Tracy Wolff | Why I Love New Orleans

Writing my newest novel, Tie Me Down, was a bittersweet endeavor, because it took me back to a city I know intimately well, a city I love and miss and despair will ever be the same.

I went to New Orleans when I was twenty years old because a tug deep in my belly told me that that city was where I was meant to be. I’m not usually one to change my whole life around on a feeling, but no matter what I did, the niggling sensation wouldn’t go away. It kept bothering me—all spring and into the summer, until finally a letter came from one of the grad school’s I’d been accepted to offering me a last minute teaching assistantship that paid all of my tuition and gave me enough to live on. That was the sign I needed and I sent a letter to the grad school I had originally decided to go to asking to be removed from the list of incoming students, packed up my car (with the help of my dad) and headed to New Orleans to take the university up on its very generous offer.

And I have never, once, regretted it. Within a few months of moving to New Orleans, I met a man, fell desperately in love with him and married him—three months after we met. He is currently my husband of thirteen years—and the father of my three children. New Orleans is alsothe city where I first learned how much I love to teach, it is the city where I turned 21, the city where I first became pregnant—and became a mom, the city where I learned what it really means to be a grown up. The city where I really, truly, learned how to write.

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Tracy Wolff | Why I Write Romances

A couple months ago, my husband and I were interviewing prospective agents to list our house as we thought we were going to have to move to Dallas for my husband’s job. I bring this up because, as we talked to the agents, all of them asked what we did for a living. My husband is an electrical/environmental engineer and I, of course, am a romance novelist. When we told them this, they all oohed and aahed over my husband’s job (he’s a green guru/save the environment guy/energy efficiency kind of guy) but when it came to my career, two of them—both men, I might add—laughed. “So you write those books?” one asked.

“What books?” I responded, more than a little annoyed by his condescending tone.

“You know, those trashy books about …” His voice trailed off.

“Love?” I inquired sweetly, though with bared teeth. “Life? Family? Happily Ever After?”

“Yeah. And, umm—“ The guy was such an idiot he hadn’t yet figured out that it was offensive to refer to my career choice as “trash.”

“Oh, you mean sex?” I filled in the blank for him, much to my husband’s embarassment. “Why, yes, real estate agent moron (names have been changed to protect the terminally stupid) my books do have some sex in them. Why? Do you not like sex? Or is it just sex with love and commitment and a happily every after that you object to?”

Needless to say, he went running from my doorstep like the hounds of hell were after him and we decided to go with a different agent—one who could respect both my husband’s career and my career own.

But his attitude (there was more to the dialogue, but I shortened it for time’s sake) has stuck with me for a couple of months now. All of my friends in the business tell stories of running into people (once again, usually men) who make fun of what they write, but this is the first time I’ve ever had someone actually say something like that to my face. And I was—and still am—ticked off about it!

So here’s the answer I wish I’d given him, and would have if I’d been more prepared and less angry.

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Tracy Wolffe | Traditions

When I sat down to write A Christmas Wedding, I had a lot of different things in my head that I wanted to get across to my readers. I wanted to create a super-strong female character who wasn’t afraid to take on the establishment—and win. I wanted to tell a story about horseracing and the world of thoroughbreds. And I wanted to tell a story of love—with all its ups and downs, a story that showed how difficult marriage can be sometimes, but also how worthwhile.

But as I was writing the book, something else worked its way into the pages, and it became not just the story of a relationship between a man and a woman, but the story of that woman’s—of Desiree’s—relationship with her father and husband and children and the very male-dominated world in which she lives. It became a story of old and new, of borrowed and blue. Of hanging on to old traditions and making new ones—something I think is particularly apropos to the holiday season beginning to unfold around us.

For Desiree, keeping old traditions and making new ones was often a matter of necessity—playing hardball in a man’s world often requires a blending of following the herd and blazing new trails. For me, unlike Desiree, keeping traditions—or making new ones—has been largely about choice.

One holiday tradition I love is baking a huge number of cookies with my mother—and my children—on the days leading up to Christmas. Of assembling trays and passing the cookies out to all my neighbors, who have come to depend on the tradition as much as we have. Two years ago we were late passing out the cookies, and when I finally made it around my neighbors all breathed a sigh of relief and told me they’d been afraid I had forgotten them that year.

I also love filling my house to the brim for the holidays—with friends and family and acquaintances who don’t have anyone else to celebrate with. It’s a tradition I learned from my mother, who learned it from her mother and nothing thrills me more than putting on a huge buffet at Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s and feeding thirty or forty or more people. At the same time, I love that Christmas Eve is all about my immediate family—my husband and children and mother and I go to Mass and then out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate the holiday (and a meal that I don’t have to cook ;)

And one last tradition I can’t do without—one that I started a number of years ago and hope to pass on to my children. The tradition of service, of giving to those who don’t have the family and friends and support system that I have. At least once every couple of months—not just during the holidays but throughout the year—I make a point of taking a bunch of food to my county’s food closet and of volunteering to cook at one of the many soup kitchens in town. So far, it is only my oldest son who comes with me, as the others are too young, but as they grow I hope to make it a family affair—one that helps my children understand that not all kids have Wiis and Nintendo DS’s and that not having Playstation 3 because their Playstation 2 works just fine does not make them underprivileged.

So, what traditions do you observe every year? Have they been passed down from your parents and grandparents or have you started them as you became an adult?

Tracy Wolff
tracywolff.com