I've been crunching to finish A Court Gesture, book 8 in my It's Reigning Men royal contemporary romance series, but I thought you might be interested in my process (or lack thereof) when I am figuring out my books. So Here's some insight into how I wrote my latest release, It’s Getting Hot in Heir, book seven in the series.
This
is the first series that I’ve written, and now that I’m this far into it I've realized that I need to be a little more careful so that I don’t find myself
writing myself into a corner…Which happened a handful of times with this book.
The
hero/heroine of this book were in previous books—the hero, Edouardo, started
out as a bit player in book two, Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow. He was a
bit gruff, far too overprotective of his sister and family, maybe gruff to the
point of surly. But the more I incorporated him into the backstory of other stories
(I think he reared his ugly head, in a funny way, in Shame of Thrones), the
more I wanted to figure him out. By the way, by the time I was writing this
book, I wished I could have changed his name, though, because spelling Edouardo
correctly realllllly got to be a pain ;-).
In
my last book, Throne for a Loop, I introduced our heroine, Gabriella, as a
secondary character who’d recently returned to Monaforte, the small European
principality in which the books mostly take place. So I wasn’t too sure about what
to do about Gabriella, either (in Throne for a Loop, I had her having
some unfortunate experiences with the men in her life that led to some even
more unfortunate stress eating, but that was about it). So I impulsively
decided to throw those two together and see what happened.
Well…did
I mention Edouardo can be a bit of a crank? And really, he just had some issues he had to figure out, so I had to
dig into his psyche a bit and try to help him get his act together a little
bit. And in the process of that, find time for the two of them to develop a
relationship, while enabling her to figure out her deal (we all have them,
don’t we?! I’m still trying to figure out my deal LOL), and—and this was what
really got me into murky water—having to coordinate it with events from
previous books and then having characters from other books making little guest
appearances and having to be sure I’ve got them doing the right things at the
right time for the time frame that this book is in, also keeping in mind that I
have some novellas I still want to write with some events like a royal wedding
(or two!) and a royal baby (or two!) and not creating conflicting information
about timing with those events.
Which
meant book seven found me counting on my fingers a lot (figuring what year or
month or season other things had occurred in so that I was sure I wasn’t
messing that up). Alas, I’m really bad at counting, even on my fingers, so
hopefully I didn’t blow it too conspicuously! And hopefully I don’t have too
many Edouardo’s spelled wrong (sometimes I spelled him I think “Edouaordo” in
an earlier book, but that was even harder to write). Plus I like the chance to
“nickname” a name, and it was hard to do that with his name. I kind of did just
for a joke at one point in the book, just because I knew it would make him mad.
But…it
was sort of good therapy for me to have to deal with some additional
computation along with those emotional problems with my story because it helped
me garner a little more insight into the motivations of both of these
characters, which I hoped I convey successfully in the telling of their story.
I
did certainly learn, however, to start choosing easier names to type for future
characters ;-).
Thanks
again for having me visit!!! You’re always such a great supporter and I’m
really grateful to you for it!
It's Getting Hot in Heir
Here's the cover for my latest I'm working on---what do you think? It's available for pre-order here: iBooks Kindle Kobo
Oh and for a limited time I've got an awesome free book for you if you sign up for my newsletter: Something in the Heir, book 1 of the It's Reigning Men series! Sign up here and you'll be first to hear about deals and giveaways.
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