LiveWorld Transcripts

Time Warner Bookmark presents

Katherine Stone
Author of "A Midnight Clear"

December 23, 1999

Author, Katherine Stone discusses her newest novel, "A Midnight Clear" and the ins and outs of her life as an acclaimed romance novelist and writer.

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TWBookmark: Welcome to TimeWarnerBookmark! . We're happy to be talking today with Katherine Stone, acclaimed romance novelist and writer. . Her latest novel, "A Midnight Clear," tells of the sensual romance of two persons over six days and six nights in London. Welcome, Katherine!

Katherine Stone: Hello! Thank you very much for having me! I am wishing everyone happy holidays. And for those who read "A Midnight Clear," they know how much I love this particular season.

TWBookmark: What was Katherine like as a little girl? Did she have any hobbies or interests?

Katherine Stone: Oh my! I was pretty much the way I am now, in terms of mainly being interested in people. I'm a people person, I think. I've always enjoyed talking to friends, hearing about their lives, and thinking of stories in my head. I'm unusual for a writer in that I wasn't a reader as a little girl, which most writers are. But I was always making up stories in my head, and I've always been interested in the relationships of my friends and the people around me. That's probably why I write the kind of romantic relationship books that I've ended up writing.

Herb: When did you first yearn to write?

Katherine Stone: I wrote my first short story at age 11. I was absolutely hooked, and I started telling everybody right then and there that this was what I was going to do. In fact, when my first book came out a million years later a girl who had gone to Campfire Girls camp with me came into the bookstore and said to the owner, "I was at Campfire Camp with her and this is what she said she was going to do!"

Vonda: Do you remember the first story you wrote? And where have you hidden it?

Katherine Stone: I have it. The first line of my story when I was eleven was, "The leg must come off." It was a Civil War story about a wounded soldier. And the interesting thing is, when I wrote "Roommates" about twenty five years later there is a line in that in which it's the Vietnam War, and not the Civil War, and the surgeon says to my wounded hero, "And the leg must come off." I had no idea; I hadn't remembered my childhood one. Although, in the childhood one the leg DID come off, but in the "Roommates" one they saved it. So that was, I think, my happy ending. I was into happy endings by the time I started writing as an adult.

Gail39: Who inspired you most in your life?

Katherine Stone: My mother has inspired me the most. My mother was a mom. And she thought that her three children were the most fascinating little creatures she'd ever seen. That enabled all of us to really believe that we could do whatever we wanted to do.

Noelle: Who are some of your favorite authors, and do you get ideas from them?

Katherine Stone: My favorite author, in the whole world, is my husband. He writes medical novels. His pseudonym is Jack Chase. But we write such completely different things that it's not a matter of getting ideas from one another. And other than that, I have so many friends in the business. I love absolutely everything that every one of them writes. If I start naming them, I will forget somebody. So they are ALL my favorites. And in terms of storyline ideas, I don't think so. I think we draw on our own experiences to come up with storylines. But I've also said to some of my friends, "Wouldn't it be interesting if we all came up with the same premise for a story?" And then we'd see that we would all write a very different story. I always thought that would be a very neat idea. Start with the same premise and see that five or ten different authors would each write different stories in their voices. Reading my friends' work inspires me, just because I sometimes say, "Wow! This is such great writing!"

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