Staying on Track by Deirdre O'Dare

Writing has been termed a lonely business. In some ways it is, but when you have a head full of people talking to you most of the time, you really are not alone! And no, I don’t think most of us are schizophrenic although at times we may be close. I might be even nearer that edge than most since I manage to keep at least two authorly personas active most of the time. 

As Gwynn Morgan I write what by today’s standards are pretty plain vanilla type romances where although the bedroom door does not close, there are no four letter words of old Anglo Saxon origin or exhaustive detail to the love scenes. As Deirdre O’Dare, though, it’s no holds barred and tell it like it is, expletives emphatically not deleted. Can’t get much more different than that! So even when I’m just chatting about “stuff” like I’m doing now, the voices of those two people are not the same. Deirdre is sassier, blunter, sometimes even a bit bawdy or crude. 

My latest offering in the PAX program is a tale in the new All Aboard PAX titled Last Train to Clarkdale. The railroad background comes naturally to me since I have been a rail buff most of my life. Perhaps it happened because both my grandfathers were in the railroad business. Maybe these things skip a generation since my dad was totally unenthused but my brother and I were grabbed by the rail mystique early on. Similar situation in another area of life since both my grandmothers were avid seamstresses; I too love to sew but mom would hardly sew on a button or patch blue jeans—which was needed since our family was far from wealthy! Anyway, both my brother and I loved trains and got involved with them at early ages.

In a lot of ways, my brother Charlie inspired the character of Clay in Last Train to Clarkdale. He’s not and never was gay, but we were not ever in the BKOC (Big Kids on Campus) set and found a comfortable place with some of the railroaders we got to know. And yes, Clarkdale was a place we knew and lived for some years. Writing this story was a nostalgic trip back for me as well as for Clay! 

The song I ‘stole’ for another inspiration was one from my early era as well. I did a search on “Last Train to Clarkdale” and came up with some fun stuff I may share on my own blog in the next day or two, BTW. I’d thought I was being totally original but dang, wrong again. That’s www.deirdredares.blogspot.com if you want to check it out.

Jon was a different sort of character, definitely not your average bear by any means. Not quite Yogi, either, but a pastiche of a number of people and situations in my world. I grew up with photography, too, as my father had been a photojournalist of sorts and then did illustrations for some of his writing. I got my first camera, a Kodak Brownie, in my late teens and have been snapping pictures ever since. So I drew on that and other tidbits to create Jon and his passion for photography.

It’s fun and funny—the way a writer goes about building a tale. Story telling has always been a big facet of life for me. Even as a small child I was super-imaginative and invented all sorts of games and friends and scenarios. Being the eldest and probably over-protected I often had little to do with other kids –like the summer my parents operated a forest fire lookout on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon—so I learned to amuse myself and the craft of story telling surely grew out of that experience.  

For me it starts with finding a character. I have no idea where they come from; they simply emerge and soon start to talk to me. Since I write romance, there has to be a partner and usually the first person will soon mention that individual and then he or she comes out of the void. They are not always in love at first and may even be very alienated, frenemies or strangers yet that other person has already touched the first character in some way or does so very soon. 

I most often pull in setting from the places I have lived because I like to make it as vivid and real as I can, almost another “character” in the story. Where a tale takes place is critical to me and I want to get it right. The plot just sort of happens since I am a very free-wheeling seat of the pants sort of writer. I trust the characters to give me their story and since it is a story, the plot, like s**t, will happen! 

And in Deirdre’s tales there will be some hot sex. Hey, banging someone is usually fun and it’s a natural part of life, don’t you agree? The pursuit and the foreplay is maybe the best part but you gotta just do it at times and of course you will not read one of Deirdre’s stories where the two—or sometimes more—peeps do not get down and dirty a time or two at least. Last Train will not disappoint there because in between the train talk and picture taking, Clay and Jon do have some rowdy fun and games…  That’s all I will tell you; you gotta read it for yourself! 

OMG, I was going to use a railroad term to sign off but then realized what a great erotica title it would make, something about “high balling” which in RR talk means full speed ahead but the double entendre there holds promise. Hmmm, well, we’ll see what happens next!

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Last Train to Clarkdale by Deirdre O'Dare is now available at Amber Allure.

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