My first crush...

My husband (aka Himself) knows how to woo me.  For years I've said my favorite present from him was a pair of a steel-toed boots. (He'd seen me splitting wood and flipping a piece that landed on my toes which made them sweet.)  But yesterday's gift might win.  An entire collection of leather-bound, acid-free paper Robert Heinlein's book.  Oh, be still my heart.

My first real crush was on Heinlein's character, Lazarus Long.  So that's where I went first. I opened Methuselah's Children.  Oh, wow.  Reading a beautifully bound version is a different experience than reading my beat up paperback.  It was lovely!  Adding to the experience was seeing Himself occasionally glance over at me happily reading and smile indulgently.  

It might seem strange to non-book people to have a first crush be a fictional character, but readers get it.  I have a crush on all the heroes I write.  And I want to be best friends with all the heroines.  If I didn't like them that much, then writing the book wouldn't work.  I've been writing Romance+ stories...books that are more than a romance, they're a story of a woman's journey that includes a romance, but romantic love isn't the reason for her journey, nor is it the only destination.  My Words of the Heart series is first person in the heroine's point-of-view.  So I get to know those heroes through the heroine's eyes.  But at the end of Carry Her Heart, Ned gets a small word in edge wise...and every time I read it, even though I wrote it, I tear up.  He comes back in Hold Her Heart and opens the book...and again, he gets me every time.  As I sat reading Lazarus last night, I looked at my husband and understood why Ned's small POV's get me...it's because he gets his heroine, Pip.  He understands her and loves her in spite of her quirks.

Himself gets me like that and proof is in a pair of steel-toed boots and a set of Heinlein books.

Holly

PS The first two books in Words of the Heart are on sale.  Come meet Ned for yourself.

Carry Her Heart

Hold Her Heart

These Three Words

Becoming Real...

I've always loved The Velveteen Rabbit and that idea of becoming "real."  As a writer, I've always endeavored to make all my characters are "real" as I can.  One of the biggest compliments a reader can give me is to tell me that they felt as if a character was a neighbor, a friend...they felt they were so real they could imagine that sort of connection.

And it's not just that I want readers to fall in love with a hero, or want to be friends with a neighbor, but I want them to feel that connection with my secondary characters.

I wrote Nana Vancy for the Everything But...Series.  In the first three books, she accidentally cursed her family to bad weddings.  After she broke the curse in the last book, readers kept asking for more. So, Nana Vancy tried her hand at matchmaking (alas she wasn't very good at it LOL) in three more books.  She found her calling matching dogs up with their real forever homes.  And in that capacity she has had a few cameos since that last book. She showed up in Christmas in Cupid Falls and even in Carry Her Heart.  

I was so thrilled this week to find out that Nana Vancy's first books, Everything But a Groom was included on Booklist's Top 101 Romances in the last 10 Years.

As a reader, do you have characters who've become "real" to you??

My first real crush was with a character from a number of Robert Heinlein's books, Lazarus Long.  He was snarky, wore kilts and had red hair.  What's not to love?

So how about you?

Holly