...happens to be Jeannie Watt.
I have an unfortunate habit of raving about the things I like. And this novelist is a newly-discovered delight.
I stumbled across her purely by accident one day while passing a bookrack in a supermarket. I'd been looking for a Western novel and my eye happened to fall on the nicely illustrated front cover of a book sitting askew in the bottom shelf, partially obscured by another book. All I could see was a cowboy and some ranch buildings, so I grabbed the book and ran.
At home, I noticed that it was a Harlequin romance novel and I put it aside, thinking perhaps I'd send it to my daughter since I never read romance novels. It just isn't manly. Or so I thought.
Later that day in a moment of inactivity, I leafed through the book and couldn't put it down. The title of the novel was The Brother Returns and the author was Jeannie Watt.
Later, I did a little research for other novels she'd written and found A Difficult Woman, which I promptly ordered from Amazon.com. This one was better yet, so good that I wrote a review on Amazon, followed recently with an as yet unpublished review for Barnes and Nobel. Writing reviews is something else I never do.
Now, I'm scouting around for The Horseman's Secret, a book that gave birth to a sequel about a brother who returns. Fortunately, my daughter has ordered one for me, which if all goes well, should arrive in a week or so.
In the meantime, I eagerly await Jeannie's newest novel, Cop on Loan, scheduled for release in October 2008. I have no idea of the plot of this story, but the title intrigues me.
Later this month, you might catch Jeannie at the Romance Writers of America annual national conference, to be held in San Francisco at the Marriott, July 30-August 2, 2008.
So, what is it about her writing that I particularly like? For one thing, she writes about ordinary people. They live ordinary lives much like the lives of the rest of us. Until love strikes. But even then we can relate to their angst.
And her characters are superbly drawn. She rounds out not only the protagonists but the supporting cast as well. In A Difficult Woman, she drew my personal attention by skillfully weaving an older man, Luke, into the story so completely that I immediately recognized him as someone out of my own youth.
My Mom and Dad had an older friend much like Luke. This friend was a bartender at, surprise, surprise, a place in California called the Owl Club. Coincidentally, the Owl Club is the name of a casino in Jeannie's story and the central location for much of the action in A Difficult Woman. Not the same Owl Club of my youth, of course, but close enough to fire my dormant imagination.
Jeannie's dialogue, especially the male dialogue, also drew my attention. If you didn't know better, you'd think that Jeannie Watt is a male author using a female pen name. But no, Jeannie is a woman, a school teacher, married, with two grown children.
Above and behind her startling technique and writing skills, however, I respect her hard word and tenacity. Here is a person who has persevered. Among other things, she's taught school, raised children, worked a ranch, and goodness knows what else, all the while following her dream of becoming a writer. Her life story reads like a novel in and of itself.
Okay, I've raved long enough. I've been criticized in the past for pouring it on too thickly, but as I mentioned earlier, it's one of my many character defects. The possibility that I might change is rather remote.
We like what we like. What else can I say?
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