by Michael D. Wynne
Who is the best selling author of all time from central Louisiana? Would you believe Kathleen Erin Woodiwiss? Have you ever heard of her? Well, here is her amazing story:
She was born Kathleen Erin Hogg in Alexandria in 1939, the youngest of eight children of Charles W. Hogg, a disabled World War I veteran, and his wife, Gladys Coker. As a child, Kathleen relished creating her own stories, and by age six she was telling herself stories at night to help fall asleep. Her father died suddenly when Kathleen was only 12, leaving her to be raised by her mother and older sisters.
Kathleen would later remark that, “every single one of us had minds of our own even then; I was no exception. I suppose that carried over into my creations of heroines who weren’t weak-willed.”
She attended Bolton High School, graduating in 1957. She was residing then in Plantation Acres in Alexandria. At age 16, she met U. S. Air Force Second Lieutenant Ross E. Woodiwiss at a dance at England Air Force Base. They married the following year in 1956. Her husband’s military career led them to live in Japan where she worked part-time as a fashion model for an American-owned modeling agency. After over three years in Japan, the family moved back to the United States and eventually settled in Minnesota. During these years, she attempted to write a novel several times, but each time stopped in frustration at the slow pace of writing in longhand. After buying her husband an electric typewriter as a Christmas present, she soon appropriated the machine to begin her novel in earnest.
Her debut novel, The Flame and the Flower, was rejected by agents and hardcover publishers as being too long at 600 pages. Rather than follow the advice of the rejection letters and rewrite the novel, Kathleen instead submitted it to paperback publishers. The first publisher on her list, Avon, quickly purchased the novel. Editor Nancy Coffey provided a $1500 advance and arranged for an initial 500,000 print run. “The Flame and the Flower” was revolutionary in literature, featuring an epic historical romance with a strong heroine and actual sex scenes. This novel, published in 1972, sold over 2.3 million copies in its first four years of publication and is credited with spawning the modern romance genre, becoming the first romance novel “to [follow] the principals (of the novel) into the bedroom.”
The success of this novel prompted a new style of writing romance, concentrating primarily on historical fiction tracking the monogamous relationships between helpless heroines and the heroes who rescued them, even if they had been the ones to place them in danger. The romance novels which followed in her example featured longer plots, more controversial situations and characters, and more intimate and steamy sex scenes.
All of her novels were historical romances set in varied backgrounds, including the Civil War, 18th-century England, or Saxony in the time of William the Conqueror. The heroines of the novels are strong-willed young women with “a spark
of life and determination.”
Kathleen describes her novels as “fairy tales.” They are an escape for the reader, like an Errol Flynn movie.”
In 1998, she was honored with the 1st Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Some of her other notable novels include, Wolf and the Dove (1974), Shanna (1977), Ashes in the Wind (1980), Forever in Your Embrace (1992), The Elusive Flame (1998), and The Reluctant Suitor (2003). During her career, Kathleen has sold more than 36 million copies of her books.
Kathleen was an avid equestrienne and lived in a large house on 55 acres in Minnesota. After her husband’s death in 1996, she moved back to Cheneyville, Louisiana and lived at Edgefield Plantation. She died in 2007 from cancer and is
buried in Wyanett, Minnesota.
She had three sons and numerous grandchildren. Her final book, Everlasting, was released on October 30, 2007. (This writer has collected her books for years though have never found a true signed copy of one.)
