Mad wanted to know how I got into writing and where I got my ideas. She also wanted some teasers from Love Me, Still, my December short story release. Well, technically it releases in just a week in a print anthology, but the ebook releases in December. I aim to please, so I’ll try to cover all the bases.
I’ve scribbled in notebooks forever. I love paper. Love pens. Love the act of writing. I have notebooks upon notebooks of stories I wrote in elementary school on through high school. I didn’t write so much in my early twenties because I was busy with life and surviving and all the fun things we do in the name of adulthood, but I continued to daydream stories and tell myself that someday I’d dive back into writing.
That someday came when a friend, who I’d met in an online expecting club for women having babies in Jan/Feb 2000, and I were talking about how much we loved romance novels and that we loved to write. That conversation escalated into a challenge. I told her that I thought we should quit talking about it and do it. We made a pact to kick each other’s asses, write those books and become published. The cool thing? We both did.
Story ideas, hmmm, I wish I could admit to something exciting or some secret formula for which a plot hatches itself, but the simple truth is, most of the time a random scene will pop into my head, take root and start to grow out of control until I give in and write the story. A lot of times, ideas come from dreams. I like to people watch, and I have a rather vivid imagination, so the two together are rather fun lol.
I’m not a plot out everything in advance writer. When I sit down to write, half the time I don’t even know what’s going to happen. Which is WHY I like sitting down to write so much. It’s the coolest job in the world. I never know what will pop up next in the story, and it keeps me on my toes (and it keeps my interest up)
Now for the teaser part. Mad wanted some info, excerpt type stuff on Love Me, Still. This is what I call an “after the happily ever after” story. The relationship has been established. That story has already been told in another time and place. Love Me, Still is a story about love found and lost and found again. Betrayal and ultimately forgiveness. Making mistakes and the consequences of those mistakes and wrong choices.
I love stories about married characters. To me, a couple (or more in this case heh) with an already established relationship, a history together, brings so much more conflict to the table. Don’t get me wrong. I love stories of how people meet and fall in love, but I also love reading about how people stay together, or how they drift apart and back again, because really, the whole meeting and falling in love thing? Just the beginning of a really long journey. The story doesn’t end with “I love you.”
I have another such story releasing next May called “Stay With Me” and it is also what I consider an “after the happily ever after” highlighting the struggles in a relationship. I have to admit, I just sigh over a romance that’s been tested and in the end survives. It’s more meaningful to me.
Anyway, back to the topic (I do tend to drift often heh) Here’s the blurb for Love Me, Still. If you follow the link to my website, you can read an excerpt there, and since Mad asked so nicely, I’ll post a never before seen excerpt here as well.
Forgiveness is the most difficult thing to give but the most cherished thing to receive.
Beloved mate to two wolves, Heather lived an idyllic life until hunters destroyed the pack’s peaceful existence.
Believing their mate betrayed them and was responsible for their father’s death, Cael and Riyu cut Heather from their lives. But when they realize their terrible mistake, can they ever gain her forgiveness and win back her love?
Excerpt plus a chance to win some books after the jump!
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