Eve Ackerman wakes up at 6:30, pours a bowl of multigrain cereal with milk from the local farmers market, puts on a pot of coffee and writes about sex.
More specifically, the Jewish mother and Florida native writes books about nineteenth-century pirates making love and trouble off Florida’s Atlantic coast.
As a woman who has worked as a journalist, news editor and radio personality, Ackerman has spent a large part of her life telling stories. But, it was Pirate’s Price, published in 2001 and written under the pen name Darlene Marshall, that added “award-winning novelist” to her repertoire. She’s a mother with two sons, a husband named Howard and a corn snake named Frisky and if her sharp wit and sarcastic sense of humor don’t keep you on your toes, you’re probably not getting the joke.
Ackerman spoke with New Voices about what it’s like being a romance novelist and how her Jewish identity and beliefs about feminism have influenced her writing.
New Voices: What are you like when you’re writing?
Eve Ackerman: Normally, I wear a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of running shorts. It’s one of the best parts of this job. Who wears a shirt with flamingoes and flip-flops to work?
Certain music triggers my writing mode. I like soundtracks from epic movies. No lyrics though. It has to be instrumental — Gladiator, Braveheart, Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack — they really help.
NV: How does being Jewish play into your writing?
EA: I’ve had some major plot breakthroughs on Shabbat. I think to myself, I just have to remember this until the sun goes down.
Also, pork is a staple item in the diet of nineteenth-century Floridians. I had all these people eating meals without pork or shellfish. I had to go back and write in scenes where people were eating pork. One of my characters, Gabriel Moses Lopez, is a Sephardic Jewish pirate from the Caribbean. He’s at a feast where pork is being served and he says, “I love pig. My fiancée asked that I only eat pork if I were starving.”
NV: How has your Jewish community reacted to your books?
EA: I really don’t give a damn if everyone in the synagogue looks at me and thinks, wow, she writes hot sex scenes. I do care if they ask my husband if he’s part of the research process. That’s so annoying. They only ask romance writers things like that.
NV: How do people react when you tell them what you do?
EA: People tend to find it very exciting, which is good for my ego. It’s a career choice that’s kind of out there. It’s not working at the checkout counter. I like getting that reaction. I’ve had so many people say, “Oh, I don’t read that trash.” I just smile and move on with my life. Or, “when are you going to write a real book?” Like this is practice.
NV: What would you say are some other common misconceptions about romantic fiction and its writers?
EA: We don’t have a typical romance reader. Sure you’ve got women with puffy kitten sweatshirts. But I also know readers who are athletes, airline pilots, cops. These are all guys incidentally. A number of romance writers have Ivy [League] degrees. Catherine Asaro writes sci-fi romance. She’s a nuclear physicist and a ballerina. If I made up a character like that, my editor would say, don’t be ridiculous.
NV: How did you get started writing romantic fiction?
EA: I was involved in the Compuserv literary forum. Their literary group had professionals and people who could offer really good criticism. They had one [writing exercise] called “sex in the dark,” where you had to write a scene where people couldn’t see each other. I’d never posted anything like that. This was the first time that I’d written fiction.
Very little happened next. It was the late ‘90s. I wasn’t really serious about it. I had the radio station, young kids, other things going on. But every now and then, I’d write a little bit more with the same characters from “sex in the dark.” How did these characters get there? Why were they in the dark? What was their story? And that’s how Pirate’s Price began.
NV: How do you feel about the criticism that romantic novels are un-feminist?
EA: I would say romantic fiction is generally empowering. You can seldom have a wimpy romance heroine. She has to be able to take charge of her life on some level. No one wants to read a tragic story about a woman who’s being walked on and kills herself.
In the ones that are classics in the genre today, that people talk about, the women — no matter what stage of history they’re in or what their life circumstances are — they’re taking charge of their life, they’re making sure the outcome is what’s best for them, and they’re going to end up with a satisfactory and successful ending. Tragedy isn’t the way the world is, necessarily. People want to read about heroines who are capable.
NV: Who are your literary heroines?
EA: Jane Eyre is one of my heroines. She overcomes incredible adversity. Also Ruth from the Book of Ruth. I was in the car once with our old rabbi, and he told me about an activity where he was discussing the Book of Ruth. I said, “That’s got all the elements of a great romance novel.” You’ve got a plucky young heroine who starts out, she’s beautiful, she’s loyal, she’s smart. Her husband dies; she goes back to a new land and creates a new life for herself. She meets a successful business man and he is immediately attracted to her, and there is all this drama. Will Boaz be triumphant? Will he get Ruth? Of course, they get married, they have children. I say, “I couldn’t have written it better myself.” Rabbi Lehmann says, “Eve, that is very modest of you.”
NV: Does anyone in your family read your books?
EA: My husband reads them, and he gets a deer-in-the-headlights look like, where does she get this stuff from? I don’t think anyone else in my family has ever read them. My sons said the idea of reading a sex scene written by their mom freaks them out. Both of them have used “My mom writes pirate porn” as ice breakers.
NV: Have you ever written something that made you blush?
EA: No, not in my own writing. I’ve written stuff that made me cry. If that doesn’t happen then I’m doing it wrong. If I’m not feeling it then I can’t expect my reader to feel it.
Sex scenes are different. You’re certainly trying to evoke emotion, but you have to be very cognizant as a writer of maintaining a high level of awareness of how you’re choosing your words and how you’re putting them in. You have to be sure you’re writing emotionally but also that you’re writing well.
Every sex scene is not about sex. It’s about building the relationship between the hero and the heroine.
Eve Ackerman has authored three award-winning romance novels in the last eight years. Her fourth, “The Bride and the Buccaneer,” will come out in December.
