Everything I know about writing I learned from Mary Stewart

Everything I know about writing, I learned from Mary Stewart.

That’s a slight exaggeration, of course; but not as much as you’d think. I grew up in France, the daughter of an American mother and a French father, and my mother’s TBR pile was always toppling over with the English-language books she shared with me — and in fact insisted I read. Romantic suspense appealed to me from about age nine on, and we had (thanks to trips to London to raid Brentano’s and W.H. Smith’s) nearly the entire Stewart opus. And I fell in love with those books, over and over again, reading and re-reading them until I had entire portions down to memory.

I may have been unconsciously following her style when, in my early teens, I myself began writing; but it was as an adult that I truly came to see Stewart’s whole opus — 20 adult novels over 40 years — as the best writing classes imaginable.

Her opening lines draw readers immediately into the story and the personality of the protagonist (talk about “you had me at hello”!). Check them out:

• “Carmel Lacy is the silliest women I know, which is saying a great deal.” (Airs Above the Ground).
• “The whole affair began so very quietly.” (Madam, Will You Talk?)
• “I am an old man now, but then I was already past my prime when Arthur was crowned king.” (The Crystal Cave)
• “My lover came to me on the last night in April, with a message and a…