Looking for love in all the right Starbucks Looking for love in all the right Starbucks (September 09, 2005)

Mountain View romance novelist writes modern characters in local settings

By Katie Vaughn

Standing in line at Starbucks. Carting the kids out for ice cream. Balancing work and family. These aren't exactly the elements that make a traditional romance novel sizzle, but they're what Mountain View writer Barbara Plum counts on to make her stories believable to modern readers.

Plum writes contemporary romance novels that tout savvy, capable women as their heroines. Plum said today's readers want confident female characters who deal with the topics many women face on a daily basis. This means reconciling the desire to have it all: a career, a husband, kids and a social life. Such subject matter puts an updated twist on the longstanding genre, Plum said.

"More and more romances are dealing with realistic issues," Plum said. "People are writing about real issues because that's what real women and real readers want."

Plum knows plenty about the struggles her characters face, as she's dealt with most in her life. Previously divorced, Plum has been married to her current husband for 38 years and raised two children while working in various careers. She left a successful post as a marketing specialist at IBM in 1995 to try her hand at writing.

She started out writing mysteries, but at the prompting of members in her writing group, most of whom are romance novelists, she gave the genre a try. She sold her first novel, "Prince of Frogs," two days before Christmas in 2003, and her second, "Queen of the Universe," hits bookstores this month.

The first novel follows a voluptuous pediatrician as she prepares for adoptive motherhood and tries to avoid a widower to whom she is immensely attracted. The second picks up where the original left off, developing the love story of two secondary characters.

Plum sets many of her scenes in commonplace locales, but of interest to many local readers may be her practice of using Silicon Valley sites. "Prince of Frogs," for instance, opens in an area Starbucks. Technically, most of the action in her novels take place in Cielo Vista, an imaginary combination of Mountain View and Los Altos, but Plum based the opening scene on the coffee shop at El Camino Real and El Monte Avenue. Similarly, her follow-up novel features the Starbucks at Cuesta Drive and Miramonte Avenue.

Plum said setting her stories in Silicon Valley creates an atmosphere in which a frenetic pace of life is the norm. It's the ideal spot, she said, in which to have her heroines and heroes struggle with the opposite pulls of work and family life.

"We have this kind of drive to excel at our jobs and careers that is very contagious," Plum said. "Trying to juggle all those balls at once isn't easy."

Ultimately, her characters have to narrow their priorities in order to be happy and sane. Plum likes to promote the idea of letting go of a job or a perceived way of having to live. She wants to encourage readers to form their own creative solutions to lifestyle problems -- and to leave room for romance.

To that end, Plum's novels conclude with happy endings. However, readers shouldn't expect riding-off-into-the-sunset scenarios. Her protagonists find love, but they don't necessarily exchange wedding vows. Plum believes that the notion of a lasting commitment requiring matrimony is an outdated component of the romance genre.

So far, fans seem to appreciate Plum's contemporary approach. She has sold more than 25,000 copies of "Prince of Frogs" since it was published in 2004. Fans have also expressed appreciation by sending Plum gifts, particularly of the frog persuasion. After imbuing her first heroine with a love of frog toys, Plum has accumulated quite the collection of amphibian paraphernalia, from jewelry and stationary to socks, mugs and bookmarks. The author can be spotted wearing the frog accessories, yet she was not always a fan of the green animal.

"I never even thought about frogs until I did this book!" she said.

For "Queen of the Universe," which is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books Inc., Plum chose an arguably more desirable symbol: a diamond-encrusted tiara. But she doubts she'll be receiving any of those in the mail.

With two published books under her belt, Plum has several new projects underway. A romance spanning multiple generations and a paranormal story are being considered by publishers, and she is writing two new novels. One is a romance mystery inspired by the Scott Peterson trial, and the other tells of a homeless woman living on the streets of San Jose.

While most of her upcoming books involve love (and more local settings), they are not romances in the strictest sense. Plum said she sees her career moving toward romantic suspense, a genre in which her characters can use love for purposes greater than just their own relationships.

"I like how love can transform them and bring justice to the world," she said.

E-mail Katie Vaughn at kvaughn@mv-voice.com

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