Dear Friends,
Being surrounded by books is a happy state for me. I love it! Most of my books are in storage in another state with all of my major possessions. I miss the many books that are in storage. (Another story for another day.)
You may remember that I have a guest blogger, Jane Rohde, in today’s blog. Her background is very different from mine, but we’re both writing steamy romance. We’re also jointly, with a publisher friend of hers, sponsoring a short story contest, “Here Come the Brides.”
The contest will be free to enter and the submission deadline is April 1st. If you’d like to enter the contest, you’ll want to write 6,000 to 10,000 words on the “Here Comes the Bride” theme. The short story can take place in any era or be any version of a romance as long as there’s a bride or wedding in the story.
I’ll have more details for the next blog. Please let me know if you’re considering writing a short story for the contest. (Shelley@shelleysommers.com) I’ll send you the rules and details. There’s no monetary prize, but we’ll be promoting the winners extensively. START WRITING! GOOD LUCK!
(And I’ll be an editor for the contest, so that’s why I’ll be surrounded by books and writing!)
Be well!
Warmest regards,
Shelley Sommers
Romance Author
ShelleySommers.com
Shelley@shelleysommers.com
Where Do My Stories Come From?
By Jane Rohde
My ideas for stories come from everywhere: maybe some gossip I heard, or something I read on the internet.
I was fascinated about evidence of humans traveling on the ice between Asia and Alaska. or modern folks building a medieval castle in France, using only tools available in the middle ages.
The first book I wrote, The Longhorn Affair, was inspired by an experience I had as a teenager. My father was a member of the Texas Historical Society. He would sometimes volunteer to examine libraries people wished to donate to the State.
Sometimes I would accompany him because I love being around old books. Some of those volumes had been in a family for generations. I especially enjoy diaries from the past. They are rich with the little details of life that are often forgotten.
On one of those visits, I found a diary from the 1930s. Written by a woman, it was full of gossip and details of the goings-on in her small rural town. Some of the entries concerned a neighbor woman who had inherited a cattle ranch from her father.
She was in her twenties and unmarried, which created a good bit of local speculation about whom she would marry and thus manage the ranch for her. She grew up on that ranch and felt she knew enough about raising cattle to run it.
Refusing the several marriage proposals she received, she elected to advertise in some of the larger city newspapers for a ranch manager.
When a couple of her rejected suitors heard this, they decided she needed a husband instead of a manager and cooked up a plot with the local telegraph operator to change the ad to say “husband wanted” in place of “ranch manager wanted.”
The last entry I read said a man answering the ad was expected to arrive in a few days’ time.
My father (at the time, I thought he was being unreasonable) refused to let me take the diary home so I never knew how the situation worked out. That story percolated in my mind for years, and when I decided to write a novel, it became a contemporary romance about a ranch heiress.
I have written several books, and the inspiration for all of them comes from things I have seen, heard, or experienced.
The Neighborhood Kids Watch (soon to be released) is filled with antics of children I have known along with a healthy dose of my own imagination.
The idea comes to me first. Then if there is a story to be told, the characters begin talking to me and telling me their story.
When characters talk to me, I literally hear them in my head, and I simply write down their words. my characters speak like people I have heard: ranchers, academics, students, businessmen and women, even riders at hunter/jumper horse shows. They are from places I have lived. I don’t have to think about how to make them sound authentic.
I am currently writing about a woman whose natural form is a centaur, although she can appear as a human woman if she chooses. Her story is pure fantasy, but when she speaks to me, her voice is as real as any human character.
Creating a novel is quite different from writing an essay, research paper, or a memoir. Those are things in which I express my own thoughts. In a novel, I’m not telling the story in my words; The characters tell it in their words. The trick is to listen.
Here’s more about Jane Rohde:
I’ve been telling stories with happy endings most of my life. Pre-kindergarten (we did not have a TV back then), my grandmother read Madge Bigham’s lovely tale, Sonny Elephant, to me over and over.
I loved the story, still do, but I just didn’t like the ending. (Three-year-olds are perverse creatures.) My grandmother told me we could tell the story any way we liked, so each time she read the book, she would stop at the last chapter, and I would make up an ending I liked better.
That was the start of my literary career. But hardly the end.
My path has included a degree in mathematics and English. I stopped just short of a master’s in computer science to have my daughter. I have worked as a programmer, a technical writer, a forensic accountant, a seamstress (which paid for my horse’s board while I was in college), an office manager, a horse trainer, riding instructor, and stable owner, and now I have become an author─possibly my greatest adventure yet.
Nowadays, I live with my husband in Fernandina Beach, Florida, where I get to watch the waves and feel the sand with my feet every day. But I consider myself a Texas girl. As a kid in Texas, and I was lucky enough to keep my horse on a working ranch. When I grew up, I owned a stable, and have trained horses and taught riding most of my life. I got to indulge my fascination with horses and ranch life when I wrote THE LONGHORN AFFAIR.
You can contact me at janerohdeauthor@gmail.com
My facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/janerohdeauthor
My blog is janerohde.com
Hope you enjoyed this blog!
I always enjoy meeting new people and I hope you enjoyed meeting Jane!
If you’re looking for a book to keep you warm on a rainy, cold, or snowy day, my newest book, A Vision of Home, will keep you warm!
Louisa and her new husband, Will, are on their honeymoon. They’re trying to figure out the rest of their lives, but especially where they’re going to live so they can be together. He’s supposed to be working at the family vineyard eight hours away from where she’ll be starting school in a couple month.
Also, Louisa’s been experiencing visions and some of them are coming true! What does this mean for their future?
You can find A Vision of Home on major booksellers. If you haven’t read the ebooks yet, they’re also available on most major booksellers.
Thank you for reading!
Shelley Sommers