BEHIND THE BOOK

Make No Promises

by Charlotte Maclay

Take the ubiquitous yellow buses of Santiago, Chile, add the starkly dramatic sights of Patagonia at the tip of South America and toss in a good portion of imagination. The result is my debut romantic suspense, Make No Promises from Leisure Love Spell, June 2006.

I generally choose vacation destinations that aren’t too hot (face it, a swimsuit does not flatter my body) and aren’t at too high an elevation (there’s something about breathing easily that I enjoy). So, when a brochure from International Expeditions arrived describing a cruise of Patagonia, land of glaciers and uninhabited islands (except for sheep and penguins) at the tip of South America, I jumped at the chance (and convinced my husband it was a great idea).

Mind you, this was no ordinary cruise. No swimming pool on the main deck (see note above) and no dressy occasions either. Each day the ninety passengers onboard the Mare Australis, wearing life jackets, disembarked in zodiac boats for visits to some of wildest and the most beautiful spots in the world. We were treated to uncanny birding opportunities, unfamiliar flowers and birch forests where fallen trees don’t decay because it is too cold. And glaciers galore.

Of course, I’m a writer so the whole time I’m taking notes and looking for ‘the story’ this incredible part of the world was trying to tell me. (If nothing else, I really wanted to write the trip off as a business expense!) Bits and pieces of story ideas began to come to me along with some surprises.

A preponderance of Chilean people are descended from Europeans, who were encouraged to settle there in the early nineteen hundreds to raise sheep or be a part of the shipping trade sailing through the Straits of Magellan. The businessmen and women walking through the main park in Santiago with their briefcases could easily pass for New Yorkers on their way to work.

The lush vineyards around Santiago reminded me of Napa-Sonoma, and thus that area of California logically became my heroine’s hometown and made her a vintner by trade.

Wherever we vacation, I try to pick up a doll in the country’s traditional dress for our granddaughter. Impossible on this trip. It turns out that native Patagonians didn’t wear clothes. They spent their lives buck naked even when swimming in that near freezing water. But knowing how the natives did that allows my hero and heroine to escape from the villains.

There is a Chilean submarine base at Port Williams. Why the country has submarines escapes me (they do fight with Argentina periodically), but I found a use for them in my story.

Research online can be very helpful to a writer. But there is truly nothing that replaces being there to inspire and enrich a story with details you simply can’t get from the Internet.

To read an excerpt from Make No Promises, click on Excerpt on this Web site.

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