Have you ever read a really great book and asked yourself, "How'd she come up with that fantastic idea?" I know I have. Which is why I thought it'd be fun to ask myself the same question. Here goes:
TAKE ME (in which a full-figured heroine gets the guy in Italy): I had a dream about a woman who had lusted after a guy her whole life, but he'd never noticed her. And then one day, the tables turned completely, and he had to chase her. Once he caught her, while in a very passionate embrace, he said, "You're mine, all mine." MINE, ALL MINE was the working title of the book - and the title I sold with. The dream gave me the theme. From there I had to figure out characters and plot.
TEMPT ME, TASTE ME, TOUCH ME (three women on a road trip to the Wine Country find love with three local men): I had just finished watching the move "Sideways" with my husband when I turned to him and said, "Wouldn't it be interesting to flip that movie on its ear and make it a girl's road trip through the wine country instead?"
RED HOT REUNION (old flames reconnect at their ten year college reunion): I had just gotten the invite to my ten year college reunion. ;-) And I thought, what if two young lovers who parted badly met again where they originally fell in love? Especially if the heroine is desperate to escape her life.
GAME FOR ANYTHING (first Bad Boys of Football book): Swear to god this one came to me in the shower! I suddenly thought, what if an image consultant is brought in to clean up a star quarterback's act - but it turns out they have a secret past?
GAME FOR SEDUCTION (second Bad Boys of Football book): The hero of Game For Anything is quick with the lines, almost flashy. I knew the hero of this book would be his opposite - tall, dark, and handsome, of course, but a man of fewer words. Silent and steady. But who to match him with? And what kind of situation could I put him in that would be both fun and sexy? My sister-in-law, Kathy, came through for me one day when she said "Older hero, younger heroine? What about a Bull Durham story with a love triangle?" Once she said that, the story started to flow like crazy.
WILD HEAT (first book in my Hotshots: Men of Fire romantic suspense series, coming May 2009): My agent and I spend a lot of time on the phone chatting about ideas. For years she's been saying, "What about firefighters?" I started researching different kinds of firefighters and once I found out about Hotshots - elite wildland firefighters who fight the fires everyone else runs from - I knew I had to write about them. They thrive on a adrenaline! They're bound by the brotherhood. As far as I'm concerned, they're the SEALS of firefighting. From there, it wasn't difficult to find the right story about an arson investigator and the lead Hotshot, who also happens to be her primary suspect for a wildfire raging through Lake Tahoe.
EXTREME HEAT (2nd book in the Hotshots series, coming late 2009): I'm writing this one right now. It's got a lot of Man vs. Wild elements.
Some ideas certainly come faster than others. The dream that turned into
TAKE ME, for example, was a much-appreciated gift. Where and how do you get your best ideas?
Please drop by my website and blog at
www.bellaandre.com/blog! And be sure to sign up for my contest (I'm giving away a beautiful necklace and earring set) before the end of the month.
;-)
Bella Andre http://www.bellaandre.com/GAME FOR SEDUCTION ~ out now!
GAME FOR ANYTHING ~ Cosmo's Red Hot Read!
Labels: Bella Andre, contemporary, ideas, Romance
My mother and I don't always see eye to eye, but the one thing we always have agreed on are romance novels. We absolutely love them. One of my main memories as a child was going to the library with my mother every Sunday, where she'd exchange her stack of hardcover romances for a new stack of books. As soon as I was old enough to have run through the Judy Blume books, I made my way over to romances. And was hooked. Little did I know that I would be writing them one day. (And that my mother would be reading them. But that's another article, entirely!)
Like many writers, I took the long way around to becoming an erotic romance author. I graduated from Stanford with an Economics degree in 1994, but really, I knew I was never going to become a management consultant. No, I wanted to be a rock star. So I recorded 4 CDs, played 1,000+ shows throughout North America, had a turn at being a star in Brazil, and then said, "Okay, what's next?" Somewhere along the way when my bank account was looking worse for the wear, I worked as a Director of Marketing for a dot com. No, I didn't get rich, but I did decide that come hell or high water I was going to make a living with creative pursuits. So I wrote two books on the music business, sold them, joined a local writer's group and uttered the words, "I could never write fiction. I can't believe that characters just start having a conversation in people's heads. How weird."
