Take a Look Behind the Scenes

Hello, fellow romance readers!

Today I want to take you behind the scenes to show you what goes into writing one of my books. I hope you’ll read along and perhaps learn something new. Be sure to let me know in the comments down below if this is the kind of content you’d like to see in the future!

Choosing my main characters

I’ve never had a hard time choosing who my main characters will be because most of them have already shown up in previous books and are refusing to shut up until I write their story. One example is Nash who first appeared in the third Black Raiders book and I instantly knew he’d need a story (and a sexy biker) and from that spawned the Salvation Kings series.

Choosing names is not always easy but fortunately, I have Google! Sometimes I’m just looking through lists of names and I’ll stumble over one I like, while other times I’m looking for a specific meaning behind a name. Ares comes to mind immediately. I knew he’d need a name worthy of the god of war himself. Or Kaz which means destroyer of peace (his dads would very much agree). Another is Auggie’s road name, Bandit. When I was choosing that name and came upon the Swedish (like Auggie) radio Bandit Rock, I knew instantly that Bandit had to be Auggie’s road name. Oh, and yes, Bandit Rock is a real radio station that Auggie also listens to in his book!

Plans? What plans?

Once I have the names and characters down, the writing starts. I always have an idea of where a certain book should go but I’m a pantser through and through (I really do write by the seat of my pants). I may start out with a plan, but once I’m writing, the boys take over and do whatever they want. Whoever said that their books are merely the incident report of what their characters get up to is so right! I so often think this is where I’m going with this story and then my boys just go ‘Sike, you thought,’ and throw me for a loop. I’m not complaining (much) because usually where they take me is exactly where the story needs to go.

When starting a series (or any book for that matter), I always write down all my characters, planned couples, and a short description of what I think their stories will entail. Now, will that change along the way? Most likely. When I was preparing for the Disciples series, I originally had Diesel and Sawyer together (I’m shuddering just thinking about it now…), then Chris appeared in Ares and well, you probably know how that went down, and if not, you can get to know the boys in the King’s Disciples series.

The Programs I Use

When I write I use a few different programs and resources. I thought I would share them here with you. I have always written in Word and I just love that program. I’ve tried others over the years (Scrivener, Atticus, and Google Docs come to mind) and I very quickly returned to Word.

Grammarly is a program I use to catch as many of my misspellings and mistakes as possible. Though some of Grammarly’s suggestions are way off (no, I didn’t mean duck, Grammarly!) it’s still a nice program to have. It just keeps my writing neater!

Planning out my word count for each book is a must for me and for that I use Pacemaker. I’ve been an avid user of Pacemaker for over five years now and I truly enjoy seeing my days and weeks planned out, and even more so when I enter my word count and get a lovely little fireworks show when I’m done.

Thank you for reading this post! I had a blast writing about my process and what’s going on behind the scenes and hope that it gave you a little more insight into my work.

If you have any comments or questions, please share your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you!