Marie Sullivan Force - Contemporary Romance Author

ISLAND PEOPLE: Writer's first published
 book combines romance, football

By James J. Gillis
 Daily News staff

 

 

Marie Sullivan Force of Portsmouth signs copies of her book, 'Line of Scrimmage,' recently at Barnes & Noble in Middletown. Force, 42, has written seven books and she has 11 more manuscripts ready to go. (David Hansen/Daily News staff)

Marie Sullivan Force lives two lives.
One is at home in Portsmouth as wife, mom and communications director for the Association of Government Accounting. The second is as a romance writer, cranking out page after steamy page of passion, conflict, loss and triumph.

At home, she writes on a laptop while sprawled out on the couch in pajamas, with a Red Sox game on TV and a Diet Coke at the ready. “It’s a glamorous life, for sure,” Force said with a laugh.

Maybe the lives of her characters are more glamorous, but life is good for Force, a former newspaper reporter who just released her first novel, “Line of Scrimmage,” a romantic huddle involving an NFL quarterback and his soon-to-be ex-wife and her fiance. For Force, 42, the book merges two passions: romance writing, which she’s loved since girlhood, and football, which she had little interest in until a season ago.

“I’ve always been a baseball gal, Red Sox all the way,” she said. “But the Muse wanted my character to be a quarterback when I wanted him to be a shortstop. So he’s a quarterback.”



“Line of Scrimmage” is her first published novel, published by Sourcebooks. As you might expect, there’s some backfield in motion and a few contact drills on the pages. “I was surprised to find out how many women are really into football,” she said. “It’s new to me.”



Force has 11 more manuscripts ready to be polished into books. “Line of Scrimmage” actually was the seventh she’d written but the first to click with an agent and a publisher.

Finding an agent, she said, was the first step. And it’s not for the easily bruised.

“It takes a while,” Force said. “I can’t count how many rejection letters. Let’s just say I have two inches of letters. I always sent a self-addressed stamped envelope. One guy just wrote ‘Not for me’ on the outside of the envelope. He couldn’t even be bothered enclosing a note.”



When she’s not writing bodice-ripping tales of gridiron-spiced amour, Sullivan telecommunicating from home for her day job. She works in a quieter part of the house, at the computer eight hours a day.

“During the job, I need it to be quiet,” she said. “At night, I usually write between 8 p.m. and midnight. There’s usually a little chaos.”



The day job is one she enjoys, plus it allows her plenty of time with husband, Dan, a retired Navy chief who works for Purvis Systems, and children, Emily, 13, and Jake, 10. “I’m really doing something I love, with the novels and with my job and my family,” she said. “I have no complaints. I have a great job while waiting for my literary ship to come in, if it ever does.”



The ship has yet to enter port, but Force said she did receive a bonus for “Line of Scrimmage.” But it’s nothing that would rile Nora Roberts or John Grisham enough to call their agents in jealous rage. “They’re millionaires,” Force said. “With my advance, I’m solidly a thousandaire, a low thousandaire. But it’s better to get a small advance and make that money back and whatever royalties come after that. If you get too large an advance and don’t make it back, then you don’t get to release a second book.”



She does have one regret, that her mother, Barbara, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2004, never got to see Force’s work bound in print. But she did get to read four chapters.

“My father (George), his thing is by no means romance novels, but he’s read mine,” Force said. “My mother loved reading and she loved romance books. When we were little, she always put my brother (also George) and I to bed with books. It turned us into readers.”



Force grew up in Middletown, graduated from Middletown High School in 1984 and the University of Rhode Island in 1988, working as a Daily News summer intern while in school and for The Narragansett Times for two years after college graduation.

“I think working for a newspaper helped me become a more efficient, economical writer,” she said. “It was great training. In my books, I don’t get caught up so much in flowery images. I like to write dialogue. And I’m good at writing fights, for some reason. I wonder what that says about me.”



While interning at The Daily News, Force met Paula DelBonis-Platt, then a Boston University journalism student and fellow intern. DelBonis-Platt now lives in New Hampshire, where she is a freelance book editor and teaches writing at a community college.

To Force, DelBonis-Platt is a good friend and a trusted editor.


“Marie amazes me with her energy,” DelBonis-Platt said. “I don’t generally read romance novels on my own, but I’ve enjoyed editing all of Marie’s manuscripts. The writing is always very active and clean. She has a great imagination. I’ve read some books that are already in production, and they don’t even have the main character’s name spelled right on two consecutive pages. I never see that with Marie.”



Force works with a few ideas and builds the story from them. She’s not restricted by pre-conceived plots and said she likes the flexibility of framing a story around characters. “There are plotters and there are pantsers (as in seat-of-the-pants), and I’m definitely a pantser.”


Force and her husband have been married 16 years and live off Sprague Street in a house with a deck that offers a glimpse of the Sakonnet River and Little Compton. Dan Force’s Navy time sent the couple to Maryland, Florida and Spain, among other ports. She said the travels have made for better novels. Her next book, “Same Time Sunday,” will be set in Baltimore with a side visit to Newport.



“Line of Scrimmage” is available at Barnes & Noble (where she will sign books on Sunday, Sept. 28, from noon to 3 p.m.) and Island Books in Middletown. The book includes her e-mail (mforce@cox.net) and she’s already hearing from readers around the world.

“It’s great to see my writing evoking so many reactions,” she said. “I love getting feedback. My writing is my passion and my pleasure.”



Force recently held a book release party at the Officer’s Club at Naval Station Newport. She hopes there will be celebrations for future novels, but the first book is special.

“People celebrate getting older,” she said. “Why not celebrate a dream coming true?”

 

The Latest

"Line of Scrimmage," AVAILABLE NOW

"Love at First Flight," Spring 2009