CAMARILLO : Romance Writer Put Self Into Dark Tales

Camarillo resident Dorothy Daniels appears to bear little resemblance to the tortured heroines of the more than 125 romance novels she has written.

Now in her late 70s, the nationally recognized author of Gothic and historical romances shares a comfortable home in Leisure Village with her husband, Norman Daniels, also an author.

However, Daniels said she put some of her own experiences into her dark tales.

She said she was anemic as a child. “I didn’t have the vitality that healthy children had,” she said. “I was very timid. I had a terrific inferiority complex.”

And growing up in Connecticut, she had unmarried aunts who constantly criticized her looks and clothes, she said. They were the prototypes for some of the villainous rich relatives who despise the orphaned heroines in Daniels’ books.

“That’s why I think I could write these so well,” Daniels said recently, motioning to her books, which bear such titles as “The Tormented” and “A Web of Peril.”

“I could understand the hurt and the need to overcome it. In my books, I could help them do it,” she said.

A young man usually saves the heroine of Daniels’ novels. Daniels said that she already wanted to write when she married Norman Daniels in 1932. But he encouraged her, and she learned by editing his manuscripts of Western novels and radio and television scripts.

Since publishing her first book in the 1940s, Daniels has received numerous honors, including being the namesake of a national writing contest. The Dorothy Daniels Honorary Writing Awards contest, which is sponsored by the Simi Valley Chapter of National PEN Women, is under way now, spokeswoman Mona Locke said. The deadline is Nov. 1. Write to PEN Women--Writing Contest, P.O. Box 1485, Simi Valley, CA 93062.