Dealing with Story Ideas by Michelle Styles

Sometimes story ideas come quietly on cat’s paws. You don’t know they are there until they start to flow from your fingertips. You can’t really say when or why they arrived, you simply know you need to write the story. Other ideas roar into your mind and refuse to let go, drowning out all other ideas until they vanish as quickly as they came, leaving you to sort through the wreckage.

My latest book from Harlequin Historical A DEAL WITH HER REBEL VIKING was one of the latter. I saw a tweet about an Oxfordshire Easter tradition about women capturing men and then men capturing women and thought  there must have a romance in it somewhere. Although I have written a number of Viking set romances, I had never set one in the Midlands, in the old kingdom of Mercia. In many ways, Mercia is overlooked as it became part of Wessex after Aethelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians and daughter of King Alfred died. She is probably the person most responsible for stopping the Vikings and for helping to ensure England evolved as a concept. She is also one of my great heroines. However, my story takes place slightly earlier than her reign, during that period when the Great Army was first on British shores.

  The idea seemed deceptively simple when I first started writing it but as ever with these things, the initial idea proved slightly elusive (among other thing I forgot the romance) and I had to work hard to make the story work for my characters (cue large scale revisions). However after working  very hard and completely re-jigging the ending, my editor loved it (cue celebrations on my part). I was also very pleased with the cover as they used the model Carson who had inspired the hero as the cover model.

As I wrote it, I also realised that there was more than one story here and so I have ended up writing a trilogy. The slight hiccup with this was that I had already committed to writing a book in the Sons of Sigurd series which Harlequin Historical is publishing in 2020. The four other authors are Michelle Willingham, Harper St George, Jenni Fletcher and Terri Brisbin. My book is the third one and is entitled CONVENIENTLY WED TO THE VIKING (publishing July 2020).  Michelle Willingham’s Stolen by the Viking will be published in March 2020. It has one of the new look Harlequin Historical covers. And having read an early draft, it is every bit as lush as the cover looks. Writing in a collaborative series was a totally new experience for me and it took me a little longer than I had planned.

 So after a long hiatus,  I have just returned to Midland set trilogy and am writing the second one. It is wonderful to revisit the world that I created last year.  This time, rather than setting it in the Forest of Arden, I have moved the action northwards to Sherwood Forest. It is easy to forget that these forests existed long before the tales of Shakespeare or indeed Robin Hood and I wanted to do something to address that.

Right now, I am hoping that people enjoy my new book. You can read the start of it here for free.

Michelle Styles writes warm ,witty and intimate historical romances for Harlequin Historical in a wide range of time periods, including Roman, Regency, Victorian but most recently Viking. Her latest A DEAL WITH HER REBEL VIKING will be published on 18 November 2019. Her next book CONVENIENTLY WED TO THE VIKING will be published in July 2020. You can learn more about Michelle and her books at www.michellestyles.co.uk

Michelle Styles: A Roman era set book and its author Jenni Fletcher

As long time readers of this blog may recall, my first published book for Harlequin Historical was a Roman set historical The Gladiator’s Honor. It was the first time Harlequin (or indeed any major publisher) had published a romance set in that. I now write other ears, mainly Vikings, but Harlequin has a few intrepid authors who have taken up the baton and started writing in that era. First Greta Gilbert and now Jenni Fletcher.

I asked Jenni to explain about how she came to write her book, The Warrior’s Bride Prize. She also kindly allowed me to read it. A happy evening of reading ensued and if you love historical romances which really capture the time period and make you feel like you are there, read Jenni’s latest.

You can read the first chapter for free at overdrive.com

If you are more interested in other time periods, Jenni writes Victorian and Medieval for HH as well. You can learn more about Jenni by visiting her website. www.jennifletcher.com 

Here is what Jenni wrote about how she got the idea:

 The idea for my new book The Warrior's Bride Prize first came to me in the heart of Wordsworth country, wandering around the ruins of a Roman fort on the outskirts of Ambleside in the Lake District. Honestly, it would have been hard not to feel inspired, standing on the shores of Lake Windermere in the autumn sunshine, surrounded by so much history and breathtaking scenery, although at the time I was busy with a Victorian story. Nonetheless, I allowed myself to get distracted briefly, imagining a tale about an aristocratic Roman lady travelling to the edge of the Empire and meeting a Pictish warrior.

     At the time, however, I wasn't ready. So I went home and wrote two other books, but the idea of a Roman-set romance never completely left me. Over time, the particulars of the story changed. I watched King Arthur with Keira Knightley and my heroine turned from an aristocrat into the daughter of a Caledonian former slave, while my hero changed allegiance completely and became Roman. The action shifted inland too, staying on Hadrian's Wall, but moving closer to Corbridge and Chesters Roman fort, where the second half of the story is set. 

     What really inspired me to start writing, however, was a visit to the Eboracum Festival in York in 2017. I loved the enthusiasm of the re-enactors (one of whom turned out to be my son's ukelele teacher) as well as meeting lots of Roman authors, all of whom were so inspired by their subject.So I started to write, but after a while I got bogged down in detail. There was so much research to do, not least in terms of military history, which was more complex than I'd imagined. Eventually I had a rough draft, but something wasn't quite right. I couldn't put my finger on the problem exactly, but I knew it had something to do with the atmosphere. I could see my book, but I couldn't feel it. 

     For me, geography is integral to a story (I often think of locations before characters) but for this book that statement was truer than ever. My husband suggested we take a trip north to Hadrian's Wall and once we reached it, everything fell into place. I stood on the edge of the wall, which was even more impressive than I'd remembered from school trips, and imagined how it might have looked almost two thousand years ago. That was when my characters - Livia and Marius - really made sense to me. I wrote another draft and I was finally happy. Which meant that they could have their happy-ever-after too!

     So that's how this story happened. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever written, but in retrospect (now the difficult part is over) that makes it extra special to me. It's my small contribution to the Roman genre and I hope you enjoy it too.

Michelle Styles writes warm, witty and intimate historical romance in a wide range of time periods. Her next Viking Sent as the Viking’s Bride will be published on 18 December 2018. To learn more about Michelle and her books, visit www.michellestyles.co.uk