Tina Sloan recreated herself after Guiding Light went off the air with a tome called Changing Shoes about her changing life. Now, she’s taken the pen to the page again with the novel Chasing Cleopatra: A Novel of Love, Betrayal, and Suspense. Sloan talks with Soap Hub about how doing what you love keeps you feeling young and in the game.
Tina Sloan: Finding Cleopatra
“In Changing Shoes, I wrote about going from sexy high heels [which I’d sometimes wear on GL] to wearing black flats,” Sloan says. The actress/author turned the book into a play and toured with it in both the United States and in England. “I knew my ‘brand’ was Changing Shoes, which is a really good and helpful book,” Sloan says. But she wanted to do something else in life — write a spy novel.
“I love spy stories,” she enthuses. “I love all the big mystery writers.” In order to bring authenticity to her writing, Sloan reached out to her son, who worked in intelligence, to make sure she was accurately bringing the world of espionage to life correctly. “I’d ask if something I was thinking of writing was possible, and he’d help me with that,” she says.
Sloan’s research brought her to Honolulu, Hawaii, where she ran a marathon. “I wrote about a marathon in my book, so I was able to use my experience,” she says. “It became an immersive thing.” Writing, unlike acting, can be a solitary process, but Sloan says that suits her just fine — especially if she wanted to bow out of a social engagement. “I’d say, ‘Oh, I’m writing today’ — which I would be,” she says.
Among the writers whom Sloan admirers is former GL Daytime Emmy-winning scribe Pamela K. Long. Sloan’s experience on soaps informed her that stories can always take an unexpected turn. “I was going to kill off one of my characters by having them go off a cliff in a whiteout, but,” Sloan chuckles, “he started quoting [Chilean poet and diplomat] Pablo Neruda, and I thought, ‘Well, I can’t kill him…so now, he’s a CIA agent!”
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Not For Women Only
The lead in Sloan’s novel is Cleopatra Gallier, a woman who is beautiful, clever, wealthy, and is also a trained killer! Although the lead is a strong female protagonist, Sloan says that a good portion of her book’s audience is not just women. “I’m finding that men love it!” she enthuses.
“There are some good sex scenes in it,” Sloan teases. “A nurse I know said to me [after reading Chasing Cleopatra], ‘I’m looking at your husband very differently,'” shares Sloan, who hastens to add, “I said, ‘I’m a writer! I’ve been on soap operas [including Another World as Olivia and Search for Tomorrow as Patti]. I make things up!'” Sloan assures readers that she’s very subtle in the more risqué scenes, but they do have to be there to help tell her story.
Tina Sloan: Aging Tips
Sloan, who turned 80 in February, is proof that new chapters (pun intended) can start at any part in a person’s life. In addition to Changing Shoes, Chasing Cleopatra, and Chasing Othello, she’s already working on two more books. Research for these tomes will take her abroad. “I’ve spent time in San Moritz,” she says. There, she was spotted for playing Lillian Raines as Guiding Light is huge in Italy where it is known as Sentieri.
In addition to living — and writing — her own best life, Sloan offers helpful aging tips on Instagram. She’s repeated one that’s attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Sloan shares: “He said, ‘When you can no longer do the things you want to do, want to do the things that you can do!'”
Click here to order your copy of Chasing Cleopatra and here to order Chasing Othello. Check out a few of Sloan’s anti-aging tips from her Instagram [@tinasloan] account below!
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