Читать книгу To Have And To Hold - Diana Palmer - Страница 5

Dear Readers:

This book contains To Have and to Hold—my third published book—and The Cowboy and the Lady, my first published Silhouette Desire.

To Have and to Hold was strictly for fun. I loved that big black dog of Cal Forrest’s, especially when he ate Madeline’s steak and pushed her down in the stream behind the house. He was actually based on my own dog, Mingo, a Doberman Pinscher whose ears had never been properly clipped.

James and I almost didn’t get married because of Mingo. At the time James and I started courting—if you can call getting engaged on a Wednesday and married the following Monday a real courtship—there were three women in the house: my mother, whom I called George, my sister and me. Dad was temporarily living in Atlanta, having just changed jobs. Mingo had gotten used to protecting his girls, and he definitely did not like strange men. The minute James walked in the house, Mingo jumped up on the nearest chair, bared his sharp white teeth and let loose his best professional wrestler growl.

The fact that James refused to be intimidated really floored that dog. He went from puzzlement to shock to actual shame. By the end of our five-day courtship, Mingo would slink away and whine when James came in the door. Poor old dog. I felt that he did at least deserve a little immortality because of his perseverance, so I added him to the cast of To Have and to Hold.

The cat, Cabbage, was not patterned after our only resident Siamese cat. Our cat was neither cross-eyed nor female. He was a mean-tempered, macho-type male cat who hated everyone—especially me. From the beginning, he belonged strictly to James. If he ever got mad at James, he would come and bite me instead!

Lucifer—he lived down to the name, believe me—came to live with us in 1972. By 1979, when To Have and to Hold was written, he was seven years old and smugly secure in his position of Solitary Adored House Cat. I hate smug cats, so I conspired to undermine his position in the household. I bought another Siamese cat. This one was female, cross-eyed and loving. She was a totally different kind of cat from Lucifer. I named her Kwan Yin, after the oriental goddess of beauty. Sadly, her elegant name lasted one day. She was sitting in my lap when a door slammed. Always high-strung, she dug in her very sharp claws and took off like a hotrod.

“Awww,” James said, grinning as he eyed my scratches. “Mama’s little Boo-Boo.”

Boo-Boo she is, to this day. But in To Have and to Hold, she was Cabbage.

We lost Lucifer in 1989—ten years after he became accustomed to Boo-Boo. She has been a lost soul ever since. Lucifer was seventeen years old, not a bad life span for a beautiful and much-loved old friend. I buried him under my favorite dogwood tree, in the front yard, and planted violets around him. They are almost exactly the color of his eyes.

The secret identity that E. F. McCallum adopts in the book—pretending to be Cal Forrest—springs from my fascination with such heroes as Zorro and Superman when I was a child. I always loved the idea of a secret identity, so I couldn’t resist having Madeline’s boss adopt one during his sick leave. When he revealed his true identity and she had to deal with the differences in their life-styles, I delighted in the resulting drama. I have to confess that I enjoyed the opportunity for some humor, as well. My first two books were rather dark in tone. This one was light and airy, with madcap people and animals. When Madeline dumped the pie on McCallum’s stomach, I laughed until I cried. I could see the syrupy apples running down over that white sweatshirt and hear McCallum yelling his head off. It was my favorite scene. My next favorite was when she backed down her driveway and hit his car. Poor guy. It was nice that he survived their courtship, though.

The scene on the beach in Panama City, Florida, was retracing old paths for me. For many years, my family spent several days every summer on the Miracle Strip in Panama City, shelling and playing in the surf. My sister, Dannis, was just a toddler then. It was so much fun, watching her experience the beach for the first time. We lived in Atlanta then, and she’d never seen anything like the Gulf of Mexico. Neither had I; seagulls and pelicans, bone-white sand and aqua water, were equally fascinating to me. I sat on the balcony of our room and watched the whitecaps break in quick chain reactions at night, with the moon shining down on the dark water. I remember thinking at the time—I was only fourteen—that someday I was going to write a book about the place. Even at that age, writing was all I ever wanted to do.

Well, I did write the book, and To Have and to Hold was it. I tried to capture the excitement I felt the first time I saw the Miracle Strip, along with the tangible delight that the atmosphere held for me. I hope I succeeded.

The Cowboy and the Lady was my first Silhouette Desire, and it wasn’t light in tone like To Have and to Hold. If anything, it was a dark drama with a very masculine hero and a feminine heroine. Amanda was very much on the defensive with Jace Whitehall, and it was obvious to me from the beginning that she was going to have a hard time.

Jace is my favorite of all the heroes I’ve ever created. He isn’t as complex as some have been, but he has traits that I liked and admired. I often wished that I’d had the space of a longer book, because the chemistry between these two characters was immediate and explosive any time they were together. I have never enjoyed a story as much. Even when I finished the book, I couldn’t stop developing the characters. My filing cabinets are full of scenes I couldn’t fit into the book. The only other book that affected me so strongly was To Love and Cherish. I don’t really know why they made such a lasting impression on me. But they did, and I’d still love the opportunity to go back and add more to them.

The idea of having Jace celibate for so long wasn’t really something I planned. Like so many facets of a character, this one popped out of thin air and refused to be dislodged. Some people think that long periods of celibacy are not possible for men. Whether they are or not, Jace said he had been, and I wasn’t about to argue with him! Really, this is fiction, and the ideals of romantic love may not be very realistic—but they are beautiful.

Fidelity, honor, loyalty and sacrifice are noble virtues. In bygone eras, they were life itself. A man’s word was like money in the bank, a woman’s virtue was a pearl beyond price, and honor was worth dying for. Maybe those old-fashioned ideas are out of date, but I still believe in them.

I admired Don Quixote tilting at windmills as he sought to restore honor and nobility to a weary, cynical world. I like characters with noble ideas, virtues beyond price and honor. Being bad is easy. Being good is not. The very rarity of true virtue makes it intriguing to me. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy building characters who portray it. And perhaps I saw too many replays of Man of La Mancha in my youth! I always have loved windmills, and there are plenty of them in Texas. Cervantes created his character as a Spaniard, but he would have made a great Texan.

All in all, I prefer writing books with Western settings. There is something timeless about a vast plain where men struggle against nature itself to carve a life—or an empire—for themselves. The men who tamed the West were a special breed. I have enjoyed recreating that pioneer spirit in modern-day cattlemen, in heroes who are, I hope, a little larger than life. If their virtues are slightly magnified, it is to compensate for the flaws of modern society, which are also magnified. Romance fiction offers a brief escape from the pain and pressure of modern life, taking you into a world where the human spirit can be noble and strive for a higher, richer existence. My characters aren’t completely true to life—but then, perhaps that’s their appeal.

I have enjoyed sharing my rose-colored dreams with you. If they have made your heart a little lighter, your step a little surer, your sadness a little more bearable, then I have succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. May your lives be as bright and joyful as your friendship has made mine. God bless you.

Your friend,