Follower Friday: Playground Monitor (Marilyn)

Steps to the microphone. Tap, tap, tap.

My name is Marilyn and I air dirty laundry for money.

When I was a child, my daddy’s sister read True Confessions, and they were off-limits to me. I always wondered what was so bad about them. You know… forbidden fruit and all that?

Now I not only read them, I write for them and the other four “tell all” titles (True Romance, True Experience, True Love and True Story) published by Dorchester Media.

I’ve always enjoyed writing, but after my boys came along, writing took a backseat to motherhood. After #2 son started college, the writing bug struck again after I stumbled backwards into romance novels. I began a novel and it stalled. I started a second one. Ditto.

Meanwhile my accountant was nervous about my tax returns since I had no income but was deducting expenses like RWA membership, my local chapter dues and trips to national conference and our local chapter retreat. It’s nice to keep accountants happy, and even nicer if you can position yourself to avoid an audit. I’d heard about writing for magazines and began studying the market. I submitted my first story in early 2006 and color me shocked when it sold. I sold seven more stories that year, ten the next and ten in 2008. I sold my most recent one about a month ago, bringing my grand total to 30 sales.

These stories are written from the female POV with a conversational style like two friends chatting over coffee. While the titles may look scandalous – like “Mistaken for His Mistress” and “The Texas Bride’s Revenge” – the stories really aren’t. The heroine may face a big challenge, overcome it and learn a lesson along the way. HEAs are not a requirement, but they make readers happy. And y’all know how I feel about keeping people happy.

Once a year, though, True Romance publishes a “hot issue” where the gloves come about halfway off. It’s nothing like mass-market erotica, but for the writers it’s a chance to kick the heat up a couple degrees.


I’ve often wondered about the appeal of the Trues. Is it the suggestion of scandal or lure of forbidden fruit like my childhood experience? I asked my mother who read them as a teenager in the 1940’s. “I don’t remember talking to any of my friends about reading True Confessions. In those days they were considered ‘racy.’ I read them because I like the romance you didn’t find in novels. Also they were inexpensive – maybe ten cents.”

Someone gave me a 1942 issue of True Confessions. Like Mom said, it cost ten cents, and except for the dated photos and advertisements, the magazine was essentially the same microcosm of life it is today.

My accountant is happier these days. The pay isn’t huge but it covered my writing expenses last year.

I’m often asked, “Are they really true?” I’m pleading the Fifth. Actually, they may or may not be true, but they are believable. I get ideas from eavesdropping at the mall food court, watching cable TV and digging into family history.

Have you ever read any of the Trues magazines? Do you have a dotty old aunt or family scandal that would make a good story?

P.S. Remember that second book I started and abandoned? I wrote 50,000 words on it last November for NaNoWriMo, finished it the end of February, entered it in an online pitch contest at eHarlequin in early March and on March 9th the editor requested the full manuscript.

A bit (more) about Marilyn...

Marilyn has spent a lifetime reading, though not always willingly. After college, she swore off the stuff. In her early twenties, she tried her hand at writing and had a letter to the editor published in Cosmopolitan magazine. She quickly envisioned a career as the next Erma Bombeck, a journey that was sidetracked by carpools, Little League, track practice and life in general. A six-year stint in the corporate world found her writing again, but this time it was reports and procedures. When she retired in 1996, she returned to her favorite job: staying at home with her boys.

Fast forward a few years and through a bizarre act of serendipity, Marilyn discovered romance novels. Being an internet junkie, she soon discovered websites devoted to the genre and eventually found her way to her local chapter of Romance Writers of America. She’s published online in non-fiction and has sold thirty stories to the confessions and romance magazines. She is also a contributor to the Bylines Writer’s Desk Calendar as well as EAT DESSERT FIRST: The Red Hat Society Cookbook and THE RED HAT SOCIETY TRAVEL GUIDE: Hitting the Road with Confidence, Class, and Style. She lives in her empty nest in north Alabama, dotes on the cutest granddaughter in the world, is active in her local RWA chapter and is a founding member of the Writing Playground (www.writingplayground.com) where she blogs every Wednesday. RWA has opened a whole new world to her and introduced her to not only the healing power of the Happily Ever After, but the remarkably sharing world of romance writers as well.