After a Drop Dead Diva marathon, the last episode I watched featured this song and needless to say, I instantly fell in love so I quickly downloaded it, added it every cd in my car and listened to it endlessly.
One morning while on my way to work, I was daydreaming in the car as I listened to this song. And like they normally do, the idea started to grow. What is the song about? I asked myself, And how the heck does it relate to a story plot?
“When you come back I’ll be alright. On your own again, back to where it all began…”
What the hell did that mean?
I listened to the gears in my head grind, the story unfolding right before my eyes. A woman, sad, recently divorced heading back to her hometown where something horrible happened.
At first, she was a fat kid who got picked on, but that was just lame. It had to be worse, why didn’t she want to go back home?
Then it came to me, and it wasn’t pretty. Suddenly I didn’t blame her for not wanting to go back home. And with that, the direction of the story changed.
It went from a woman who left home ten years ago and was now suddenly forced to go back, and oh check out the hot neighbor who she falls in love with – a typical love story, to something darker, more deadly than that.
I can’t say I’m surprised with the turns that have come my way. Before Ties, I tried to write something ala James Patterson and failed miserably. Well, not that I failed, more like I gave up before I even gave myself the chance to start. The previous story bled into Ties and turned it into a suspense story, sort of Nora Roberts’ Northern Lights or Carolina Moon….or something like that.
And believe it or not, it's kind of working for me. I love to write love stories, they're as easy to write as breathing, and there's something about a good love story...I don't know, they make you feel something - especially if they're well written. Like The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, Dear John, The Notebook, Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas...they leave you feeling....well, depending on the novel, they leave you feeling empty or whole or happy or downright miserable. Yeah, you can write a crappy love story, but really, generally they are easy.
Writing suspense mixed with the right amount of romance is hard...it doesn't come as naturally to me. Maybe it’s a sign that it’s not the genre I should be writing, but the fact that I have to work for it makes the fact that it’s so well received that much better. The fact that people are enjoying it so much that they are writing reviews, spreading the word about the story makes me giddy. It's nice to know that the struggle has not been in vain.
Which brings me to my point; one of my readers was/is a guest reviewer on a site that does recommendations, and she reviewed and recommended The Ties that Bind. I’ve read the review like six times already, for reals, because I'm like that stunned.
I've never had something like this happen before. I've had stories nominated for awards (I've never won, but I came in third place once) and for a while I had only a small following of about eleven readers. Ties has a huge following, probably the largest following of any of my stories, I've written 11 chapters and already have over 200 reviews. That’s a third of what my other eight stories have total and they’re completed.
Anyway, I think it's kind of awesome. Thanks to KM3 for such a sweet review. Glad you like it and I hope you keep reading...lol, the lemon is coming, and it's going to be epic...kinda like closet sex...yeah, you know what I mean. :)
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