first book were always with you, begging to have their story told. When you started writing, did you just let the characters take you on the journey of the story, or did you have a plan for where everyone was going to end up?

Leslie Ray: I love this question! It’s one of my favorite topics when people ask about my work…even if they look at me like I have grown a third eye when I tell them my characters talk to me.

My characters are as real to me as you are reading this blog, and they all have a story to tell. When I started my first novel, it was like getting to know a new friend or significant other. I had an idea of where we all needed to end up, but the journey was wide open. I would start down one path, only to have my hero look at me like I was crazy. Often times, he just wasn’t buying what I was selling. I tried hard to make him into the “playboy” kind of man, but turns out he’s just too mellow for that kind of lifestyle. So, I did what all great writers do, I let him show me the way. There is always a certain level of plotting and revisions that happen during the process, but I try to let my characters tell their own story.

Tell us about the inspiration for your most recent book projects.

Leslie Ray: Every story has an inspiration. In my upcoming release, Run To Me, the story was based around a single incident involving myself and a uniformed military officer. A rather embarrassing incident where I may or may not have been watching where I was walking…until I was palm to chest against a certain handsome soldier. But it was while I was writing Run To Me that my most recent project was born.

I was sitting in my local Barnes and Noble, laptop out, Pandora playing through my headphones when a young guy sat down in the seat next to me. I’m guessing he was in his early twenties, with a “boy next door look.” Normally, I’m so lost in my work that I ignore everything around me, but something about this guy had me looking up from my computer screen. And not in a good way. From the corner of my eye, I could see he was very…restless. There was a constant twitch to him; like he couldn’t sit still. Maybe a nervous twitch? Maybe he had been bitten by ten-thousand mosquitos? Maybe I’ve watched too many episodes of Criminal Minds? I don’t know, but he was making me nervous. To make matters worse, he was reading a sniper magazine.

So, like every normal person sitting next to someone that makes them uneasy, I pulled out my cellphone and began texting my best friend (and plotting-partner-in-crime). We decided maybe it was time I leave the store – just for good measure – but not before I decided he needed a story.

In my currently untitled first novel of the Carefree series, Julia Hawthorne finds herself quietly doing a risk analysis on the man sitting next to her in a coffee shop, in the small town of Carefree, SC. Although he may be handsome, his constant fidgeting is sounding all kinds of warnings in her head. Or maybe it’s the sniper magazine that’s making her uneasy. Either way, it’s not setting a good tone for her first visit to this unfamiliar town. Too bad she doesn’t know Miles Scott happens to be the Chief of Police, and the constant twitch…well, that is thanks to the chiggers covering his legs after he had to chase down Mrs. Jenson’s llama through an overgrown field.

Want to know where this story is heading? You’ll have to stay tuned…but I promise, it’s shaping up to be quite the laugh.

Why did you choose to write contemporary romance instead of historical romance?

Leslie Ray: Although I found myself enthralled with Mr. Darcy, it wasn’t until I found contemporary romance that I fell madly in love. I love a good YA or mystery, but it’s contemporary that holds my heart. Inspired by everyday life and love, I like to keep my stories in the here and now, touching on societal issues in the current dating world. And not to mention, I enjoy bringing in elements of modern technology and social media. But mostly, it has to do with my voice. To be honest, I would make a terrible historical writer. Talking about butchering dialog, I would never do it justice.

What was the most important lesson you learned while writing your first novel?

Leslie Ray: Lesson number one in writing – Plot! You can never spend too much time plotting. When I started this journey, I thought I could sit down with a laptop and blank Word document…the rest would be history, right? Wrong! It didn’t take long to realize how important and valuable plotting a story really is.

To put it in perspective, I have a file with about 40,000 words that were cut from the very frist manuscript I wrote. In layman terms…that’s half of a novel. Needless to say, I don’t type a word until the story had been laid out. With that said, my plots are never chiseled in stone. As I mentioned above, I don’t limit my characters by strictly follow my original plot. With the time lapse between plotting and the start of the manuscript, my character’s personalities develop revealing that sometimes my plot was headed in the wrong direction. Plotting also helps maintain details. I don’t know how many times I have been two months into writing and can’t remember the details of something I wrote in the frist few chapters. Instead of having to read the entire beginning again, I can quickly skim my outline and find the information I need.