My Sizzling Summer Nights

I love the JustRomance.me blog hops. It’s a great way to meet new readers and authors. This summer's hop is called Sizzling Summer Nights and we’re to interpret the theme however we want to. I thought I’d share what I’m working on this summer on those sizzling summer nights.

Going to The Dark Side

I actually started book #4 some time ago, but the storyline was pretty dark and I decided to work on a different piece while I left #4 to cool a bit. Book #3 is now in the hands of the publisher. That’s the one with the working title of Smuggler’s Paradise although I’m sure that will change. (I’m horrible at naming books. Quick Tip – Never give an English-language book a French title like Le Chevalier. D’oh!)

Willing Love

Update: Book 3 has been released under the title Willing Love. You can find it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, The Wild Rose Press and probably other great outlets as well.

I’m glad I set book #4 aside. It’s still dark, but somehow it seemed easier to write after taking a bit of a breather.

So what’s so different about this book? Glad you asked.

Le Chevalier

Those of you who’ve been to my blog before know I love history. My first three novels are set during the American Revolution or the events leading up to it. I decided to set this current story during the French Revolution.

That, right there, should give you some indication of why the storyline gets a bit dark. The American and French Revolutions are often called sister revolutions. Maybe. But if so, the French Revolution must be the American Revolution’s evil twin. Read my posts here, here and here for a few examples of the differences. 

Book #4…Sorry I keep referring to it by number, but I don’t even have a working title I really like even though I’m halfway through the manuscript. Anyway, Book #4 starts out with my heroine waiting her turn at the guillotine. She’s happy to die just so long as she can watch her miserable swine of a husband die first.  (I told you it was dark.) Of course, the hero rescues her, but it takes the heroine several chapters to forgive him for doing so. 

Neil and Christiana Make a Comeback

Caution to the Wind

This is the first time I’ve ever used recurring characters. Neil Blakely is Amanda’s younger brother in Caution to the Wind. Christiana Saint-Ange is Mont Trignon’s youngest sister from Le Chevalier. The story takes place in 1793, during the height of the Reign of Terror, so Neil is twenty-six and Christiana’s turned thirty. 

Both of these characters have really come to life on the page and the chemistry between them has come fairly easily. That’s always a good sign.

Christiana’s been a bit harder to write than Neil. She’s such a wounded soul, yet I wanted her to keep that sense of grace she had in LeChevalier. She’s also French aristocracy and has every reason to hate the Jacobins, but I didn’t want to make her such a cookie-cutter character. She deserves to be complex. Actually she’s demanding it.

Christiana’s also the oldest heroine I’ve ever written, but that’s been refreshing. It can be tough to write a believable seventeen- or eighteen-year-old who isn’t a tad annoying. On the other hand, terribly worldly eighteen-year-olds aren’t all that believable. But a thirty-year-old? Now that has possibilities.

I’m really looking forward to finishing this piece so I can discover how it ends. Not that I don’t have it mapped out, but you know how characters are. They don’t always follow the plan.

MJ