Susan Presents: Margaret Mallory

Dont'cha miss the good old days when you could get your hands on a books about knights and kings and kirtles and stuff? Well, I have a treat for you, because today's guest blogger is Margaret Mallory, and she writes medieval romances. Knight of Pleasure, which is hitting the shelves as we speak, is the second in her series, ALL THE KING'S MEN, and--whoo-hoo!--she's giving away autographed copies to two lucky posters. Take it away, Margaret!
(Oh, wait, wait! I forgot to mention the pic below the star line. That's Caen Castle--there are several scenes in the book set here. Pretty cool, huh?)

Okay, now take it away!

******************************************************************


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Thanks so much for inviting me, Susan. I’m thrilled to be rubbing quills with such wonderful authors.

Tell me, when you are a bestseller, do your relatives still give you a hard time about your love scenes? It’s not that my family members don’t read plenty of books with sex scenes…but knowing I write them is something else altogether.

Shortly after my first book came out in July, I did a book signing at my sister’s library. She is the librarian in the town where we went to high school, so between relatives, old family friends, and library patrons, a lot of people showed up. Every time someone said they were buying my book for a daughter or niece, my mother would shriek, “She better be over 18!” My mother, who is not young, was prepared to wrestle the person to the ground if the answer was no.

With my second book coming out, I have visions of my mom standing in the romance section of her local bookstore checking ID’s to be sure no one underage picks up my book.

And then there are my in-laws. When they kept joking about how hot they were going to get reading my book, my 19-year-old son had to leave the house. (It was hard, but I refrained from going with him.) He told me later that thinking about “old people” having sex—and I suspect he meant his parents as well as his grandparents—was just too “disturbing.”

Your children, of course, don’t want to know that you ever had sex, let alone that you write love scenes for all the world to read. My son’s friends did not help matters when they threatened to read my love scenes aloud to the freshman dorm. How mature. I considered advising these young men that reading romance novels could save them years and years of missteps with women, but I bit my tongue.

Really, don’t you think romance novels should be required for college freshmen?

My son asked me to cut the love scenes from his copy of my book. Paper-clipping the pages or blacking them out was not sufficient; the offending pages had to be removed completely. He still hasn’t read it—probably because I warned him I could not possibly cut out all the places where my characters are THINKING about sex. It is a romance, after all. ☺

While I have family members who want the love scenes removed, a number of men friends want to read ONLY the love scenes. They pretend to be joking when they ask for the page numbers—ha ha—but I don’t believe them. Yes, it is a little weird.

My daughter, at least, stopped being embarrassed after she saw how enthusiastic her girlfriends were about my books. Luckily, her friends are all over eighteen, so my mother won’t have to track them down and rip the copies out of their hands.

All kidding aside, my family and friends have been amazing in their support of my new career as a romance writer. I am sure every one of them accosts strangers in the grocery store to tell them about my books, and I am grateful. In fact, I dedicated my new release, Knight of Pleasure, to my parents. All the same, I hope they don’t read past the dedication.

It’s a good thing I don’t write my books for the relatives. If I did, they wouldn’t be fun at all.

I would love to hear your advice and comments!

~Margaret

www.margaretmallory.com