Ilena Holder, Romance Author and U.S. Navy Vet

Welsome Ilena Holder, U.S. Navy veteran and romance author.  

What did you do in the Navy?
While on active duty (’72- ’76) I was an Aviation Storekeeper stationed in Rota, Spain.  I took advantage of my base position in the Mediteranean to travel as much as possible during my enlistment.  This included trips to Morocco, Gibraltar, and a two week Eurail trip around every major country in Europe before my discharge in November of 1976.

Tell me about your relationship with flying and the aviation community. Are you a pilot? 

No (laughing). However, I love the thrill of commercial flying whenever I can and appreciate the beauty of sleek aircraft design.  My rating in the Navy meant that I ordered not only aircraft parts for every plane in the base squadrons, but also pilot survival gear (flight jackets, sunglasses, shark repellant, and parachutes.)  When you get to know military airplane supply from the nose mounts on up to ejection seats, you feel more of an affinity with the mechanics, flight crew, pilots, and plane captains.

Did the location or people influence your writing?
My military background gives me many real life experiences I can draw upon in my writing.  Military aviation is quite thrilling with an adventure literally every week. Of course, military life is very fast paced.  The people I was stationed with had been so many exotic places in their careers- Greece, Antarctica, and the Phillippines to name a few. Besides shore duty, they also had been stationed on aircraft carriers and those were full of innumerable human interest stories.

Military life is so different from civilian life. It is a great place for young people to learn a trade or job skill for later life.  Plus the great benefits and free travel are wonderful perks! (do I sound like a recruiter?!)

Tell me about your books.

I have one ebook currently selling on Awe-Struck Press, called Rose Garden.  It’s a contemporary romance set in Michigan and California.  My next book will come out November 19th with Red Rose Publishing.  It is called Color of the Flame and features an ex Navy SEAL and a widow who runs a blueberry farm in Michigan.

What do you like to read? 
I am an electic reader. Of course, I push ebooks because that is what I am writing at the present time. Right now I am reading The Royals by Kitty Kelly. A friend in my writing group loaned me The Old Man and The Sea because I had never read that.  I’ll probably finish it this weekend.

What's your favorite "flying" book?
My favorite flying book is Yeager:  An Autobiography.

What are you writing now?
I am currently about ¼ the way through my next time travel/ IR romance. The setting is in south west Michigan where I grew up. It will take place in the time of Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties.  I am also about ¼ of the way through a general fiction book which will center on my civilian career in the nuclear power industry.

Ilena Holder was born and raised in southwestern Michigan. The area is known for fruit production and she worked in different summer jobs picking and packing fruit for shipment as a child and teenager. Like all the children of farm families in the area, she was rounded up for picking when blackberries and strawberries were ripe in the fields. At this time, no mechanical pickers had been invented yet. Grapes were cut from the vines with clippers and peaches, plums, and apples were picked by hand in the orchards. All the farm neighbors and their children worked side by side into the night until the fruit was picked. Ilena also worked at a local riding stable, teaching lessons and working as a stable hand. She learned English balance seat riding from the age of ten and elementary dressage. Reading always helped pass the long cold Michigan winters. 

At eighteen, she joined the Navy to see the world. She never dreamed she would be stationed so far from home, in southern Spain. From here she was able to travel to places she only dreamed of as a child. When she finished her four year enlistment, she went to college on the G.I. Bill. Ilena is married for 35 years with one child, and lives in northern Alabama. She is a member of Epic Authors, and also ROMVETS, a group composed of woman veterans of the armed services who write romances

 Ilena Holder Books
Rose Garden can be purchased Awe-Struck.Press 
Color of the Flame out November 19th from Red Rose Publishing

To find more mililary women who've turned the sword into a pen

visit ROMVETS