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.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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 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
