Idea Sparks - Romance Writers Weekly - #lovechatwrite

​This week’s Blog Hop topic is:

Name something that inspires your writing—real life, other books, a setting, dialogue you overhear, etc.

I am most inspired by meet-cutes. In romance, a meet-cute is the (usually awkward) moment that sparks the romance between the main characters. If they’ve known each other for a while, it’s the instant things change between them. If they are strangers, it’s usually their first time encounter .

I love hearing how real people met their significant others. Every story has something unique and special about it, and I want to bring that reality into my fiction.

For me, a book is launched when I have that opening scene settled in my mind. Here are a few examples that really stick out for me in my own work.

Strictly by the Book: the heroine falls into a swimming pool. She is unnecessarily rescued by the hero’s brother.

Too Good for Words: the hero brings the heroine’s son home in the middle of the night after the boy vandalizes the hero’s motorcycle shop.

Reserved for You: the heroine’s date proposes a threesome and she storms out of the hero’s restaurant.

The Promise of Frost: The hero’s young son climbs a tree in the heroine’s back yard trying to rescue his kitten.

What inspires you? What feeds your creativity? I’d love to hear about it. Then hop over to PG Forte to discover what inspires her!

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Available for Preorder! Coming April 8.
Amazon-Kobo-Nook-Apple
Only $2.99!

SUSPECT ATTRACTION
A steamy, later-in-life contemporary romance mystery
 
A silver-haired charmer with a shameful secret. A broken-hearted matchmaker with a guilty burden. And a bewildering disappearance that could wrench them apart.
 
Regina Blynde knows Seth Updike is trouble the minute he strides into Blynde Dating Agency. That’s trouble with a capital T—tantalizing, tasty, and tempting.
 
Resolved never to risk loving someone only to lose them again, Ginnie keeps things strictly professional and matches him with a wealthy widow.
 
Who promptly goes missing.
 
Ginnie’s search for the truth makes it impossible to avoid Seth. And when he sets out to woo her, she finds him too hard to resist.
 
But as the evidence mounts up and mysterious circumstances multiply, Ginnie must face a shocking fact—she’s falling in love with the prime suspect.
 
(Ginnie 54, Seth 51)

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Coming Soon!
Que Será, Syrah

​They may be keeping secrets and telling lies, but a little white wine never hurt anyone.​
 
Allegra
 
It’s not every day that you inherit one-third of a winery. I should be on top of the world, floating on Cloud Wine, as they say. Instead, don’t you just know it? I’m about to make one of the biggest mistakes of my life. And that’s saying something. My family has always viewed me as something of a screw-up, not always fairly. But in this case? They’re not only dead right about me messing things up; they don’t even know the half of it. Yet.
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Complicating my quest to redeem myself, earn my sisters’ respect, and help them turn our winery into a straight fire success, is my low-key relationship with Sheriff’s Deputy Clay Romero. Sure, there are risks involved in sleeping with the enemy, but ‘what’s meant to be will find a way,’ right? And whether Clay believes it or not, I know we’re fated. With a capital F.
 
Clay
 
We’re Capital F somethin’ all right; but I don’t think it’s fate. Ever since Legs (AKA Allegra Martinelli) blew back into town, I’ve been flirting with disaster. Literally. I doubt that woman’s ever met a rule that she didn’t want to at least bend. And, as luck would have it, it’s my job to try and stop her. I love my job, and I think I love her. But there’s not enough wine in Napa to convince me that I’ll be able to hang on to them both.
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Legs keeps likening us to Romeo and Juliet.  And as I keep trying to remind her; that kind of story tends not to end well. I’m sure there are exceptions, but are we gonna be one of them? I guess we’ll find out.