>Rosamunde Pilcher
WITH HER KIDS BIG, HER BOOKS ARE TOO
"I didn't want to write about the war, but about those tense years before it," says Rosamunde Pilcher, "and how the war changed a group of people's lives." Like her lead character, Judith, Pilcher, 68, grew up in the English county of Cornwall and joined the Women's Royal Naval Service (in 1943). After the war ended, she married (Graham, a jute manufacturer) and settled near Dundee, Scotland, where she churned out short romances while raising their four children.
What attracted you to romantic fiction?
That was the kind of book I'd been devouring since I was 12. I never went to a university, and I certainly couldn't have written anything clever at 22. For many years, when I was writing all those little books, I had a lot of kids under my feet and couldn't concentrate on a big book. That's one reason I didn't write The Shell Seekers until I was 60.
Are you ever at a loss for words?
I've had some very bad blocks. So there's much tramping round fields and kicking furniture. But if I have a good night's sleep, often the problem works itself out in my subconscious.
Is Judith in the book modeled after you?
Judith is not like me, but she's based on my experiences. I never had a nice aunt who got killed and left me all her money! If I had, I'd probably never have started writing.
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