In England, Al Lovelace walked through the rain to find a bookstore that carried Georgette Heyer's 72nd book. They went to Vietnam at the same time, they shared days off on military hops around the world. On her second day in the Air Force, the young 2nd lieutenant met a young captain. It was more painful to remember than she expected, she said.īut some memories from that time come easily. Some 25 years later, she wrote a novel called "Duty and Dishonor," set in Vietnam. At age 21, "I qualified on my own on an M-16," and volunteered for Vietnam, where she was a wing executive. Also, personnel were being shipped to Vietnam. Male officer candidates went to small arms classes, women to makeup classes. Two important things were happening in the Air Force in 1968.
In 1968, she left school to join the Air Force, following in her father's footsteps instead of Georgette Heyer's. By college, she had read 71 of Heyer's 72 volumes. That gave her legal entry to the grown-up books, and - typical of her style - she set out on a precisely structured plan to read every word romance writer Georgette Heyer ever wrote. As a child in the tobacco fields of Massachusetts, then a nomadic daughter of a military officer, she found familiarity and fantasy in the pages of Golden Books, Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames, Hardy Boys - and progressed to the adult novels of Thomas Costain.Ī tall, poised woman now, as an adolescent she was able to convince librarians she was the woman on her mother's library card.
"I think I always read romances, but they were not labeled," she said. I like stories about women who succeed," whether the strong women are winning wars or saving babies, the author said. She made the USA Today bestseller list and the Waldenbooks list.Īll that's left is the New York Times list. She got a six-figure contract and writes for several lines for several publishers. So far, Merline Lovelace said, she's achieved some important goals.
Many of them have heroes and heroines who wear Air Force uniforms. Critics call them adventurous and sensual. Now retired from a career in offense and defense, she writes romance novels. His wife, Merline, is the queen of Oklahoma's impressive and extensive court of romance novelists. You can see the small "r" in his romantic eyes when he looks at the other colonel in his house. He speaks with authority because he's a retired military officer and lives with another retired military officer. He's talking about the phenomenal business of paperback publishing, and the fact that more than 50 percent of all paperback books purchased now are from the Romance category. You can hear that capital R in Al Lovelace's voice. "I was a romantic before I knew about Romance."
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