From Federal Agent to Romance Novelist

Image

In the novels of Tee O’Fallon ’86, love always wins. Her genre is romantic suspense, and she’s found myriad ways to bring together heroines and heroes, devising diabolical obstacles to pull them apart, crimes for them to solve, and surprising turns to reunite them. The “happily ever after” conclusion is de rigueur in the romance fiction business, but first come the complications.

“The skeletal structure of all romances is the same,” says O’Fallon. “There’s an initial attraction and a conflict between the hero and heroine, but it’s the ups and downs, the journey to happily ever after, that makes every book different, and that depends on how the author writes the story and the plot.” 

Romantic suspense, in particular, has similar but more rigorous requirements than straightforward romance novels. “In the same number of pages, you have to put together a fully developed romance, plus an investigation, a crime plot that has to be solved. The bad guy has to be caught,” she explains.

Today, with 12 novels published and a loyal and growing following, O’Fallon is filled with ideas to complicate the love lives of her characters. It’s no wonder: Her own trajectory to professional novelist has some of the earmarks of her fiction. From her book series —“NYPD Blue and Gold,” “K-9 Special Ops,” “Federal K-9”— a few overarching themes emerge: law enforcement and an affinity for canines. O’Fallon has two Belgian sheepdogs and a backstory filled with career adventures, and both inform the narrative twists she brings to the page. 

O’Fallon’s turn to fiction was not an obvious plot point. Her mom was a pediatrician, and her dad was a geological scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. At Barnard, O’Fallon initially studied architecture, then switched to major in environmental science. After graduation, she worked at the Army Corps of Engineers and then at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

While working at the EPA, another career beckoned from behind a mysterious door in the federal building. A colleague mentioned that he knew every inch of the federal building where they both worked. But he told her that there was one door he couldn’t get into.

Image

“I asked what was behind that door, and he said that’s where the special agents are,” O’Fallon recalls. “I was so intrigued. I started investigating and decided that’s the kind of work I want to do.”

O’Fallon was soon hanging up her civilian credentials and signing on as a federal agent. She discovered within herself a great capacity for the work.

“My brain just quickly perceived what I need to do to get to the next step of an investigation and to put a case together that could be successfully prosecuted,” she says.

After working federal cases for 27 years, another opportunity drew her in: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where she became a police investigator stationed at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

“It’s an interesting agency,” she says, “because it’s one of the few in the U.S. that straddles two states.”

Along the way, O’Fallon, who had always loved reading, was writing her first novels on her own time. As a teen on vacation with her family, she found her first romance novel in a Hilton Head hotel, started reading, and got hooked on this genre of love and adventure.

“I came from a family of doctors, engineers, and scientists, and we didn’t read romance in our house,” she says, laughing. After that vacation, O’Fallon started going to the library to find more romantic favorites.

About 10 years after graduating from Barnard, she took another beach vacation in North Carolina, this time with her then boyfriend. She brought her beach read — a romance novel, of course — but found it lacking.

“I was so disappointed, I literally threw it into the sand,” says O’Fallon. That’s when her boyfriend suggested she write her own, pointing out that she’d always been a good writer. O’Fallon took to the idea then and there.

“My boyfriend, being a very thoughtful guy, buys me a purple leather-bound binder to start. Over margaritas, we began talking about my first book ever,” she says.

This novel and the next one didn’t land her a publishing deal, but O’Fallon didn’t give up.

“The third time was the charm,” she says. The novel Burnout is about a New York City detective who wants to switch careers to become a chef and stumbles onto an opportunity at a restaurant, but intrigue finds her there. Enter the romantic lead (whose ripped physique graces the book’s cover), and the story takes off. O’Fallon landed a publishing deal for Burnout and two more books to create her first series.

For aspiring writers at Barnard now and everywhere, O’Fallon, who is set to publish her 13th novel in the fall, offers advice based on solid, thoroughly investigated evidence: “The main thing is perseverance. Don’t ever give up. Don’t ever stop trying. Don’t ever stop writing.”