Megan Hart talks about… details.

Introducing the women of the Order of Solace

The handmaidens of the Order of Solace are each named for the exquisite service that best reflects their true calling. Their greatest delight is giving pleasure–devoted as they are to fulfilling the desires of the mind, the needs of the soul, and the cravings of the body.

Meet Stillness, called upon to soothe the conscience of a man in need of redemption after a shocking act from his sexual past. Then there’s Honesty, whose vow of Solace is to a prince looking for a submissive handmaiden. Instead, he gets the unexpected. And finally, Determinata, a handmaiden confronted with a client lost in a haze of random sex and drugs. She has just the plan to literally whip her man into shape.

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Well, hello there! I’m so glad Fatin’s organized and reminds me so sweetly I’ve agreed to do a blog post for her, because even though it was on my calendar, I’d never have remembered otherwise.

Hello!

Let’s talk about details. Remembering them, specifically. See… when I’m immersed in a book, I live with those characters and that world in my head for months at a time. And yet I don’t remember everything about that world. I have to take notes to remind myself of a character’s name, eye color, the name of a street.

I’m not one of those writers who plots out everything in advance with character descriptions and worksheets and life histories. I let everything kinda sorta just happen. I do my best to make it all fit and be consistent, and I do take notes to help me remember, but later on when someone emails me to ask me questions about the book, I’m often left scratching my head and making the sort of face that looks as dumb as I feel.

Questions like, “What was Joe thinking when he did what he did on the park bench with Sadie that day?” or “Why didn’t Grace eat mushrooms on her pizza?” are, as C & C Music Factory said, are things that make me go, HMMMM.

Because come closer, dear ones, and let me tell you something… I CAN NOT ANSWER THOSE QUESTIONS!

My doves, Fatin asked me to write about how I came up with the world I used in the Order of Solace books, and I wish I could tell you all that this happened and that led to this and I got the idea  this way, but the truth is, I simply don’t know. I don’t remember what led me into the world of Handmaidens and solace. I don’t know what Joe was thinking on the park bench (because, well… mostly because Joe’s not real and it wasn’t his point of view, therefore, I’m not sure WHAT he was thinking!).

Sometimes I remember. I vividly remember being in my office with Superman standing in the doorway and I said, “I have an idea about a woman whose husband’s best friend comes to stay with them, and they have a threesome, but here’s the catch–he’s in love with her husband!” Superman wasn’t a fan of that idea, but readers might recognize it. So yes, there are times I can pinpoint an exact memory of where something came from, or tell you exactly what was happening when I wrote a certain scene.

But most of the time, just as I nearly did with this blog post, I simply… forget.

One thing I don’t forget though is that I’ll be giving away a copy of Pleasure and Purpose to someone today!

And thanks to Fatin for having me (and for reminding me!)

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Thank you, Ms Hart! 😀

Everyone, you heard: leave a comment here to enter a drawing for a signed copy of the just released Pleasure and Purpose, courtesy of Ms Hart. You can learn more about the Order of Solace and about Ms Hart’s work by visiting her website.

But wait! That is not all–our very own and so lovely Fatin is contributing another–alas, unsigned!–copy for another lucky commenter. So, come on over, join the party!

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