This post is about all those people who keep dying

My sister Ellen and I used to say “They’re dropping like flies” when people we knew in the comic book business who were our generation started dying. And then she died. And now someone born the same year as Ellen has died. At least Jim Shooter got a bunch more years than Ellen did. This … Read more

I Changed the Title of My First Western Romance

Sometimes I can be stubborn. Back in the day, I read quite a few romances that used the word “captive” in their titles, and none of those books contained anything more sexual than kissing. Time passes, and the commonly understood words of one era take on new meanings in another. In the last several years … Read more

Life Really Is Too Short

I wrote my latest women’s fiction novel featuring five point-of-view characters–three women and two men–in part for my late sister, Ellen Vartanoff. It’s not the story of her life or anything like that. She died of cancer in 2019 but before that awfulness had the great pleasure of taking a trip to see the total … Read more

It’s Fun to Be in the JL-A

This isn’t really my story. It’s Paty’s story and Dave’s story and Ellen’s story. Paty and Dave as in Cockrum. My sister, Ellen Vartanoff, who had a printed copy in her files. Back in the day, mostly in 1966, I wrote a lot of letters to DC Comics with my reactions to their comic book … Read more

Temporary Superheroine Goes Hollywood!

Five years in the making! The story YOU demanded! The senses-shattering conclusion you’ve been waiting for! At long last, the third and probably final Temporary Superheroine novel has released. You can buy the ebook right now on Amazon by clicking here. If you prefer to read a paperback, click here for the print version.* Chloe … Read more

Why Write About a Ranch?

I visited Wyoming for about a day a long time ago, and I liked the looks of the state. When I decided to write a romance about a rich but entirely too self-confident man, I set it in Wyoming and made him a rancher. In real life, ranches have boundary lines and neighbors. In my … Read more

I Wrote a Gothic Romance

A woman looking fearfully at a house in the desert. Second Chance Reunion, a contemporary Gothic romance by author Irene Vartanoff

And I didn’t even realize it at the time. I worked on the story I now call Second Chance Reunion for many years off and on. I titled it Desert Wind and started with a simple idea. Then after a while it stumped me. When I began writing the story I thought of it as … Read more

The Ranch Master, or Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

“Meanwhile, back at the ranch,” was a cliché by the mid-twentieth century, and it probably was used for another fifty years previously, the heyday of the American Western. This phrase in the old movie serials switched focus from one scene to another. With Book 4, the Selkirk Family Ranch series now switches focus from the … Read more