My heroines are all flawed women – they make plenty of mistakes – they go out with the wrong men, they put their trust in the wrong people, they are sometimes too judgmental, or too critical – but at the same time – and this is a hard thing to achieve – they remain sympathetic. This is essential, because, however misguided they may be, the reader must nevertheless like them – otherwise why should they bother reading about them? So my heroines must never do anything really awful, or mean, or nasty.

The characters around them can – in ‘Out of the Blue’, for example, Faith’s best friend, Lily, does plenty of mean, even Machiavellian things – but the heroines themselves can’t. So the faults that they have are ones that are not too serious, but with which we can all identify. I certainly would never have a heroine suddenly doing something bad – stealing, for example, or taking drugs, or trying to defraud someone. They are basically good women, I would say, and they have a strong moral sense - but they are misguided in what they often do.

They get themselves in a terrible mess. Minty, for example, has been shallow. She has got engaged to a man whom she knows is not very nice at all – in fact he is a total control freak - but because he is also very attractive and wealthy she goes along with the relationship, allowing him to walk all over her because she thinks he’s the ‘right’ sort of man to marry – but knowing in her heart of hearts that he could not be more ‘wrong’. She is made to suffer for this terrible lapse of judgment – in fact she goes through real turmoil – but at the end she faces up to the truth about herself, and how she had lowered her standards – and at that point she is allowed to move on and find happiness with another – much better – man.

Rose, in ‘Rescuing Rose’, is a very angry woman – her marriage is over after only 7 months – largely because she was such a nightmare to live with. But I give her a good reason for being so angry – she is adopted, and has never resolved the issue - and this is the journey that she goes on during the course of the book – the search for the knowledge of who she really is. I love Rose because she has the greatest problem of all of my heroines – a profound hurt at the very centre of her being. This is why she has become an ‘agony aunt’, or Dear Abby – she is the classic ‘wounded healer’. So the reader understands why she is often angry with those around her – and they sympathise with her – otherwise they would not want to follow her progress.

Faith in ‘Out of the Blue’, allows herself to be manipulated by her brilliant, and super-glamorous, but bitchy friend, Lily, because Faith is following an agenda of her own. She would quite like a break from her 15 year marriage – she would like to be a single women, going on dates, having an exciting life – because she married too young, and is wondering, at the age of 35, whether this is all there is to her life. So although she is wrong in what she does, we can understand why she does it.

I also like my heroines to be interesting women, with great jobs. They are intelligent and motivated at work – they are not just rich women, or air-heads - they are all independent and strong, and they are givers, not takers. They try to do the right thing. They try to behave in an honourable way. I give them interesting jobs, because I think it’s nice for the reader to learn about their careers – I like my books to contain quite a lot of information as well as the story.

Faith in ‘Out of the Blue’ is a weather presenter on daytime TV, so there is loads of stuff about meteorology – which is a fascinating subject. Rose, as I’ve said, is a ‘Dear Abby’ or agony aunt, so there’s a lot of stuff about the kinds of letters she gets, the problems that she tries to resolve, and about the politics of the tabloid newspaper where she works. Tiffany Trott works as a successful advertising copywriter; Minty Malone is a radio reporter; Miranda in ‘Behaving Badly’ is an animal behaviourist, or pet shrink. So all my heroines, without being tub-thumping feminists, are independent, career women. But they are kind to their colleagues and would never want to get ahead at someone else’s expense.

The journey they all go on is from lack of insight into their own behaviour, to self knowledge. I used to joke that they ‘start out stupid, and end up clever’ – it’s a crude way of putting it, perhaps, but I think it’s true. Of course they are not at all stupid in their professional lives. I think this is true of many successful women – their emotional lives can be a disaster. When things go wrong for them, they become indignant – which is funny – rather than nasty or bitter. They just can’t understand how it happened. Eventually, however, they get there – luckily before it’s too late.

The Heroes

I like the heroes to be similar to my heroines in that they are moral, and upright and compassionate - but they are never priggish or boring. They have some annoying traits – in Rescuing Rose, the hero, Theo, keeps badgering Rose to look for her birth mother – he’s really interfering, and very blunt, but he’s right. In ‘Behaving Badly’, the hero David, is quite an abrasive, over sensitive character. As with my heroines, I give the heroes interesting jobs. So Theo is an astronomer – a wonderfully rich subject – I adored doing the research for it; and in ‘Behaving Badly’, David, is a photographer, who has been a war photographer for ten years, but can’t take any more. In ‘Making Minty Malone’, the hero, Joe, is an independent film-maker, trying to make it in Hollywood.

Publishing Details for Isabel Wolff’s Books

The books are all listed on my website, www.IsabelWolff.com. or can be found on Amazon.com, or Amazon.co.uk.

‘The Trials of Tiffany Trott’ – Dutton NAL

‘Making Minty Malone’ – Dutton Nal.

‘Out of the Blue’, ‘Red Dress Ink. Will be published in mass market paperback in November 2005.

‘Rescuing Rose’ – Red Dress Ink.

‘Behaving Badly’ – available now from www.Amazon.co.uk., or from Red Dress Ink in November 2006.

Isabel’s latest novel, ‘A Question of Love’ will be available from www.Amazon.co.uk in June 2005.

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