Posts Tagged ‘flawed characters’

I HEART Flawed Heroes and Other “Love”ly Goodness…

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014

Another writer said to me the other day that you have to “surrender to your characters.” I couldn’t agree more. And my heroes always insist on being flawed. Broken in the past and not completely being done broken. They don’t want Hollywood versions of what it’s like to have been a bad boy or a wounded hero or a shell of a man trying to believe in love again because he can’t seem to stop completely no matter how hard he’s tried. And did I mention I write romance novels ;o) LOL!

hawt wounded hero

See, actually, I don’t. At least not anymore–not the category-type Harlequin novels that I love and began my career writing. I wish I still could–I had a good thing going there for a while. But these guys won’t stay out of my head. Or other writers’ heads, authors I admire like Susan Elizabeth Phillips and her Gabe Bonner in Dream a Little Dream, or Debra Dixon and her Sully in Bad to the Bone, or Linda Howard and her Webb in Shades of Twilight… This gives me comfort, because these are romance authors, too–the BEST at the game, IMHO. But they write bigger, deeper, gritter stories and characters who can challenge the reader through a full range of not always so comfortable feelings. Then they give us the most amazing happy endings. I LOVE that. Especially during release weeks for new books, when I can see readers responding to how I write flawed heroes, and loving it, too.

angsty wounded hero

I wanted to WRITE  that, back in the day I first started this ride–heroes, heroines, secondary characters and plots and themes that make others feel and experience and embrace the journey on the page (and in their imaginations) the same as these masters do . And now I am, in my own not-quite-romance, not-quite-women’s fiction, bigger book way.

Love on Mimosa Lane is my first full-on Valentine’s story. There’s a strong romantic central theme, there’s even a Valentne’s Dance and an amazing, happy ending where the central characters have just returned with the hero’s little girl from Disney World of all places. BEAUTIFUL, romantic, tough and challenging, hearts and flowers but only after real tears, because I’m also writing real problems and their ups and downs and aftermaths and crashes and then their rebounding and valiant recoveries that pull hearts and lives and relationships and entire communities together.

I HEART flawed heroes and heroines and communities and the amazing things they do to become who the need to be, once and for all, for themselves and the people they love so fiercely. And I’m so very lucky to be able to write these stories now, no holding back, no making them fit what every romance reader would want. These days, on Mimosa Lane, I get to write the whole story and characters that come to me, surrender completely, and bring eager readers along for a ride like they’d never find anywhere else!

scruffy wounded hero hoody

A Love on Mimosa Lane excerpt is below, (more…)