My guest is romance author, Elizabeth Michels. Her topic today is using bits of life and experiences in our writing.
First of all, thank you for having me here to celebrate
the release of Must Love Dukes. I feel
as if I've been wandering aimlessly toward this moment for years and I’m happy
to share it with you! Why was I wandering aimlessly? Let me explain… There are little shards of my life, people I've
met, experiences I've encountered sprinkled throughout this book, and really
any book I write. I started writing
during nap times just after I had my little boy. Before that, I was a small business owner sentenced to bed rest
during pregnancy and given piles of romance novels for company—not too shabby a
sentence, right? *grins* My point is that
I haven’t always been a writer, but I have always been a reader and an observer
of life. And often that surrounding
life shows up in the fiction I write.
There
is one scene in Must Love Dukes that practically wrote itself after
visiting my in-laws for the weekend. It
had been a difficult week for various reasons I won’t get into here and to
compensate for the unfortunate turn of events my mother-in-law decided to fuss
over my husband and me while we were crawling into bed at night. It was absurd. I remember her piling more and more and more blankets on us while
we looked at each other, shaking our heads as we wondered what was
happening. She claimed that the guest
bedroom was drafty and we were cold—even though we were comfortable. She would leave the room and then minutes
later return with another layer of blankets...
In
Must Love Dukes this turned into Devon’s mother calling for food to be
brought in and checking the windows for drafts when she knew her son was in
emotional turmoil. He is protesting
while she flits around the room in a frenzy of activity, calling in maids as
she attempts to fix things that aren’t broken because she can’t fix what is
truly wrong in her son’s life. Sound
familiar?
And
then sometimes inspiration is more abstract and yet still based in daily life
all the same. At the heart of Must
Love Dukes is Lily’s struggle to hold on to her family heirlooms while her
brothers seek to auction off everything to the highest bidder—including
her. Disagreements over inheritance
seem to plague every family at one time or another, causing rifts between
siblings, driving proper ladies into a life of crime. Alright, so maybe not all ladies at war with their brothers turn
to thievery to solve their problems, but Lily does just that. Only unlike real life inheritance battles,
Lily’s journey leads her into peril when she steals from the wrong man—the Mad
Duke of Thornwood.
Many
of the family dynamics I enjoy writing about in my books occur today just as
frequently as they did in Regency England.
Must Love Dukes does have twirling ball gowns and a swoon-worthy
mad duke bent on revenge, but it also has people trying to navigate the path to
happiness and love in life. Finding
one’s way down this path often requires sacrifice, hard decisions, and
occasionally, it requires setting hunting dogs on unwanted suitors in a
ballroom…Oh, you’ve never been in that situation? Well, maybe not everything in my stories is based in the life I
see around me, but I think that’s the enchanting part of reading a book—never
knowing what adventure will be on the next page.
- What inspires you in your daily life?
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The Mad Duke
leaned in closer, his lips gently brushing her ear, and whispered, "I dare
you."
She Can't
Resist the Dare…
Lillian
Phillips could not imagine how her quiet, simple life had come to this.
Blackmailed by the Mad Duke of Thornwood into accepting one wild dare after
another...all because of a pocket watch. Desperate to recover her beloved
father's pawned timepiece, Lily did something reckless and dangerous and
delicious—something that led to a night she'd never forget.
He has a
Reputation for Scandal…
When Devon Grey, Duke of Thornwood, runs into a
mesmerizing, intoxicating, thieving woman who literally stole from his
bedchamber—with his new pocket watch—Devon plots his revenge. If the daring
wench likes to play games, he's happy to oblige. After all, what's the ruse of
being the Mad Duke if you can't have some fun? But the last laugh might just be
on him...
Elizabeth
Michels grew up on a Christmas tree farm in rural South Carolina. After
tip-toeing her way through school with her focus on ballet steps and her nose
in a book, she met a boy and followed him a thousand miles away from home to
Kansas City, Missouri, before settling down in North Carolina. She attended
Park University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in Interior
Design. Elizabeth is a lover of happily-ever-afters; she invites you to read
her stories, get lost, and enjoy. For more information, please visit http://www.elizabethmichels.com/
and http://www.badgirlzwrite.com/.
