Epstein, I
want to know more about you as person. Talk to me, if you will, about your growing up
years and what shaped you into the person you are today.
Epstein: I grew up in a small town in the Oklahoma
Panhandle of only 1250 people. It hosts a
four-year college, which doubled the population during the school year! I can remember back then staying in my room for
hours and listening to the radio, reading romance novels, and writing letters. I would write short stories, and even dabbled with
a few poems. Well, that was when I
wasn’t in church. I grew up in a strong
Christian family, and THAT is what probably influences my life more than anything.
I always
wanted to either be a high school science teacher or a nurse. I ended up getting a scholarship to my hometown
school, which didn’t offer nursing, so I ended up getting my bachelors degree in
Science Education. I lived in New Mexico for
a year and substituted, then ended up moving back “home” to Oklahoma. Well, wouldn’t you know that the only job in
town was at the nursing home! That is what
started my nursing career.
In 1996 I
met this most wonderful man in a chat room, who promptly moved me to Idaho. We were married in January 1997, and he is still
putting up with me today! It was such an
incredible story that I knew would make an excellent book; therefore, my writing career
began!
After
being published in 2001, I decided that I could do that also! And in January of 2002, I formed my Internet Ebook
Publishing Company, Epstein Publishing. To
date, we have about 30 published titles.
Who is
this shaped person of today? Epstein LaRue,
wife, mother, teacher, nurse, publisher, and author.
Kristie: You
currently live in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Tell me a little about what it is like to
live in the city that imported the London Bridge from England, piece by piece, and
reassembled it over the Colorado River in the middle of the Arizona desert.
Epstein: Well,
because of the London Bridge and the Channel you drive fast during the summer when all the
Californians are here and slow in the winter when the snowbirds are here! I had never heard of Lake Havasu City until a
month before I moved here. Pretty amazing the
fact that Mr McCullogh paid millions of dollars for this Bridge to be taken apart across
“the big pond” and have each brick numbered and shipped over here. Would Havasu be what it is today without the
bridge? Definitely not! My husband and I love to go to the café nearby
and eat a late breakfast, and we love to take our visitors there also! Including the wonderful lady interviewing me and
her hubby J
Kristie: Is your family supportive of your writing career?
Epstein: Without
my family, I wouldn’t have a writing career! They
are supportive of me everyday, in that they don’t gripe about the extra time I spend
on the computer typing. In fact, since we
have two computers here at the house, and since my husband and I started out communicating
online, we find ourselves chatting a lot of the time online, even though there is only a
wall between us. Sometimes things are just
better said with the hands. My husband and
son are always referring people to my webpage, and you ought to see them work at a
booksigning! At my last booksigning, my
teenage son handed out about two hundred informational sheets, and my husband was
wandering the shopping center herding people towards the store.
Kristie: Epstein, your first romance novel, Love at First Type, is a story about a couple who
meet in an online chat room – and eventually get married in real life. I have read
and reviewed this novel and found it to be a fascinating read. It is even more intriguing
to me knowing that it is based upon your own true story. Would you please tell our readers
a little about this book and why you decided to share your story with the world?
Epstein: Right
after J. C. and I got married, the movie You’ve Got Mail came out. I watched that movie, and couldn’t helping
thinking to myself, “your story is much better than that!” I was working on a Rehab unit then, and in the
summer we weren’t as busy because the snowbirds weren’t there, which gave me
quite a lot of time to read (we just had to stay awake).
After running out of the books that I could find lying around, I decided
that I could do just as good as they could; actually, I also got tired of reading. It was then that I came up with the outline of Love
At First Type, and worked on it through the summer, completing it in the fall, and
completing the editing process in the winter. I
was published in January of 2001.
Kristie: Your second romance novel, Crazy Thoughts of Passion, was just released this
year. The main character in this novel is
Kaitlyn Malloy, who is a nurse in a Gero-Psychiatric hospital. Your background as a Registered Nurse must have
been a tremendous help in writing this book. How did you come up with the storyline for Crazy Thoughts of Passion? Is it also based upon a
true story?
Epstein: I
get a chuckle every time that someone asked me about if Crazy Thoughts Of Passion
is based on a true story. In a way the
setting was based on a reality setting, but definitely NOT the story line! One of my most interesting jobs in my nursing
career was the two years I spent “behind the locked doors.” Although some people think I still should be
there, I made it out alive! This made a
fascinating, unusual setting for a romance novel. Don’t
think I have ever read a romance novel that included romance behind the locked doors of a
psychiatric unit!
Right
after I had completed, Love At First Type, I wondered what I would write next, or
if I would write another novel. I
wanted to do another one based on the medical field, but didn’t want it to be on the
same lines that you usually hear about… nurse
falls in love with another nurse, nurse falls in love with ancillary staff, or definitely
not nurse falls in love with the rich doctor! Every
once in a while, you hear of nurses getting into the biggest taboo of all… falling in
love with their patients, but I had never heard of a nurse falling in love with a
patient’s family member!
What a
conflict of interest that would be! And just
how would the nurse and patient’s son ever be able to get together and still be
ethical? Then, as my husband would say, I had a vision!
I wrote the vision into an outline, added my love for golf, and a few of my
favorite nursing assistants… and Crazy Thoughts Of Passions was born.
One of my
friends, whom the book is dedicated to, keeps on asking when I’m going to write the
sequel and add their end of the story! So, I
have been tossing around the idea of making it a Trilogy with my two other female
characters, Edith and Joyce. Stay tuned, you
just never know what I am going to get a vision on next!
Kristie: You have recently decided to take a different path
in your nursing career by becoming a traveling nurse. What is it like being a traveling
nurse?
Epstein: I
have always wanted to do travel nursing, but never thought I could because of my son, now
fourteen. My husband is disabled, so he is
pretty mobile, but I have always thought that you were supposed to provide a
“stable” environment for children. This
last year as really been a tough one for him at school, and my husband asked why
don’t we just homeschool him and think about doing travel nursing. I told him that I was perfectly fine in my job of
four years, but I would definitely consider the homeschooling thing. Within a month of this conversation, I had a
disagreement with the administration after I wrote up a statement of concern about my
supervisor, and told them that I believed that it was in my best interest to find another
job. I really felt like God had just opened
the door for me to live my dream of being a travel nurse and home schooling my child. Maybe I CAN use my teaching degree for something!
I found the job that I had by posting my resume on
the Internet, and ended up doing the same thing again.
Within twenty-four hours I had at least 20 recruiters contact me either by phone or
email. That is the beauty of being a
Registered Nurse… you don’t have to
look for a job, they come looking for you!
My husband and I decided that I should stick close to
home for now, and so I ended up accepting a job 200 miles away in Phoenix, Arizona. Now I definitely have the opportunity to use my
emergency room and psychiatric nursing into practice!
My schedule puts me in Phoenix for eight days, then back to the “LaRue
Resort” in Lake Havasu City for six days of the three Rs… Rest, Relaxation, and Riting. Well, I also make time for my hobbies of golfing
and quilting while at the LaRue Resort.
In Phoenix, I have an apartment on the golf course,
my son not only reads about Arizona history, but also gets to LIVE it. I work fewer hours than I was as a staff nurse,
and make more money. Yeah, life as a travel
nurse is tough, but someone has to do it! Actually,
I am very lucky in that I was placed into a facility that is VERY nice to their travelers!
Kristie: Epstein, since you have a way of taking real life
events and transforming them into a book, do you plan on creating a book about your
experiences as a traveling nurse?
Epstein: Well, since you asked! Yes! My
newest work in progress is a Non-Fiction book about travel nursing. I am a pretty gutsy gal, but there are some people
that traveling and getting used to a new place every thirteen weeks is a very scary
thought to them. What if they land in a
hospital that isn’t so very travel nurse friendly?
What can they expect in their first assignment? How do they get their first assignment? There are hundreds of travel companies, how do
they pick the right one that is for them? I
found a lot of information on the Internet about travel nursing, and there is a lot more
that can be learned from other experienced travel nurses.
The object of this book is to help travel nurses make educated decision
about career, including: the best places to
travel, the worst places to travel, the best travel companies, the worst travel companies,
and how to find that dream job!
Kristie: You
not only write books but you also have your own publishing company, Epstein Publishing.
Tell me about your publishing company.
Epstein: After I was published in January of 2001, there
were a few ideas that I had, but I wasn’t for sure if I wanted to pay to have them
put into print, but I definitely wanted to test out the market. I figured that since I could make a .PDF file just
the same as the publisher that I have for my printed books, they why couldn’t I just
publish my own books?
After I
started publishing my own books, I had a few other people want me to help them publish
their books also… so I started my own
company, Epstein Publishing. Just recently I
have started with the new concept of publishing books for free, and getting that
“publishing fee” from the royalties! So,
for the last month I have been working on a few titles for free, with only a small change
in the royalty fee. This gives the person who
wants to get their feet in the door a chance! I
guess this is my way of helping writers become established authors!
Kristie: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to
me, Epstein. I wish you the best of luck in the future. Is there anything that you would
like to add?
Epstein: In
closing, I would invite everyone over to visit my website, which not only has all the
information about my books, but has links to my medical consultation service for fictional
writers, website analysis service, my column of online romance “Dear Abby”
questions, a link to my online romance gift shop, and information on how to make a money
online. It can be found at http://www.epsteinlarue.com/
I want to sincerely thank you for giving me this
opportunity! I have really enjoyed this
interview, and it has given me a chance to reflect on my writing career… where I have
been, and where I am going.
For some reason, when I started out in the crazy
business, I was attracted to the friendship of a lovely author who was there when I
started out to answer all my stupid questions… After all, she had one published
novel; therefore, she was considered an expert to me!
Shortly after I met her in January 2001, she asked me to join her in starting this
group of authors that do it THEIR OWN way… Not
The Usual Way.
We soon became a community of print on demand and
electronic authors who do things OUR way, which is not necessarily the way of that grand
publishing company who would like to edit and make our books fit into their categories and
their program.
If any of
you published author are reading this and you are NOT a member of the NUW community, you
don’t know what you are missing! This is
my online family! Check out the website
at… http://groups.msn.com/NUWNotTheUsualWay/
My new friend, who was also a good ole southern gal,
only lived three hours away, but we never found a chance to get together before her
husband’s worked moved her to Alabama. This
was across the world to someone like me, who has only been fifty miles on the other side
of the Mississippi River once! Until one day
last year, when she mentioned that she was moving to Arizona… Come to find out, she moved within ONE hour of my
house! Since then, we have met “in
reality” several times, and she is most definitely as much of a gem of an author in
reality as she has been to me online! We even
have done a booksigning together, and have dubbed ourselves as the Southern Belles of
Romance! Thanks Kristie, for your friendship
all these years! Our next planned appearance
will be a hot one at “The Book Shindig” in Prescott, Arizona, in the middle of
August. |
