Word: avon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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WICKED LOVING LIES by ROSEMARY ROGERS 667 pages. Avon...
...Avon Ladies," as they are known in the trade, who have struck the richest vein. In 1971 Editor Nancy Coffey of Hearst's Avon Books found in her "slush pile" of unsolicited manuscripts an interminable 800-page tome about love in the midst of the American Revolution by a 35-year-old New Jersey housewife named Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Published in 1972 as The Flame and the Flower, it has sold an astounding 2,348,000 copies -more than enough to convince Avon executives that millions of women readers were yearning for "frequent long vacations from the 20th century...
Rough Diamond. Avon has supplied them. In addition to Author Woodiwiss, Editor Coffey has discovered Laurie McBain, a 26-year-old Smith graduate whose 428-page Devil's Desire has sold 1,268,000 copies, and Joyce Verrette, a former NBC secretary whose 475-page Dawn of Desire has sold 150,000 more than that. But the biggest discovery was made late in 1973 when a rough diamond as big as the Ritz dropped through Avon's transom...
...Avon's editors believe the question echoes a cry from the hearts of millions of American wives and mothers. These women, says an Avon executive, are sick of being used as domestic drudges and emotional garbage bags. "They identify with Rosemary's heroines because the heroines do everything the average housewife longs to do - they travel to exotic places, meet famous people, have passionate affairs with fascinating men, and in the end fall madly in love and live happily ever after." Identification is made easy because Rogers' heroines - and her heroes for that matter - are at worst...
Third Eye. What happened might strain credulity even in the context of a Rosemary Rogers novel. Working only at night for more than a year, she rewrote one of her childhood tales 24 times, then mailed it to Avon. Today the author lives quietly in a small dramatic villa perched on a crag above the Pacific near Carmel. Her three oldest children are now away from home. "I'd like to live with a man," she admits, "but I find men in real life don't come up to my fantasies. I want culture, spirit...