Author Takes Love Seriously : Books: Romance writer Mary Jo Putney bristles when people make fun of her books. They’re not “trash,” she says.

About a year ago, when an acquaintance found out what Mary Jo Putney did for a living, she said with disdain, “Oh, you write romance novels. I never read trash like that.”

Putney, bristling only slightly, gets a serious expression on her face. “I don’t mind if someone says to me, ‘I read it and I didn’t like it.’ But for someone to say what she said to my face is pretty insulting. It shows how little people know.”

In fact, anyone who spends a few hours with Putney finds out quickly that this 43-year-old single woman is quite serious about her books, which are well regarded in the genre.

Putney, who was just honored as the author of the Best Regency Novel of the Year by Romantic Times magazine, has written eight books, including the recently released “The Rake and the Reformer,” which won the award.

Although prolific--she has produced those novels in 3 1/2 years--she is also quite scholarly in her pursuits and serious about her work. Her book-lined office, which is upstairs in her townhouse here, has some titles, including historical tomes, that require heavy lifting.

“She’s absolutely one of the outstanding writers of the year,” said Kathryn Falk, publisher of Romantic Times, the bimonthly bible of the romance novel industry.

And in a field that is both crowded--120 new romance titles are released each month--and overrun by the predictable heaving-breasts-and-hungry-loins passages, Putney “is an unusually strong writer with an ability to come up with fresh plots,” Falk says. “Her book (‘The Rake and the Reformer’), a real page turner, could have been a mainstream novel.”

The current novel is also a breakthrough in the Regency romance category. Romance novels fall into one of three major categories: the long historical novels, also called bodice-rippers; the contemporary romances, usually featuring more explicit sex and up-to-date themes; and the Regency romances, which are confined to the Regency period (1811-1820) and focus on the English comedy of manners and courtship.

While “The Rake and the Reformer” does have the requisite deep-sighing heroine--Alys, a pre-feminist who works as a steward despite her hidden noble birth--and the devilishly irresistible hero--Reggie, tall, dark and you-guessed-it handsome--there is a twist. Paralleling the romance--that agonizing period when all is fantasy, desire and unconsummated rolls in the hay--is another tale: one of alcoholism.

“This is a realistic story. Anyone who knows anything about alcoholism will recognize that I have used Alcoholics Anonymous steps to recovery,” Putney said. But it is all set in another time. “I’ve used some 20th-Century themes, but they work in this form. The Regency era was a very heavy period for drinking. It was not unusual for people to drink three bottles of wine a night, plus port.”

Someone close to her had a serious drinking problem, and she wanted to address that theme in the book. But if romance novels offer a promise of escape from contemporary problems, why would a reader want to encounter those problems in fiction?

“There are readers who want some fantasy as well as reality. They want characters they can understand, characters with a larger-than-life quality dealing with real issues,” Putney said. However, she admits, the book has not been hyped as a tale about an alcoholic and his recovery. “It’s nowhere in the promotional material because we didn’t want to scare readers away.”

Her editor at New American Library, Hilary Ross, said: “It has been very successful letting writers do innovative things and treat more serious themes. Otherwise, the genre gets cliched and tired.”

Putney turned to this work about three years ago after a career as a free-lance graphic designer. She put together an outline for a novel a few months before her 40th birthday, sent it out and immediately got a contract from New American Library, a week after she turned 40.

“I’ve had an easier time of it than almost anyone I know,” she said.

For the past two years, she has been chapter adviser for the Maryland group of Romance Writers of America. Almost 35 regional authors meet once a month to discuss the state of the industry, to listen to speakers on genre fiction and to share information. Tea and cookies, very English, usually end the meetings.

“It’s great having support,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll be in the middle of a story, and I won’t know where to turn. I’ll pick up the phone and call another writer and say, ‘I have plot problems,’ and she’ll know just what I mean.”

When she first started writing, Putney says, she felt isolated and knew she had a lot to learn.

“I know some career women have a prejudice against romance novels, because I myself had never read a Harlequin or Silhouette book before,” she said. “And because I wasn’t a romance reader, I was considered innovative with the stories I wrote.”

She chose the field of Regency romances, she says, because “it was a good place to start, it had a narrow framework, it was about relationships and people. And it was also an area in which I could earn a living.”

She knows the reality of the marketplace for writers: That while only about 5% of all general writers earn a living at writing, almost 15% of all genre writers do. In a few years, Putney says, she expects to earn a $50,000 annual income from her work.

In some respects, she believes that she fell naturally into the work because of her background, which includes a degree in 18th-Century English literature from Syracuse University in her native Upstate New York, followed by two years in Oxford, England. It makes her especially familiar with the period she writes about and the places she describes. She is an Anglophile, and her townhouse reflects her tastes with its treasured pieces of old English furniture, as well as her favorite teddy bears.

In her office, there is also an inspirational artwork with these words floating above the head of an angelic muse: “Within the circle of proficient thought resides your golden meter. . . . Retrieve.”

Falk of Romantic Times says that there may be danger ahead despite the auspicious beginnings: “Quite often, romance writers come out very strong, but then they fall into the traps of writing the same novel over and over and losing their original freshness.”

But Putney doesn’t want to be confined to any category, at least not in the long run. “I’ll probably work my way into more mainstream historical work,” she said.

That does not mean she offers any apology for what she does now. “I’m very comfortable with what I do,” she said. “I write good books, the best I know how. A good story doesn’t have to be defended.”