Word: evanovich
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...Evanovich, by then in her 30s, worked on the typewriter in Pete's office after the kids went to bed. She knew no writers or agents. She began racking up rejection letters. Years went by; her career went nowhere. Advised by someone to try romance novels--which she had never read--she studied up and wrote a few. But when she crossed the 10-year mark in trying to get published, she burned all her papers and sat on a curb and cried. A few months later, an editor called to buy one of her books. Even now, Evanovich gets...
After publishing a dozen romance novels, Evanovich switched to a crime series. "I decided that if I was going to stay with something for a long time, it would have to go back to New Jersey," she says. Not wanting to make her heroine, Stephanie Plum, a private eye or a cop, Evanovich made her a bounty hunter who tracks down suspects who jump bail. "It had such cachet, the Wild West thing," she says. "It was something with a lot of personal freedom to it. Then I had to find out what bounty hunters do." She also...
...plunked Stephanie and a cast of oddball characters--Lula, the plump ex-hooker; Grandma Mazur, who hangs out at Stiva's Funeral Home because it's "the nerve center of the news network"--in an area known as the Burb, near Trenton (also near Evanovich's hometown). "If the Burb was a food, it would be pasta," writes Evanovich. "Penne rigate, ziti, fettuccine, spaghetti and elbow macaroni...
...antic tradition. Stephanie is stalked by a man in a bunny suit, a dead body shows up on her couch, and her car is blown up. She boomerangs randily between her two love interests, a bond enforcer named Ranger and a cop called Joe Morelli, written by Evanovich with the flair of a former romance writer. Evanovich also knows how to keep the laughs coming: "Fortunately, the flow on the Turnpike was steady. Good Jersey traffic. Bumper to bumper at 80 miles an hour...
...Today Evanovich and her family live near Hanover, N.H., in a house overlooking the Connecticut River Valley, with a golden retriever and "a rude green parrot." What a difference royalties make. "If I see something I like, I can buy it," she marvels. "I have more money than time now. I don't always have to look for the best buy." (One such purchase: a diamond ring from Tiffany's.) In short, says Evanovich, turning out best sellers "allows you to have different priorities." But for her, one priority remains: writing book nine...