Her One And Only Valentine - Behind The Scenes

Ooooh a new place to Blog!!! How exciting!

So I figured since a few lovely folks have been discovering my February book I might take to telling some of the behind the scenes stuff on here to any who might be interested. I do these on my website all the time but to have a place to do them here is fab! Mind you - you do get pretty pics with it on my website ;)

Anyhoos Her One And Only Valentine is a story that started out with one premise and morphed into another and then another before it finally made it to the book it now is in print... That happens a lot with writing I think...

Initially I had the idea for linked stories based around a group of college friends, one of whom had died young and left a series of will 'provisos' that would effect the lives of all the others. But at the time I only plotted the one story. It involved a huge great country estate called Brookfield and a couple who had dated in college, but had parted and the guy had never realized the girl was pregnant. But if I'm honest, it was chock full of plot holes...

In it's next incarnation I chatted with two author buddies online about a trilogy of linked books, known as a continuity. We had hours of *fun* passing the 'bible' back and forth as we put together our pitch for the editor we were all with at the time. And all that hard work and varying suggestions from three very different perspectives and voices really tightened the story up... We each took a character from the group of friends, thought up the will proviso for each one and let our imaginations fly! But unfortunately our timing was off, and with so many continuities scheduled our pitch was a no-go...

But I loved this story. So when it was time to pitch a new Romance plot to my editor, I went back and looked at my part of the continuity, had a chat with the gals to make sure it was okay with them to pitch it as a stand-alone rather than wait what might have been years to find slots for three linked books, and thankfully they were fine with it. So pitch it as a stand-alone I did! Third time lucky!!! But it did mean a right wee bit of re-writing, the loss of every hint of linkage to the other books, and a real brain-wracking to try and not make it too clichéd...

Cos secret babies are getting to be a harder sell these days I think. A father has as much of a right to access to his child as the mother. So I had to try and find a reason for Rhiannon to have kept Lizzie's father in the dark. And as always it came down to the characters, to emotions, to circumstance and the perceptions they had developed to hide the reality of their own feelings... Character driven. Just as it should be they always tell us. It made for an emotional read I think. But I'll let you guys be the judge of that...;) I just write em... 

So all it took was the loss of the will provisos, the renaming of all the characters, a complete change of background for the hero and heroine - oh - and a change in the ownership of the estate. But hey... it's still called Brookfield... I guess sometimes we just have to be flexible with our stories!

Locations in this book:

I'm forever waffling on to friends and family and on blogs about creating worlds for characters to live in. And Her One And Only Valentine is no different...

Everywhere in Ireland there still remain large Country Estates. Some not as large as they used to be, some lying in ruins with the lands run by co-operative groups of farmers, some run by the National Trust and yes, some still under private ownership... and every one of them has a special beauty of it's own and is tied to Ireland's long and often turbulent history.

So with all that history in mind, the one constant that remained through every incarnation of this book, was Brookfield; the country house that Rhiannon inherits from her best friend Mattie. The estate that goes with it, however, now belongs to Kane Healey... And that's what forces them together...

It makes for a lovely setting, especially for the Valentine's Ball at the end. A huge country house deserves an old fashioned Ball, don't you think? Yes, I thought so too ;) And the interior and exterior of the house gave me plenty of scope for scenes - the square courtyard at the back where the carriage horses would have been stabled, the lake in front of the house where Kane teaches Rhiannon how to skip stones (an old childhood game of mine that I could never quite get the hang of like Rhiannon), the old servants dormitory in the eaves where Kane sets up an office, and the vaulted ceiling stove room where Kane and Rhiannon argue and eventually 'make up'... Yup, I had tonnes of scope here...

Soundtrack playing: 

Anyone who knows me knows I ALWAYS have music playing when I write. Some authors can do it - some can't. I thrive on it. And I make soundtracks these days for each one... For Her One And Only Valentine I had one song in particular that added to the emotion of Kane and Rhiannon as they worked their way through the past and looked to their future and it came from Take That's album, Beautiful World and was number one in the UK for ages. So I wasn't the only one who liked it.

'Patience' is such a lovely song, and has an 'epic', 'movie soundtrack' feel to it that I love to have when I'm writing. Atmospheric is the best word I spose. And I find when I'm writing the tone of the song can really effect the scene I'm working on...

So there you go. Behind the scenes stuff. If anyone reads it and would like to ask me any questions or let me know what they thought then leave a comment and I shall stick my head out of the deadline cave to say HI...

HAPPY READING FOLKS!!!

RT REVIEWERS CHOICE AWARD WINNER 2008 for RESCUED: MOTHER-TO-BE

HER BEDROOM SURRENDER - Harlequin Presents - May - BOOKSELLERS BEST FINALIST as BREATHLESS!

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