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About My Great Love Affair With Books, Romance, and History

 

For as long as I can remember, I have adored books. When I was a child, I loved my Little Golden Books so much I constantly tried to eat them. Perhaps this was my toddler way of “consuming” their knowledge (ha ha ha). When I was older, I moved on to The Babysitters Club books. After this came the infamous Nancy Drew, which I enjoyed all the way up till high school (1990s). It was during this time that I spied one of my classmates with a romance novel. Even now, I remember how fascinated I was in that book with its sensually entwined couple upon its cover. I had never seen its like before (no one I associated with read much, especially romance novels). And as I was an extremely shy girl, I could not bring myself to ask my classmate about the book she had with her. Next chance I got, I asked my dad to take me to the library. After that day, I could always be found hanging about those spinning racks that held romance paperbacks, which I had never even knew existed. Soon after this, a strangely coincidental, but amazing, thing happened. One afternoon, as I went out to get something from my parents’ car, I found a box in the parking lot. Curious, I opened it up, and lo and behold, found it to be a veritable treasure trove—well, at least to me. Inside the box were several stacks of books, and all of them romance novels. I could not believe my luck! Like a child who had found a twenty dollar bill, I rushed back inside with my find. The books were only of two different romance authors (Sandra Brown and Linda Howard), but this didn’t matter. They were romances I had not read yet by authors heretofore unknown to me, and there were many of them. From that day forward, I became infatuated with Brown and Howard, reading all their books I could get my hands on, or rather, what I could persuade my dad to buy for me (ha ha ha). To this day, I still have the first book I read from that box—Linda Howard’s Diamond Bay. It’s so old and battered I had to put tape all over the first page to keep it from falling completely to pieces.

   

After finding the box in the parking lot, wherever romance books could be found I was there. And as my dad was usually willing to buy me a book when I found one I really wanted, I was able to discover many other authors I came to cherish—Amanda Ashley, Linda Lael Miller, Suzanne Barclay, Beatrice Small, Roberta Gellis, just to name a few (later, I got into the classic stuff—Dickens, Hawthorne, Cookson, Heyer…). My indulgence had started out in the contemporary zone of the romance genre. But as I read more and more, I was seduced by the authors of historical romance, particularly Beatrice Small. This eventually led to my infatuation with history.

 

It was 1999 when I first got the idea to write myself. To tell the truth, it wasn’t my idea at all, but my mom’s. When I asked her what I should do with the little tales I had floating around in my head, she simply said I should write them down. So I did.

 

Deciding to finally write myself seemed at the time the most natural thing a person like myself could do. However, as I grew to love history, I became more of a researcher than a writer. From late 1999 to about five years ago (2010), I had spent most of my time and money gathering historical information on the stories I planned to write. Today, my home office is packed, and I mean packed, with books and binders literally stuffed with Xerox copies and hand written notes. The upside to having spent so much of my time and money on historical research is that I now have a good knowledge of the daily lives of those living in certain eras, especially medieval. The downside is that I did not get a lot of actual novel writing done during these years. Nevertheless, I did happen to compile a book list, which includes story premises, character profiles, and historical notes significant to each story. This list presently numbers over a hundred books I plan to write (These are set in the periods from the Viking Era to the Victorian and then on to Contemporary. While most are basic historicals—some more romance or erotic based than others, hence my choosing to write under differnt names—some involve vampires, soul-switching, and reincarnation. I have several fantasy books in the works as well). 

 

About five years ago, I finally put my foot down, put away my history books, and just started writing. A week later, I had my first historical short story completed. I remember how proud I was with myself. This short was the first thing I let anyone read, and they liked it. This meet with approval fueled my determination to put aside my research until such times it was needed.

 

While I had taken the step to showing my work, it was not until last year (2014) that I finally published on Kindle (The Masquerade). I was very uncertain about this move—I published without the benefit of having my story proofread by a professional (I couldn’t, and for the most part still can’t, afford editors fees). However, I decided that perhaps I could get some good feedback. A week later, I published A Diamond for a Baronet on Kindle, and a month later, The Surprise of Love. From there I went on to complete and publish two anthologies, each containing three novelette/novella length stories.

 

So now I arrive at the present and this little website I have designed specifically for my torrid series (well, at least it started out that way, ha ha)written under the pen name Leelou Cervant. If you have reached this final paragraph after reading this page in its entirety, I offer you my greatest thanks for having endured the tale of how my lifelong love of books, romance, and history came into being. Read on my fellow book lover, and may it go on forever!

 

 

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