Monday 18 July 2016

Research and Inspiration




with guest blogger Kelly Hunter!



If you've been a romance writer or reader for any length of time, I guarantee you've experienced some of the charming ways people dismiss our genre. Romance novels--they are all the same. If you've read one, you've read them all. Then there's my personal favourite: Don't you just change the names?

I smile whenever someone voices that last one. I smile with all the demented menace of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Because, no. I don't just change the names. I don't know any romance author who does.


It's true that a Happy Ending defines the romance genre. If I don't deliver a happily ever after, it's not a romance. With that one requirement in mind, I then go out of my way to make story settings, characters and plots unique.



PRB comes to Deadwood



And by 'go out of my way', I mean that if I agree to collaborate with a bunch of my favourite authors on a series of bull rider stories, set in America, I am quite likely to end up at a PBR rodeo in Deadwood, South Dakota in the name of research. I'm very dedicated!



It's the internet age and we can do a lot of online research about place, occupations, health issues, whatever. We can email or interview people and harvest their experiences. But when I'm after the tiniest of details...the ones that whisper of a deeper understanding of place and culture, of brotherhood, sisterhood, of pain and trial and circumstance...I have to get down and dirty in it.


Bull Rider at Deadwood








How else will I know that so many of these bull riders are babies (either that or I'm getting really, really old)? How else do I understand the terrors of a suicide grip and getting hooked up in a bull--and the heart-stopping, breathless wait for rider and bull to part that goes with it? How else do I get a feel for sunset over the Black Hills or the hot suck of a sticky summer night?



Be still my ovaries









If I don't go more than once, how do I know that the banter of the rodeo announcers is the same every night and rarely deviates from the script? How can I comprehend the distances these guys drive from week to week if I don't take a run at it myself?











The things we writers do in service to story. Do I just change the names? Pah!

Now that the research is done and inspiration has been found, comes the hard part. Collaborating with the rest of the authors in the series and doing my best to write a unique and compelling love story. I also guarantee it's going to take me longer than five minutes (another myth busted! Who knew?).








Tule Publishing Group's Bull Rider series won't be out for quite some time, but we're working on it. Meanwhile the Australian Bestseller Box Set for 99c will give you a taste of some of the authors writing for the series.

https://www.amazon.com.au/Australian-Bestseller-Box-Set-ebook/dp/B01H4AD8TI








Comments! I love them. Writers, what's some of the strangest research you've ever done in service to story? Readers, what are some of your favourite story places writers have taken you to?



I love to love...my children. There's no stopping it. It's my never-ending story.

I love to laugh...until I'm stupid with it. It doesn't happen very often but when it does I can't stop. And then I can't look at anyone for fear of starting up again.

I love to learn...by glomming Netflix television series. It's Story. I'm learning. And there's popcorn...

Thank you, Breathless in the Bush, for having me.


If you'd like to learn more about Kelly and her stories, please visit her website

http://www.kellyhunter.net/

or join her newsletter

http://www.kellyhunter.net/newsletter-sign-up/

There's a free rural romance, A Wish for Adam Kincaid (formerly Wish) on sign-up.

You can also connect via Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kelly.hunter.73307

and Twitter https://twitter.com/kellyhunterova?lang=en


19 comments:

  1. Thank you for a really interesting post, Kelly. I like to read about places as different as possible from Sydney, where I live. Being from the city, I find Central America, Outback Australia, and countries in Europe particularly fascinating.

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  2. New-to-me places are always fun to read about. I remember a Liz fielding (fav category author) setting one of her stories in a treehouse in Africa (I want to say South Africa or Zimbabwe but I'm not sure). Hero had a broken leg and spent a lot of time roaring from his bed. Very wounded lion. Loved that story!

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  3. Hi Kelly. Loved reading about how you incorporate your research into your stories. Very hands-on, which then adds that realistic touch to fiction and makes readers feel like they are right there in the stories. And you've piqued my interest in bull riding now. Would love to see it myself one day!

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    1. It's an emotionally charged rollercoaster to watch, Enisa. Not everyone's cuppa. ps. The PBR Australian Championship is on in Sydney this weekend. Sat 23rd at Olympic park.

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    2. Ha. Wish I'd known earlier. :)

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  4. Hi Kelly! Your Bull Riders collaboration series sounds great. Looking forward to having a read.
    I did a lot of internet research on the Kimberley area and on pearl farms before I wrote The Farmer's Perfect Match, but nothing brings home the atmosphere like actually visiting those places. You get a whole new perspective on places-the unique sights, sounds and smells-when you experience them for yourself, and I know it brought a new level of reality to my book after I'd spent some time around Broome.

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    1. I'd love to visit a pearl farm one day, Marilyn. And yes to the atmospheric details that come of writing about places you've been. Who was the pearl farmer in your story? Hero or heroine? For some reason I have an old film memory of Sophia Loren emerging from the ocean after having been diving for something. Probably pearls. Huge goddess moment!

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  5. Hi Kelly! Love the story of your bull rider research. I love to read stories that are set far, far away from Sydney, Australia. The saying 'everything I know I learnt from a romance novel' could be said of me! It could be the other side of Australia - that's certainly far, far away - or overseas. Love them all. But I also love reading locally set romances. I get that little lovely shock of recognition of the 'I've been there!'

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    1. As a reader, I love that shock of 'I know this place'. As for the mystery of the faraway places, don't they just grab you. I've always wanted to go to Manderley. Why? Rebecca: Last night I dreamed of Manderley again...

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  6. Loved seeing the photos from Deadwood as I have some of the very same ones; the little kid interacting with the pick-up man (who I recently learned is my husband's cousin's son. Did not know that at the time.); the young bull riding champion being introduced the second night. And yes, I tune out the announcers' banter. Also interesting to read what you were 'looking for' when you attended; details I had not thought about as a rodeo junkie. I will be very interested in reading the bull riders series when it finally hits print. Will you be attending the PBR in Sydney?

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    1. Coleen, I never know what I'm looking for when I go somewhere. Everything! I want to experience everything and then be able to remember specific sounds, sights, sensory stuff as I'm writing. Yes, I'll be at the PBR in Sydney, along with Aussie author Amy Andrews (who will also write a story for the series). I'm pretty sure I'll be there clocking differences and similarities with its US counterparts.

      The cowboys were so good with the kids, I thought.

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  7. Hi Kelly, thanks for your post. I always like a happy ever after ending in any type of book - not just romance. I have never been to a rodeo but would love to go, it looks like fun... and what a way to research. Can't complain about that. My books are based in Sydney so I haven't had to go too far for research as yet but I look forward to exploring some of Australia's outback one day.

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    1. We definitely can't complain when research is fun. Although I can probably give it a whirl...

      Too distracting, can be never-ending, makes the tax man sigh, makes it hard to settle down and write the necessary words ... I'm guilty of a couple of these.

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  8. Hi, Kelly!
    First let me say...LOVE YOUR WORK!
    Second...my brother is an ex-bull rider so I'm really looking forward to your upcoming PBR inspired romance!
    Third...the weirdest (and most difficult) things I've researched for my romance set in 10th C Wales are: did 9th C Welsh people wear underpants (yes...and no), what form of birth control was used (not a discussion for this blog), and what were the inheritance laws (youngest boys inherited the lot)?

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    1. Thanks, Dee, for the lovely compliment. Second, a former bull rider for a brother? Wow! How come I don't have one of those? (I have none).

      I'm in awe of any kind of historical research and the stories that come of it. Is your Wales story finished? Title?

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    2. Yeah...I have one brother and he chose to be a cowboy...probably because he needed to get away from his six sisters! LOL
      My Wales story, Believe in Fairy Tales, is finished but as yet unpublished. Thank you for asking. I won the Ripping Start last year (2015) and finalled in the VP (2015) with it.

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    3. Congratulations on the win and finalist spot for the story. Sounds great.

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  9. Thank you Kelly for this uplifting post. I am so proud of what I write but sometimes we have to wear the Jack Nicholson smile - and that's kinda sad. i write Regency historicals so there is also lots of research and woe-be-tied if you get something wrong. I can't wait for my next research trip to the UK.

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