Christal Cooper – 1,763 Words
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ROMANCE
NOVELIST
SHIRLEE BUSBEE
A QUICK SUMMARY OF A ROMANTIC LIFE
Shirlee Elaine Busbee, born
in San Jose, California in August 9, 1941, was the eldest of five children of a
naval officer. Her childhood was
happy and could be summed up in the form of her first memory: her mother, grandmother, and aunt
placing the three year old on the kitchen table and singing You Are My
Sunshine.
Busbee loved to read and
her school library consisted of the Trixi Belldon books, the Thomac C Hinkle
horse books; but the turning point of her reading career came at the age of
twelve, when she read her mother’s novel Forever
Amber by Kathleen Winsor.
“It was in its day the most scandalous. I remember my mom and her friends
gossiping and laughing about it.
They made a movie about it and when the movie came out that generated
more gossip and giggles.”
Two years later,
still living in California, she took her first stab at writing a short story
called Pale Gold Is The Stallion.
“It was from the stallion’s point of
view. The teacher wanted me to
read it out loud to the class because it impressed her. I did and everyone liked it.”
***
In 1957, the
family moved to a military base in Kentri, Morocco, where her father was
stationed. Busbee, who graduated
from high school there, described the base as a “small USA.” That all changed when an American film
crew urged the American high school students to go to the city of Rabat in
order to see King Mohammed V Of Morocco in all his splendor.
“It was a real spectacle because it’s the
white horse pulling the red carriage and the big red umbrella held over his
head as he comes down.”
When the Moroccans
saw their King they did their traditional chant. Busbee became friends with members of the Moroccan community,
which was a Muslim community with a strong French influence.
“We had a fatima, which was a maid, and most of the Moroccan women were
called fatimas because their name was Fatima. My favorite was a young woman named Zora. I cried the day we had to say goodbye
to her. I have a djellaba (the
Morocco traditional dress). Zora
gave it to me the morning we were leaving.”
***
She returned to California with her family and
attended Burbank Business College of Santa Rosa and got a job as draftsmen in
Solano County. While she spent her
days working, her grandmother and her husband Howard’s grandmother concocted a
plan to get their grandchildren to meet and fall in love.
“My
grandmother knew Howard when he was a little boy. He wanted to grow up and marry Gram. Finally they managed to get the two of
us together. I met him at my
grandmother’s house. We got
married 18 months later.”
She was a happy
wife deeply in love, but her love of books never changed. She read voraciously and constantly
that her husband’s ten siblings would tease her by saying they thought that a
book grew out of the end of her hand.
Busbee continues
to be a fast and voracious reader, carries at least six books in her purse, “You never know when you’re going to be
somewhere and get bored,” and reads 12 to 15 good-sized books a
month.
***
The thought of
writing did not come into Busbee’s mind until she met fellow author and dear
friend Rosemary Rogers. Both women
worked for Solano County and their offices were down the hall from each
other. They developed a friendship
when they learned they both were lovers of books. Soon they began to compare notes of writers they liked and
didn’t like and would shop for books at used bookstores and flea markets. Then one day, Rogers went to Busbee’s
office to give her the good news:
she had sold her first book.
“I was just astonished. She never said anything about writing.”
Her
interest in actually writing her own book came a bout one day when Rosie
mentioned to Busbee:
“I got them on the damn
mountain and I don’t know how to get
them off.”
“I looked at her as if she had grown ten
heads. What do you mean you don’t
know how to get them off? You’re
the writer. You know
everything. She said, “No, I
don’t. I know where it’s going to
take place, the characters, and how it’s going to end, but I don’t know how to
get them off the damn mountain.”
Then
Busbee had one more comment for Rosemary Rogers: “I said, ‘You
know, I think I can do that.’ She
turned and looked at me and said, “Do it!”
***
And she did. But before she could do the actual
writing she had to do research to determine in what era and aspect of history
the historical romance would be in.
“My favorite era is from 1790 to 1816
because there was so much going on in that period: The French Revolution, The War of 1812, Barbary Coast
Pirates, the Louisiana Purchase, the Regency, and the Comanche.”
Once Busbee
determined the era her novel would take place she wrote four handwritten
pages. And then she stopped. Finally, after 18 months passed, she
knew it was now or never.
She
began to handwrite her novel onto a yellow tablet, and very quickly Jason
appeared. She continued to
write and then rented an electric typewriter and had about two hundred pages in
manuscript form.
“Rosemary literally ripped it out of my hand
and sent it to her editor, Nancy Coffee, at Avon Books. And Nancy bought it.”
The novel at that
point was focused on Jason and christened the title Beau Savage, but
that all changed when royalty-born and gypsy-bred Catherine appeared.
Gypsy Lady takes place between
1790 to 1804 in England and Louisiana during the Louisiana Purchase.
Eighteen months
later, Gypsy Lady made it to
the New York Times Bestseller List.
***
Busbee normally
does two to three months of intense research before she begins to right the
next novel. .
“I have all of these research books around
with slips of paper in them with pages marked. I knew Gypsy Lady was going to be focused on the Louisiana
Purchase. When I was researching
the Louisiana Purchase there was a reference in one book to a mysterious person
that carried the offer from England to the Americans. ‘Jason, you’re job is here. You are the mysterious stranger,
my friend.’ I always try to
incorporate real events.”
“I write daily two to three hours and then
I’ll take a break and go back for another two to three hours. I’m not counting in the time when I
have to stop and look up some historical fact; when I sit and think and plot;
and when I’m laying in bed awake all night because I’ve got some problem. When I get into the book halfway I
start working forewords and backwards.
By the time I get done with the book I have 100 to 150 pages to put into
final form. I’m so focused on the
final that usually it takes about two weeks of 10 to 12 hour days of just
reading, correcting, and thinking.”
***
Thus far Busbee has written
24 novels with over nine million books in print and seven New York Times
Bestsellers. Her novels have been
published in France, Bulgaria, China, Germany, Holland, Israel, and
Russia. She is the recipient of
two Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Awards, Affaire de Coeur’s Silver, and
Bronze Pen Award, and a member of the Affaire de Coeur Hall of Fame.
After 24 heroes,
Jason from Gypsy Lady still remains Busbee’s favorite hero, next to her
husband that is. “Each hero
comes with different histories and eras, and there is a little bit of Howard in
all of them.”
Busbee described her husband as having a strong moral
compass; a strong person; not afraid to hide his emotions; willing to go to
romance conferences; and a very romantic fellow. Busbee likes to tell the story of her husband’s
heroism.
“We had gotten our camp trailer set up and
then we took a run up to this place called Big Rock. When we come back down I notice two heads inside the trailer
drop down. We’re realizing that
we’re being broken into. And the
scary part was we knew there was a 22 in the trailer. Howard steps on the gas, slams on the break and says, ‘Get
me the 38!’ I flipped over that
consul, threw that gun in his hands just like Ma Barker. He is out of that car and he is out
there like Clint Eastwood and they come out of the trailer and he says, ‘Down
on the ground!’ At one point they
tell him, ‘We don’t have to stay here.
You’re not going to shoot us.’
Howard looked at them and said, ‘There’s going to be two bodies on the
ground and when the sheriff gets here I don’t care if they are dead or
alive.’ That’s the kind of person
he is. I wouldn’t be a writer
today if my husband did not practically carry me around on a satin pillow. He has always put my writing
first.”
The couple lives
in a ranch style home in the foothills of Northern California, where, instead
of having children, they have Mini schnauzers, Standard Schnauzers, and
prizewinning American Shetland ponies.
“We
don’t have children on purpose.
When we first got married we were going to wait a few years, and as time
goes on we looked at each other said, ‘We’ll just try to be everybody’s
favorite aunt and uncle.’”
***
Throughout the
day, Busbee will be in her small office, consisting of three full bookcases,
two filing cabinets, two desks, and another desk with a hutch in it. The office is connected to the library
via a sliding glass door. Her main
view is via a high window where she can see the walnut tree facing the east in
their backyard. Even though she
doesn’t have much of a physical view, having an internal view is more
important; and with this view she continues to write books.
She’s completed
the third book in the Ballinger Series and is half way through the fourth book
of the Ballinger Series. She plans
on writing a novel that takes place during the Bloody Sevens, which occurred in
July of 1777.
Visit
Busbee’s website at http://www.Shirlee-busbee.com or her agent,
Irene Goodman Agency at http://www.irenegoodman.com
SHIRLEE BUSBEE'S BOOKS
Louisiana Series:
Becomes Her Series
Ballenger Family Series
Single Novels
PHOTO DESCRIPTION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Photos 1, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, and 15.
Shirlee Busbee. Copyright by Shirlee Busbee.
Photo 2.
Forever Amber jacket cover.
Photo 3.
King Mohammed V of Morocco in the United States in 1957. Public Domain.
Photo 4.
Red djellaba. Author Josep Renalis. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
Photo 5.
Howard and Shirlee Busbee. Copyright by Shirlee Busbee.
Photo 7.
Rosemary Rogers. Copyright Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law.
Photo 9.
Gypsy Lady jacket cover
Photos 10. and 14.
Shirlee Busbee in her office. Copyright by Shirlee Busbee.
