Could This Really Happen?
I’m 46 years old, and I can honestly say that my life has been stranger than a fictional story could ever tell—but it reads more like a horror story in places, so I’ll spare you the gory details. Don’t get me wrong—I have a great life, too, and appreciate the fact that the Lord has seen me through some very difficult circumstances that helped to shape me into the person I am today.
That being said, as an avid reader of romance before I ever wrote my first novel, I remember coming to the end of a book several times and thinking, That was a great story, but it never would’ve happened in real life. And it irked me that a writer would have the audacity to exaggerate so much, pushing what I felt was too far beyond the bounds of what could logically occur in real life.
This way of thinking was tempered when I became a writer. After being tutored by some highly successful authors, I realized that fiction needs to strike a balance between realism and fantasy—where the magic is less about abracadabra and more about the sparkles illuminating the characters. Believability is important for sure, but a reader also wants to escape reality and be immersed in a fairy tale for a while. I mean, what reader of romance doesn’t wait in breathless anticipation for the hero and heroine to kiss for the first time?
So when my heroine, Ariana Stover, finally meets her father again after being separated from him for almost twenty years, having thought he was dead, or another heroine, Emma Hutchins, runs off to help a U.S. Marshal apprehend a duo of wanted thieves, I look at these ideas and realize they could have actually happened, but if so, they were very uncommon experiences for young women living in the 1880s indeed. Another experienced writer, Regency author Sarah Eden, taught in a writing conference I attended a few years ago that if a writer of historical fiction asks her hero or heroine to break one of the conventions of society, the writer needs to make sure there’s a good reason for the character to do so. Along with the need for a good reason, the character needs to suffer the natural consequences later on for his or her decision.
I kept these nuggets of wisdom in mind as I crafted the plot of my Brides of Hope Hollow romance, Hope in Her Heart. The previous book, On the Wings of Hope, leaves Emma Hutchins caught in a bank during a robbery. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—U.S. Marshal Patrick Carter also happens to be in the bank when the robbers storm inside. While Emma and Patrick come through the experience okay, they each have their reasons for chasing after the robbers once they leave the bank. (He, of course, being a lawman, needs to bring the criminals to justice, and she needs to recover her stolen necklace, which is a family heirloom.) I knew the bulk of this book would be spent with Emma and Patrick pursuing their quarries, and I needed to create ways they could spend enough time together to fall in love but still be watched over by chaperones for part of the time as well. Secondary characters to the rescue!
Or those secondary characters might be the foil to a larger scheme that Emma and Patrick need to uncover. And will they suffer the consequences of their decisions? You betcha! But in the process, they might just discover that the other is a prince and princess in disguise.
Today I’m offering signed paperback copies of On the Wings of Hope and Hope in Her Heart to a randomly chosen winner.
To enter the contest, comment with a fictional incident that gave you a jolt when you first read it, thinking it could never happen in real life, and then to your surprise, it did happen. Or comment with an incident you’ve seen or read about that actually happened and it made you think it would make a good fictional piece.
This is where the idea originated for Ariana’s father to come back into her life after being absent for so many years. I read an article about a Holocaust victim who thought his wife had died, and then was miraculously reunited with her many years later. Truly, real life can be, and often is, stranger than fiction. More importantly, the Lord is the author and finisher of our faith and can work miracles that our finite brains could never imagine!
