Author Donna McClaire had no problem describing the mansion
    featured in her new romance novel, “Maxwell’s Mansion.”  After all, she’d
    lived in it.  
          “That house actually exists,” she explains.  “For years I'd loved fixing
    up old houses.  When I found this one in Magnolia Springs, Alabama I
    twisted my spouse’s arm, and–well, like they say, the rest is history.”  
          That history is pretty much chronicled in “Maxwell’s Mansions," a
    romance novel to be released by Chippewa Publishing this fall.  Donna’s
    teenage son actually fell through the house’s rotting back porch, just as
    Brenda almost did in the fictional version.  Finding the secret attic,
    cleaning the beaded-board walls and ceilings, rebuilding the front porch’s
    roof, sanding the floors–every house-refurbishing detail addressed in the
    book was lived by Donna long before the made-up Brenda Maxwell
    came on the scene and took all the credit.  
          She had good reason to write about her own house.  
          “I’d written non-fiction for others for a lifetime,” says Donna, who’d
    spent several years as a public relations consultant and writer.  “I knew
    how to write about real things.  But when I decided to write a romance
    novel I drew a blank.  What should I write about?  Well, I’d always heard
    one should write about what one knows, and I took that seriously.”  
          She’d attempted writing a novel before, and had thrown in every
    cliché she knew before getting totally lost at Chapter 5 and abandoning
    the project.  So this time she combined two loves–old houses and
    novels–and wound up with a book she loved to write, and one people tell
    her they love to read.  Along the way she wove in the story of beautiful
    Baldwin County, Alabama, an area she’d become a part of.  

    Young Adult novel follows
          “Writing what I know worked out fine,” Donna says.  “My next step was
    to identify something else I knew well, so I could write another novel from
    the heart.”  
           She didn't have to wait long.  She looked around, and there her
    inspiration was; her teenage daughter.  
           Donna played the "what-if" game.  What if her daughter, a fun-loving,
    level-headed kid with a lot of drive, one day realized super-human beings
    were hiding in her bedroom closet?  For several weeks, while finishing
    her first novel, Donna took scribbled notes.  The results are seen in her
    just-released book titled "Attack of the Killer Prom Dresses."  
           "I had fun writing this," she recalls.  "For one thing, I didn't have to
    make up a character, because that 'character' lived and breathed in my
    own home.  In a way I was just writing down how I thought she'd react to
    some unique, unworldly happenings.  Readers tell me the fictional
    character Kim Howell is very real to them."  
           Donna  is now searching for material for her third novel.  Whatever it
    is, we can be sure it will have something to do with her real life.  
           
Real Life
Guides Donna McClaire's
Fictional Worlds
Counter
Donna McClaire
This house in Magnolia Springs, Alabama was the "real
life" house fictionalized in Donna's first novel, Maxwell's
Mansion.  Donna bases all her fiction on the real world.  
She didn't have to wait long.  She looked around, and
there her inspiration was; her teenage daughter.  
Donna played the "what-if" game.  What if her
daughter, a fun-loving, level-headed kid with a lot of
drive, one day realized super-human beings were
hiding in her bedroom closet?  For several weeks,
while finishing her first novel, Donna took scribbled
notes.  The results are seen in her just-released book
titled "Attack of the Killer Prom Dresses."  
"I had fun writing this," she recalls.  "For one thing, I
didn't have to make up a character, because that
'character' lived and breathed in my own home.  In a
way I was just writing down how I thought she'd react to some unique,
unworldly happenings.  Readers tell me the fictional character Kim Howell
is very real to them."  
      Donna  is now searching for material for her third novel.  Whatever it
is, we can be sure it will have something to do with her real life.

    "I'd always
    heard one
    should write
    about what one
    knows, and I
    took that
    seriously."  

    "...I didn't have
    to make up a
    character,
    because that
    'character' lived
    and breathed in
    my own home."