Interview by Erin Carlile

Janis Susan May Patterson (just "Susan" to her friends) of the ARCE North Texas chapter has been passionate about two things for as long as she can remember—writing, and ancient Egypt. By the age of nine, this successful author of 20 novels "had read every book in the local library on Egyptology" and was quickly honing her literary skills at her parents’ Dallas advertising agency.

Both writing and a deep interest in Egyptology have continued to sustain Patterson in many ways over the years. She, in turn, has contributed significantly to these arenas as a founding member of Romance Writers of America and the ARCE North Texas chapter, for which she currently serves as Secretary.

Patterson has found numerous opportunities to unite her twin passions. In addition to being one of the nine-member organizing committee that helped get the ARCE North Texas chapter off the ground, she founded the NT/ARCE Newsletter and oversaw its monthly publication for nine years. More recently, Patterson wrote and published "Passion's Choice," a novel of romance and suspense set in ancient Egypt (Red Rose Publishing, 2008).

Patterson lives in Dallas with her husband, Navy Reserve Captain Hiram Patterson (also an ARCE North Texas member), their two "neurotic" cats and rescued dog, Mindy. I spoke with her via email about her history with ARCE and what new projects she has up her sleeve.

How were you involved in the creation of the ARCE North Texas chapter?
Dallas was pretty much an Egyptological desert pre-ARCE. There was the occasional museum exhibit, of course, and an amateur group or two, but nothing dependable for the serious non-professional. When a large exhibit did come in, I would go and stare and finally realized that I was seeing the same people again and again. Then in 1988 the Ramses the Great exhibit came to town and a number of us serious amateurs worked as volunteers. Marilyn Terwey, a member of the original Organizing Committee, volunteered so many hours she won a trip to Egypt! I put in over 300 hours myself.

There were others who were not "Ramsites" as we called ourselves, most notably our founding president Jim Murray and his beautiful wife Nancy; we met them at a continuing education class on Egyptology. The more our group got together and talked, the more we wanted a reliable, accurate, knowledgeable source of Egyptology.

In the eight or nine months from our first organizational meeting to our first public meeting, there was a lot of discussion and a lot of work. There were nine of us on the Organizing Committee, as well as one unofficial member—my late mother, Aletha Barrett May. She never possessed an interest in ancient Egypt beyond the average, but she had a den big enough to hold all the Organizing Committee and was generous enough to let us use it whenever we wished. My husband and I now live in that house and have held several other ARCE functions in that same den.

After those initial organizational meetings in late 1992, we mailed our first newsletter in January, 1993 and had our first public meeting in February, 1993. At that first meeting we voted to pursue becoming an official ARCE chapter. We started the paperwork immediately and were officially recognized in April of 1993.

How did the NT/ARCE Newsletter come about?
Being from a newspapering/writing/publicity background, I declared we had to have a newsletter, both for reasons of publicity and of credibility. My dreams were big; it would have to be interesting to our local group, but have enough scholarly content to make it acceptable to professionals. I wanted it to be recognized and archived by major museums and colleges, and, in what now seems an incredibly short amount of time, it was—no small feat for an 8-side photocopied newsletter originally done on a typewriter!

Before too long I graduated to a computer, which improved the newsletter's appearance immensely, but the content remained of high quality. I look back at those early issues and marvel at what we did. I had no shame about approaching the most famous of Egyptologists to beg for articles, and many, many of them came through.

Today the newsletter is completely digital, which gives it a freedom and a range of possibilities and size of which I could only dream. While I haven't been the editor of the newsletter for several years now, I am so proud of what it has become and of knowing that I had a part in getting it started.

Why do you think the North Texas region has proven to be such fertile ground for an ARCE chapter?
A glib answer would be that when Texans decide they want something, they get it—and there would be some truth in that. I believe the reason the North Texas chapter formed, survived and flourished is because a group of people wanted it so badly they were willing to work very hard to make it happen. The Dallas/Ft. Worth area is singularly bereft of Egyptology—while we have several major universities, none offer credit courses in Egyptology, though rarely a community college will do a beginner level continuing education class. None of our museums have a permanent Egyptian collection of any note. Traveling exhibitions do come through occasionally, but...that is only occasionally.

There is in this area, however, a surprisingly large number of people fascinated by Egyptology, intelligent people who wanted more than just an occasional traveling exhibit or a continuing education basic Egyptology class. Texans are traditionally movers and shakers, and we believe if what you want isn’t available, create it. The North Texas chapter was born out of a desire for knowledge and camaraderie with like-minded others.

ARCE has played a particularly important role in your personal life, has it not?
Yes! This seems an appropriate time to say "thank you" to ARCE. Hiram had been a national member for some time and of course came to our chapter meetings from the beginning. That's how we met and eventually we married (following a proposal in Egypt amidst the moonlit gardens of the Mena Hotel, no less!). You could almost say that ARCE introduced us, for which I am most profoundly grateful.

Tell me a little about your career as an author.
I have sold 19 novels under my own name (as "Janis Susan May"), four or five of which are still in the publishing queue and should be available in the next year or so. If you count ghostwritten books (all but one non-fiction) you could just about double that total. I published my first novel (a Dell Candlelight Intrigue) in 1979. In 1995 I quit writing to take care of my mother, who had entered her final, lingering illness. In 2005 Hiram was preparing for his first deployment to Iraq and I was at a loss about what to do with myself. He suggested that I go back to writing, as that was the only thing I ever really liked to do. After ten years, I didn’t know if I could still write, but agreed to give it a try. I’ve sold nine books since then.

One of the points of pride in my life is that in 1980 I was one of the original 40 women who met in the board room of a savings and loan in Houston, Texas to see if an organization of romance writers was a feasible idea. That idea became Romance Writers of America, arguably the largest writers’ organization in the world, with over 10,000 members all over the globe.

One thing I know is that I write in genre fiction. Probably I will always write either in some sub-genre of romance or mystery, though I was startled to write and sell a children's book last year. "Danny and the Dust Bunnies" will be released in January, 2010.

"Passion’s Choice" is a novel of romantic historical fiction set in ancient Egypt. Was writing it easier/more difficult or more fun/less fun than you anticipated given your strong attachment to the subject matter?
Writing "Passion's Choice" was a joy. It was one of the easiest books to write of any I've ever done. Writing it was a total ball, a pure exercise in wish fulfillment. The story starts with a group of tourists at the Hathor chapel at Deir el Bahri; the story came to me almost full-blown when I visited the Hathor chapel at Deir el Bahri and in my mind started playing "what if...?" I would sit down at the computer and just go, then be startled when six or eight hours passed without my noticing.

What was NOT fun was dealing with one editor about the book. I tried very hard to make what happens in the book congruent with what we knew of the age. The time-travel aspect excepted, of course.... Since then there have been some new discoveries which change what we know of Hatshepsut, but what I wrote was what we knew at the time. In any case, there was one editor who all but said "Damn the facts of history, change the story this way...."

I yelled. I screamed. I threatened to pull the book. Luckily I was blessed enough to have a publisher who respected both me and history and gave me a new editor. My last editor was a gem who questioned things like crazy, but when I backed them up with scholarly references, let them stand.

I want to write another—several other—books about ancient Egypt, but right now I’m tied up on a bunch of other projects.

What projects are you working on currently?
Having been told that I am more comfortable with dead bodies than live ones, I am trying to find a niche in the mystery field. I have joined Mystery Writers of America and am currently serving as Secretary of the Southwest region. In that vein I have just finished a stand-alone historical mystery set in 1919 Denver called "The Hollow House," and have begun working on two cozy mystery series.

I have decided to use the name "Janis Patterson" for the mysteries. Besides making a clear demarcation from the "Janis Susan May" name I use for romances, there were three reasons for this decision: 1) it is my legal married name; 2) it honors my husband; 3) with any luck at all, it will get me shelved next to James Patterson!