Hello, everyone.

A SOLDIER COMES HOMEI’m so pleased to be a part of the Romance Book Club blog today. My newest release, A Soldier Comes Home should be showing up in stores any day now. This is the story of Captain Ray Hughes, whose wife leaves him while he’s fighting in Iraq. He comes home to an empty house and a three-year old son he scarcely knows and has to pick up the pieces of his life as a single dad. He meets Chrissie Evans, a young widow whose husband died early in the war, and the two fall in love. But Ray isn’t sure he can trust a woman again, and Chrissie is afraid to marry another soldier.

Probably the most common question writers get asked is “Where do you get your ideas?” I’m as curious as the next person about this. When I read a good book, I always wonder “How did the writer ever come up with this story?”

The inspiration for A Soldier Comes Home was a series of newspaper articles that ran in the Rocky Mountain News about our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the articles was about soldiers who received “Dear John” letters while they were overseas. They came home to no one and in some cases, nothing. The story tore at my heart. I wanted to make things come out better for those soldiers. I couldn’t do that in real life, but I could create a happier ending in a story.

Another article was about war widows, many of them young and not married very long. That article helped me create the character of Chrissie. A third article was about Native American soldiers from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. That was the springboard for a major subplot in the book.

I’ve heard of writers whose stories were inspired by dreams. Some authors write about things they really happened to them or to friends or family. Music, conversations and movies have also inspired stories for me. Of course, the inspiration is merely the spark that gets things going. The real challenge is taking that germ of an idea and fashioning it into a full-blown story. One thing I find helpful in fleshing out stories is to focus on creating realistic, three-dimensional characters. I try hard to create people who act the way I would act or people I know would act. People who have real emotions. Characters who are flawed, with both good and bad aspects of their personalities. For instance, in A Soldier Comes Home, Chrissie doesn’t like change. She’s so resistant to change it doesn’t hold her back. Ray, for good reason perhaps, only sees the bad side of his ex-wife. Facing up to the ways in which he contributed to his marriage’s demise is a real turning point for him, and it opens up a path for he and Chrissie to have a better relationship.

Even after more than 30 books, I find everyone is different — the inspiration comes from a different place and the process of creation takes a different path. I think that’s what keeps me coming back, book after book. It never gets boring. I’m always waiting to see how things unfold.

So, that’s my take on inspiration. Do any of you have questions or comments?

Cindy Meyers

http://www.cindymyers.com

Recently I was given an interesting interview question: You are a heroine in one of your novels. Would you rather play the young and innocent virgin, the worldly widow or the seductive, yet secretive courtesan?
Boy, those are some limited choices. Which is one of the reasons I chose to write in a period of more recent history—the turn-of-the-century—so that I could have a wider selection of heroines.

Gigi, the heroine of my debut book, Private Arrangements, is a businesswoman, a mogul, even. Her control over her own fortune is made possible by the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882. For my sophomore book, I turn around 180 degrees, and star a heroine who is a cook—a marvelous cook, but still a servant (it’s a Cinderella story, if you haven’t guessed). My third book, which so far exists only as a conversation between me and my editor, will feature a heroine who is a practicing physician, a character that is not historically possible in the United Kingdom until after 1865.

Other more vague ideas for possible future historical romance heroines include a mathematician, a WWI ambulance driver, and maybe a hack writer of penny dreadfuls (really lurid pulp fiction published in nineteenth century Britain which appeared in installments, each costing a penny).

I like my heroines to be independent. And by that, I mean having an independent source of income. For which they either need to have skills that get paid decent wages or an inheritance. And even when they do have an inheritance and don’t need to work, I still prefer them to have a vocation—must be the influence of all the industrious women in my family, impressing upon me from an early age that idleness is not a good thing.

So back to the question asked of me, whom would I choose to play?

The courtesan is definitely out. I’d make a reluctant and resentful courtesan—the thought of sleeping with men I find unattractive gives me the creeps. And it would be a rare courtesan who didn’t have to take a protector for reasons other than his personal hotness.

The young and innocent virgin is the next to go. All my best friends are non-virgins. I find them more interesting this way.

That leaves the worldly widow by default. Private Arrangements actually has a worldly widow—the heroine’s mother—as a secondary protagonist. She is virtuous, but she is also ambitious and wily. And I can live with that.

So, Dear Readers, if you were to answer the question, which character would you play? Or if you, like me, find the choices too restricting, what character would you invent to play?

--Sherry Thomas, www.SherryThomas.com