Sunday, December 8, 2013

An affair in Italy...true romance


As a romance reader for many years, I loved revisiting characters in connected novels. Essie Summers, one of my early favourites, was particularly delightful to read as she slipped in characters from her earlier books and you could see the satisfying lives the characters lived after the final kiss in their own story. Contemporary romances are so short, writing a series allows you to develop layered stories and deeper characterization of secondary characters as well.

So you've seen Book 3 Outback Affair...here is a little bit about Book 2 Italian Affair.

Holiday Affair, the first book in the Affair series, started its life as a standalone book. My lifelong dream of writing a contemporary romance came to fruition with this book, and I hadn’t really given any thought to the other characters. I am a panster through and through (although my editor is slowly beating that out of me!) so my characters lead me along.
Tom, the middle brother in Holiday Affair needed to find his happy ever after and I mulled over his problem and what sort of woman he would need to fall in love with, to complete his happiness.
Now, for those of you who have read Holiday Affair, you will remember Tom as a bit of stuffy, stitched-up, list-making man, as one reviewer of Italian Affair described him! Tom needed someone who was free-spirited, who could tease him, but who would also fall in love with the wonderful man he is.

Inspiration came to me through a very dear friend and I have dedicated Italian Affair to this friend, Melissa Lulham who she told me how she had discovered her birth grandfather on Lipari Island. Brianna Ballantine was born in that moment. Free spirited and with an urgent need to find a husband in four days, she meets Tom on the plane on the way to Italy. And that is where their story begins.


Annie loves to hear from readers at: annieseaton26@gmail.com

1 comment:

ELF said...

I think it's great to be a combination of pantser and plotter...you can let your characters guide you to a certain extent yet keep things logical, lol.