From Russia with love3 . . .
Historical romance author is visiting Auckland this weekend as part of a brief tour
Most authors will tell you it’s hard to sell books these days — everyone is too busy binge-watching Netflix series. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em is how best-selling author Paullina Simons is approaching publication of her End of Forever trilogy. All three books are being rolled out by HarperCollins this year.
The Tiger Catcher came out in May; A Beggar’s Kingdom is in stores this month then Inexpressible Island hits the shelves in December. If other authors want to follow her lead, by all means, says Simons, but you have to have the books ready.
“You have to do what I did, have five years of not being published.”
As she finishes edits on the third novel, she can’t wait to see them all out in the world.
“The beauty of putting out three books in one year is the story remains front of mind,” says Simons, who’s written 13 novels and two non-fiction books.
Simons, who writes romance, historical and mystery books, has sold 2 million books worldwide. She often describes the immigrant journey in her novels, which is not surprising as the Russian-born author moved to America with her family aged 10 in the early 1970s, a lifechanging event for a little girl who desperately wanted to be accepted as an American.
She made her writing debut with 1994’s Tully and was, at the time, a solo mother, taking menial jobs to pay the bills and living off her redundancy from a financial reporting job while she wrote.
The book was embraced by Australian and New Zealand readers even before those in the United Kingdom and the United States discovered it.
The Bronze Horseman trilogy, which started publication in 2000,
The beauty of putting out three books in one year is the story remains front of mind.
was also successful in New Zealand and Australia but Simons finds it hard to fathom why her World War II era novels were so strongly embraced here, saying perhaps it is because she describes universal human experiences.
In any event, after the success of the trilogy, set in her former home city of St Petersburg (known as Leningrad from 1924 to 1991), Simons proved herself more than capable of telling gripping stories over a book series.
She’s also perfected the art of being able to change genre without a backwards glance.
It means readers who like her historical romances might find a very different writing style in the End of Forever trilogy, which centres on urbane Julian Cruz and dazzling but unreliable young actress, Josephine Collins making it in the entertainment/media world in contemporary Los Angeles.
The story then moves to London, switching historical eras with a bit of time-travelling.
That may be a bit of a stretch for some readers, but others might question Julian and Josephine’s love affair and quickly planned marriage. But Simons says it matches her parents’ romance when they met in the early 60s, holidaying at a Russian mountain resort.
“He came home and told his parents, ‘I have two pieces of news for you, I’m no longer engaged to the woman I have been engaged to for the past four years and I’m marrying someone else in September’,” Simons says. “So, I know these things are possible.”
Nevertheless, The Tiger Catcher has rocketed up the New Zealand bestseller lists and Simons is looking forward to meeting fans when she arrives here for a brief tour this week.
Paullina Simons