A couple weeks ago, I was contacted by a friend who had a friend whose middle-school daughter needed to interview an author. So she and…
All Swoon. No Spice.
Category: Saving Marilee
Now that Saving Marilee has been out for more than a year, I finally got around to writing a scene from James’ point of view.…
Well, it’s been almost two weeks since Painting Rain was released. In that time I’ve run a free promo on Just Ella and then promptly fell off the face of the internet to take care of this little snoozer.
Life is good here in mommy land.
Hey Everyone!
I’ve got a deleted scene from Saving Marilee for you to read. And as a bonus, everyone who signs up in the next week will be entered into a drawing automatically.
Another question from my FB page. Someone asked where I get inspiration for my heroes. So here’s my attempt to answer:
Firstly, none of my characters are based on real people. I have utilized little quirks from people I’ve known and incorporated them into some of my characters, but that’s the extend of it.
During my 2 1/2 day writing retreat with my critique group last October, I ended up writing 22,000 words on my Saving Marilee manuscript. A lot of that success was due to my determination to plug in and write. No excuses. Just writing. And most of the time I would have my headphones on, listening to my writing playlist so that I could tune out anything else going on around me.
It makes me giggle when my books are criticized for not being historically accurate. So, for the record: I don’t write historical fiction. It’s just not in my wheelhouse.
I had a reader ask on my FB page where I came up with the original concept of Ella and her sisters.
The first few scenes that I wrote for Just Ella were so bad. They were stilted and awkward, the dialogue was contrived, and I was trying to write in the style that Jane Eyre was written in, which didn’t work since I’m not Charlotte Bronte. I didn’t have a handle on the old timey speech, and I didn’t really know who Ella was.
While I was still in the middle of writing Missing Lily, I started contemplating my next project. I decided that I didn’t want to do another princess story. I was done with those. I tried starting the story of Gavin’s younger sister, Kinley, but it never grabbed me. I thought about telling the story of Brinna, Gavin’s jilted fiancée, but I barely got beyond a couple of paragraphs with her.
As you know, my decision to not do another princess story didn’t pan out.
I had always liked Marilee because she was fun and made me smile, but I knew that she wasn’t mature enough for me to want to be inside her head for an entire book. I knew that if I was going to make her a heroine, she’d have to grow up, and she’d have to do it the hard way.