ESCONDIDO
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Chris Holmes has written thrillers on subjects ranging from anthrax attacks to plagues and genetically modified food.
In light of his latest offering, the Escondido author admits to being a bit of a genetic aberration himself: a romance writer with a Y chromosome.
Holmes, an epidemiologist and retired U.S. Navy captain, joins the rare breed of male romance writers with his historical novel, “Blood on the Tartan” (2007, Highland Press).
The story is set in the 1800s during the Highland Clearances when, spurred by the Industrial Revolution, capitalists eager for wool and other natural resources began evicting Scottish clansmen.
“The lairds (land owners) in Scotland figured they could make a lot more money (renting the land) to sheep farmers than to these poor tenants,” Holmes said. “Most of them were evicted, sometimes at the point of a bayonet, onto ships that went to New Zealand, to the Carolina coast of the United States and to Canada.”
Holmes dedicated the book to his mother, Catherine Holmes, “a Highlander from her toes up.”
His grandmother was born in an area near where his novel is set, Caithness, in a tiny fishing village.
Holmes grew up in Canada, where his ancestors settled after being evicted from the Strath of Kildonan in Scotland about 1831.
“When my grandfather decided that he wanted to get out of Scotland, he looked around and he found a place in Winnipeg called West Kildonan, and he said, 'That sounds like home to me.' ”
Following Scottish history, the heroine of Holmes' story, Catherine, organizes the villagers to fight for their land, becoming smitten with Ian, a constable who comes to establish law and order.
A blurb publicizing his book summarizes the conflict in the story: “As a truncheon comes down aimed at Catherine's skull, Ian makes his choice. Would Catherine's greatest adversary become her truest love, or would they both perish in the chaos?”
Holmes has published three books, including “The Medusa Strain” and “The Garden of Evil.” He has a degree in history and has visited Scotland three times, researching his romance novel.
When it came time to turn up the heat on his protagonists' simmering relationship, however, Holmes deferred to his editor's red pen.
“She went through and she would put a big red X in places and say, 'Chris, we need more passion here,' ” Holmes said. “We're not talking about sex. We're not talking about erotic detail. We're talking about feelings.
“I sort of looked at my word processor and said, 'How do I do that?' I'm much more comfortable with murder and mayhem and strangulation and poisoning.”
Holmes eventually did what an editor advised him to do long ago: mine his own life for authenticity.
“You go back into your own life and you say, 'How would I have felt if this had happened? How can I put that into words?' ” he said.
Holmes published his first article while in medical school and has been writing ever since. Before attempting his first romance novel, he pored over books on romance writing by Tess Gerritsen and Nora Roberts.
Holmes said what helped him the most was realizing that romance exists in many genres, include suspense.
“The film, 'Witness,' with Harrison Ford, . . . is actually a romance,” Holmes said. “The detective story is the underpinning, but it's really the story of Harrison Ford and the Amish woman, how they kind of jockey around to find intimacy.”
Holmes said he saw an opportunity to maximize readership of the novel he had been working on for the past decade by turning it into a romance.
“Of all fiction sales, 30 (percent) to 35 percent of them are romance,” he said. “There's a market out there. . . . I wanted the story, but I wanted the romance to be the engine that drives the plot. . . . What could be a bigger challenge than to find intimacy during this time of chaos?”
Pat Sherman: (760) 752-6774; pat.sherman@tlnews.net
