Reintroducing Louise Clark

Many thanks to Hannah Howell for allowing me to visit her blog and talk about my new release, Fighting Fate. My name is Louise Clark and I’ve had six—no seven!—books published. All but Fighting Fate were published in the 20th century, so some of you may remember me, but many will not. I began writing contemporary series books for Silhouette using the pen name Roslyn MacDonald. I’m a history major and I’ve always loved the past, so when the opportunity came to write some historical romances I did. Those came out under my own name in the 1990s.

Then came kids.

Kids, I discovered, take up a lot of your time. In my life, that meant the business side of writing was submerged beneath family, grad school and then job. Even though I wasn’t doing much by way of selling my work, I didn’t stop writing though. Now that I am restarting my publishing career, I’ve got lots of material to polish and market. Whether contemporary, historical or time travel (like Fighting Fate) my new books will all be coming out under Louise Clark, so I hope you’ll keep my name in mind.

Fighting Fate is a contemporary time travel. Instead of the usual scenario where one of the characters goes back into the past, the time traveler in this story comes from the year 1772 into the present. Using that twist was a lot of fun because it allowed me to play with the differences between then and now.

What would a man from 1772 find puzzling about our world? Big things like cars, for sure. Paved roads, miles of strip malls where there used to be fields, congestion. Everyday things like refrigerators and flush toilets. And, oh yes, computers, cell phones and tablets. What he wouldn’t find different are people and the way they behave. Since people are at the core of any story, the combination gave me lots of scope to create a touching story with a shot through with a light vein of humor.

When you write a time travel there’s always a lot of world building that has to happen. How does the person move through time? When he reaches the new time period is he there forever? Or will he have to go back? How do other people react to the stranger? Will the past—or the future—be affected? So not only did I fall in love with my characters in Fighting Fate (I always do!), but I also was intrigued by the time travel world they lived in. Though I wrote Fighting Fate to be a stand alone novel, I left the door ajar, so I could explore their world more.

I’m delighted to say that I will be doing that. Joanna D’Angelo and LeeAnn Lessard at Lachesis Publishing have both expressed their enthusiasm for the “Fate” series. They want to know how Faith and Andrew met and they want to read Andrew’s story. I’m happy to oblige. I’ve got four new stories in the series forming in my mind and I’ll be starting work on the first this summer.