…Might just be the name of my new imaginary band. On New Year’s Day this year, sipping a glass of bubbly and chatting with my husband was commemorated with this tweet:
Um…I may be plotting a fly fishing romance with my fly fisherman husband. #sendhelp
— Adele Buck 📚🇳🇴 (@_AdeleBuck) January 2, 2017
I thought about it a lot, I plotted (in my head-I’m not much of a “real” plotter), I created an academic librarian hero and a fly fishing guide heroine. I settled on the title, Slow Drift. I didn’t start writing it until a few days before my first Romance Writers of America conference in July, and I finished the first draft in late October. Four months of writing, about 80,000 words, and a good ten months from the idea to The End.
All the while, I was aware that despite my friends’ encouragement (there was a lot of, “Oooh! I’d read that!” on Twitter), I am an odd duck with a wide acquaintance of fellow odd ducks. I personally love it when a heroine has a nontraditional job (also heroes, but heroines even more so), and I love getting a slice of life view of a profession I haven’t done and haven’t seen in romance before. I’m aware that not everyone feels this way, which can make marketing hard.
So I was thrilled when Mr. Buck emailed me this article in the New York Times about women getting into angling. It touches on a lot of the themes I covered in Slow Drift, and it makes me cautiously hopeful that the book will find its footing in the publishing world.