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

Trippin' with Holly and Susan—19

I was posting today's Trippin' with Holly and Susan and realized that I had to blog...I thought it might be fun to talk about these videos here.

They started a couple months ago. Susan and I were taking a roadtrip from Erie, PA to Syracuse, New York to speak. She rolled the camera and we talked about writing, reading and books. We finished them all up and started a new batch around Erie. We both live here and set books here. I grew up here. We spent a day filming episodes around town, showing off some of our favorite downtown spots. It was a breezy summer day and my Medusa hair continued to make a break for it all day, but it was fun. I hope you enjoy this one, and if you want to catch up on some of the episodes you missed, you can find them on YouTube. We post new episodes on Mondays and Fridays.

Hope you enjoy the trip!

Holly

PS I have a few books on sale this week: Just One Thing (Paperback and ebook)
Hold Her Heart
Everything But....series

You Can Go Home Again : : Anne McAllister

Hardly a writers' conference goes by -- or a library talk or an article in a newspaper or magazine -- that doesn't somewhere contain the sentence, "Where do you get your ideas?"

People who don't write -- and sometimes even people who do -- seem to want to know that more than they want to know anything else. Except for how much money we make!

I think it has to do with the 'mystery' of writing.

It seems like it should be easy because we've all done it, haven't we?

Everyone over the age of six has written a composition about what they did on their summer vacation or about their favorite pet or, if they are like my youngest son, they write fabulous adventures using every gun every known to man because he spent his youth devouring Gun Digest.

So it should be simple. Everyone should be able to do it.

But they don't. Because the ideas aren't the hang-up, when you get right down to it.

We all have them. Ideas for books have, to be honest, come from things I've done on my summer vacation. They've been inspired by places I've been, songs I've heard, fortune cookies I've opened. They've been infiltrated by my favorite pets -- and several other peoples' pets as well. (Hi, Sid!).

And if I haven't got all the guns known to man in my books yet, well, it may be just a matter of time -- or genre.

The ideas are the easy part. You just use what you know, what you remember, what you feel, what you're interested in. You find the story in it -- and you've got a book.

Well, sort of. But that's the basics. Even though, after 63 books, I find myself digger deeper and deeper into what I know so I don't use the same stuff over and over again.

Still, I do use it. When I wrote my newest book, One-Night Mistress ... Inconvenient Wife, I needed a place that was upscale and yet not really glitzy. I dug through my mind for what I knew -- and I ended up going clear back to the beginning and basically 'went home again.'

I grew up in Manhattan Beach, California. While I spent summers (those well-used vacations that got me through nearly 20 Desires and Special Editions and a single title!) in Montana and Colorado, I spent school years on the beach of So Cal.

And even though Manhattan Beach changes regularly and quickly, some things about it don't change -- The Strand, the pier, the broad walkup sidewalk streets, and most of all, the informal beach-oriented lifestyle.

It's an upscale community now compared to when I grew up there. You do pretty much need to be a millionaire to live on The Strand these day.

So it was a perfect place to put Christo, my hard-driving lawyer hero, because it gave him the beach on his doorstep so he could kick back and relax and go surfing when he wanted to (see how useful growing up on the beach was?). It was an equally good place to stick Natalie because it was his turf and she was out of her depth.

I went home again in my mind a lot while I was working on the book. I also called my friends who still live there and picked their brains about how things have changed. (Writing is good for maintaining friendships).

Of course, 'going home again' to a location wasn't enough to get the book from my brain to the page to the bookshop. Books are more than settings and ambiences. They require a lot of bits and pieces that make up the patchwork. Occupations, families, backstory, emotions.

Which are simply more types of going home. I needed to reconnect with other friends and relatives, too -- one in Brazil who helped me with Christo's Brazilian father and grandmother, and one in Pennsylvania, a lawyer cousin who on a daily basis kept Christo from getting disbarred.

I borrowed the name of one of Robyn Donald's granddaughters. I borrowed someone else's cat. (No, not you, Sid!) I moved a house from Hawthorne to Torrance. I played fast and loose with few things from my own emotional baggage. I threw in a sand castle and some body surfing, a rainstorm I remembered all too well, a wedding with fairy lights, and, especially, a beloved grandmother.

I went home again, physically and emotionally -- and I went to a few other peoples' houses, too. And I wrote a book.

It's the same process every time I write one. And I never quite know until I'm actually working which memories, which facts, which emotions, which bits and pieces are going to be the ones I'll need.

It's the joy of writing -- getting up every morning and discovering where I'll go and what I'll use today.

How about you? Do you go home again? Have you written about it? Where do you go in your head?

Where do you get your ideas? - Helen Bianchin

One of the queries an author is asked is ... where do you get your ideas? From life is too simple an answer ... perhaps events that happen in life is more accurate. Taking an idea and giving it a twist, employing a reality fact and weaving it into fiction with a romance element. In the case of a Harlequin Presents, that involves a sexy romance!

Sometimes an item in the media will spark an idea, an event in a television series, a conversation ... anything, anytime, anywhere.

So how did the idea for the plot of Purchased: His Perfect Wife come about?

For me it was the result of a conversation I had with a friend. A conversation which began quite innocently and revolved around a recent (at the time) news item involving loan sharks. The kind who lend money very short term at exorbitant interest rates ... those whose mantra is "pay on time and you'll be fine. Don't, and you won't".

As often happens, this inspired a "what if" scenario. I needed a realistic plot, a situation that could happen. The how and where and why took some thinking and planning time, and just when I thought I had it, a more plausible approach sprang to mind.

What if the heroine in my story is a chef who co-owns a restaurant with a financial partner, and the partner clears out their bank account and absconds with the money leaving her in debt? Although she presses charges, the bank won't lend her any further money. Desperate, she borrows money from a dubious source on the basis her stepfather will transfer the necessary funds into her account ... except he's killed in a car crash before he can effect the transfer.

The backcover blurb says it all ... "Lara needs cash fast. Her business partner has duped her and her beloved restaurant is in crisis. Only Wolfe Alexander, her tall, dark, brooding stepbrother, can help. Wolfe needs to marry to meet the terms of his late father's will, and when beautiful Lara begs him for money he sees his opportunity. A Powerful attraction has always simmered between them and he'll help if she'll be his convenient wife! With no choice to to accept, Lara is soon swept into a world of high-society glamour, and passion beyond her wildest dreams. But where is her husband's love?"

I hope you enjoy the read as much as I enjoyed writing Lara and Wolfe's story.

I'd love to hear what ideas spark your imagination and prompt a reason for a story.

Regards to all,

Helen