I have always seen Christmas as the absolute best setting for romance. Even apart from the religious significance of the festival, it is a holiday for family and togetherness and feasting and dancing and children and joy. It is a time in which to dwell upon the hope of peace and goodwill. It is certainly tailor made for a love story. When writing about Christmas, I can be as sentimental as I want as I deal with love and healing, with second chances and an end to loneliness, with surrender to friendship and love, with commitment to marriage and parenthood and happily ever after.

Most of my Christmas novels and novellas have a larger family beyond just the hero and heroine. Christmas stories needs to be filled with people. Most also feature children. Children can teach adults a great deal about love. Many of my stories have a couple with a troubled relationship—a marriage that teeters on the brink of failure,  or a former romance that ended bitterly but needs rekindling, or a marriage that has already fallen over the brink of failure. Or… The possibilities are endless. Some merely feature two lonely souls who have yet to discover each other. But it is always Christmas that brings the lovers together and shows them that they belong together, that there are love and joy to be shared during the season and maintained after it is over and built upon through the rest of their lives.

Christmas is never incidental to my stories. It is never just a convenient setting that could be changed without in any way affecting the developing romance. Christmas becomes almost a character—a central, benevolent force for family and love and happiness and new beginnings. There is no more suitable time of year for a love story if one listens closely enough to hear what at its heart it is saying about the meaning of life—that love is forever present and that really love is all that matters.

To someone who leaves a comment below by Tuesday, October 23, I will send my last advance reading copy of SOMEONE TO TRUST.

Unlike that witch on her broomstick, I believe most us at least try to think before we speak. But I’m sure all of us have experienced the odd time when we did not do so but blurted out the first thing that came into our head—and ended up variously embarrassed, horrified, remorseful, and wishing fervently that we could rewind the clock a few seconds. The trouble with the spoken word, of course, is that it cannot be recalled once it is out there, not when there was someone to hear it anyway. Not one iota of what has been said can be changed, whether it happened five minutes ago or five centuries ago. Time is unforgiving that way.

The written word can be just as fraught with danger for the impulsive and almost as unforgiving in an age of constant texting, twittering, and firing off unconsidered comments on social media sites. Sometimes it is possible to erase or edit something we wrote, even if it is only to correct a typo we notice the moment after we press that “post” button. And perhaps we are more likely when we write than when we speak to think through what we have to say and choose our words carefully before we write them down—though I know those twittering thumbs can be very itchy especially when tempers are running high.

But what about the writer of stories and novels? The written word for us becomes very forgiving indeed. We can change anything—the last sentence we wrote or something that happened seven or twelve chapters ago. Anything we like, in fact. We get to play God. Time means nothing in the creation of a story. We can totally erase something that happened six weeks ago and eight chapters back. Poof! It never happened. We can change our characters’ appearance and name, their words and actions, even their thoughts, as often as we choose. If we don’t like something they say, we can simply erase it and get them to say what we want them to say. After all, we created them. They have no existence outside our imaginations. We are in control. Right?

Hmm. Let’s call a pause right there. The answer is yes, of course. It is also no.

I know I am not unique in this. I have spoken to numerous other writers who agree. We create our characters out of the stuff of our imagination. We provide enough detail to round them out and make them seem like real beings, and we set them loose into our stories. And then what happens? Pretty soon they become separate beings with a will of their own, and they decide what they are going to say and do in the course of their story. This is why I find it impossible to plan a book ahead of time. I never know what is going to come out of my characters’ mouths when they begin to talk. I can set a piece of dialogue in motion and often do so as I love writing it, but then I just sort of sit back and let them have at it. Often the conversation goes off in a direction I had not anticipated. And often what is said changes the course of the story and establishes a theme and a message I did not see coming.

In the book ONLY ENCHANTING, for example (Book 4 of the Survivors’ Club series), I had vaguely planned a relationship between Agnes and Flavian in which seduction and a brief affair and its consequences would lead to a deeper relationship and ultimate marriage. However, when I got them into conversation several times early in the book, each time obligingly placing them in an attractive and very private setting, would they cooperate and get down to the business of having an affair? Not a bit of it! That whole segment of the book ended up with Flavian blurting out a marriage proposal that surprised both him and Agnes—and me. At that point I had to decide whether to erase his words and force him back into a more determined seduction or let him have his way. But letting him have his way totally negated everything I had half planned for the remaining two-thirds of the book. I let him have his way! Sometimes when words have been spoken aloud, even within the pages of a book, they just have to be allowed to stand. The story must be changed accordingly.

In THE NOTORIOUS RAKE, a totally unimportant minor character, a friend of Mary Gregg, the heroine, was cautioning her against encouraging the advances of Lord Edmond Waite, the notorious rake of the title. As part of her argument she asked Mary if she realized he had killed his mother and brother. I swear those words just appeared on the screen before my eyes. I had NO idea she was about to speak them. The words alarmed me to no small degree. I think I felt as Pandora must have felt when she opened that forbidden box. Of course, I was more fortunate than Pandora—all I had to do to put matters right was delete the words and carry on with my story of a perfectly stereotypical rake who needed to be redeemed by the power of love. But I had the feeling that the friend must know something I didn’t, so I kept her words without any idea of how they were going to affect the story. They turned out to be the key to Edmond’s character and to the whole relationship that developed between him and Mary. Lord Edmond Waite is still one of my favorite heroes. Did he kill his mother and brother? Well, yes—and no…

The spoken word, it seems, then, has a power of its own whether the speaker is a real person or a fictional character. When it is spoken in real time it cannot be recalled. When it is spoken in the pages of a book, it can be recalled by the author but perhaps ought not to be. Perhaps in either case we need to ponder where the words came from—and where they are likely to lead. Life is a dynamic, unpredictable, exciting process… But I won’t proceed down that road.

To one person who leaves a comment below by next Monday, October 15,  I will send a signed copy of either the two-in-one edition of  A COUNTERFEIT BETROTHAL/ THE NOTORIOUS RAKE or ONLY ENCHANTING–winner’s choice.

[This week’s winner is YVONNE JONES]

I was asked a while ago who were some of my favorite tortured heroes in books other than my own. It was not easy to narrow down the possibilities, but I eventually came up with Mr. Rochester from Charlotte Bronte’s JANE EYRE; Christian, Duke of Jervaulx from Laura Kinsale’s FLOWERS FROM THE STORM; Darius Lindsay from Grace Burrowes’s DARIUS; Reggie Davenport from Mary Jo Putney’s THE RAKE; Lord Ian Mackenzie from Jennifer Ashley’s THE MADNESS OF IAN MACKENZIE; and Holden Caulfield from THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. And that was just the heroes. The question did not ask about heroines. I have created my fair share of wounded heroes and heroines. Why do I do it? Why do I write so often about men and women who are wounded in body and/or tortured in spirit—especially in books that are billed as feel-good love stories? Why would you read them or other books like them?

To a certain degree woundedness of body and brokenness of spirit are common to the human experience. We all suffer. No one is immune. Because I am an optimist, I am fond of saying that I have lived a blessed life, and indeed I have. Yet I have also known times of intense suffering, either in my own person or involving people near and dear to me—or concerning people worldwide whom I don’t know personally but only through media reports. Often the heart feels as if it must surely break. Sometimes  it is hard to hold off the self-pity and the “why me?” or “the world is doomed” reaction. Now these facts don’t mean we have to read about suffering in the books we choose for relaxation and pleasure. So why DO we do it? Why do I write about suffering? Why do you read about it?

I think maybe it’s because we are all uplifted when we witness or hear of other people enduring pain and rising above it, conquering it, finding themselves capable of extraordinary achievements and acts of kindness and heroism and love, not despite their suffering, but because of it. Think of real life people such as Helen Keller, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, for example, and all the innumerable heroes and heroines, often nameless, who selflessly give of themselves and risk their lives and often lose them in the face of great calamities and tragedies. They are an inspiration to the rest of us. They can raise us above the sufferings that threaten to drag us down into despair.

Such people are irresistible (to me, anyway) as the heroes and heroines of love stories, for love can help them accept what they cannot change and find healing for what they can. It can help bring them the peace of acceptance for what life offers them. The healing and wholeness they find can enable them to trust the love that is offered them and to give love in return. Great love stories are about more than just romance and sexual chemistry and happily-ever-after. They are about two people who have lived long enough to have picked up baggage and to have constructed layers of armor and masks behind which they hide. They are about two people who at the start of a story are not ready or whole enough in themselves to take on the great risk of loving their way through life regardless of what the future may have in store for them. As a writer I love taking two such characters and showing the healing process, which must be both personal and shared. I love to take them to the point at which they trust love—trust that they are good enough to give it and worthy enough to receive it. I like to run them through the mill so that the happy ending can be all the more satisfying and believable. And I want readers to feel that yes, love works and suffering for the most part can be overcome.

In my book ONLY BELOVED, the final book in the Survivors’ Club series, George, Duke of Stanbrook, is a sad character. His only son was killed in the Napoleonic Wars and his wife committed suicide soon after. Since then he has devoted many years to helping severely wounded officers heal and recuperate on his large country estate. The stories of six of those people are told in the other books of the series. George is quiet and kindly and always ready to listen to other people’s sufferings. But deep inside is the raw wound of a far deeper torment than any of his friends suspect. Dora Debbins, whom he marries early in the book, saw the dreams of her young womanhood fade when her mother ran away from home with a lover, leaving Dora to bring up her much younger sister. After that sister married one of the other Survivors (in ONLY ENCHANTING), Dora was left alone, quiet and cheerful, seemingly content with her lot as an aging spinster giving music lessons in a country village but in reality deeply wounded. The marriage of the duke and Dora promises a placid sort of contentment to both. But the real suffering they hold deep and try to hide from each other must be confronted and dealt with if they are to know the full glory of love. In the course of the book I give them no choice, poor things!

As a reader, which would you prefer? To read about the placid contentment or to tackle the woundedness and the healing and the real, passionate love story to which it gives rise? To one person who leaves a comment below by Thursday, September 27, I will send a signed copy of ONLY BELOVED.

Perhaps that is partly because I really can’t plan a story ahead of time. I usually start with two characters (and I don’t even know them particularly well at the start!) and a situation. But I have no story apart from a few vague notions of where it may be headed and the certain knowledge that it will end happily. The story takes shape gradually after I have got the characters into that situation, acting and reacting and interacting, though even then there are many false starts and restarts. Often I have to go back and rewrite as new ideas pop out of the ether. It is not a comfortable way to write. Nor is it for the faint of heart. But it is challenging and exhilarating and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Somehow everything always seems to work out for me. After more than a hundred novels and novellas that is reassuring—especially when I am deep in despair after having painted my characters into a corner with no discernible way out.

I do know, however, what sort of thing might inspire me to write—and it is almost always something that stirs some deep emotion in me and inspires me to write a story from that emotional place. It doesn’t have to be a romantic emotion. It can be a scene of extraordinary beauty—the mountains and lakes of British Columbia, a sunset reflected across the ocean, or a picture of giant trees in a rain forest. It can be a work of art. I remember once sitting and staring at a picture of Michelangelo’s Pieta for well over an hour. Or it can be a piece of music. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto can do it to me every time. So can Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World or Bette Midler’s The Rose. And definitely it can happen with any music sung by a Welsh male voice choir—Hiraeth(Longing) or Myfanwy, for example, or the Welsh national anthem, Mae Hen Wlad fy Nhadau (the land of my fathers). Or sometimes it is a quotation or a short poem, like William Butler Yeats’s Had I the Heavens’ Embroidered Cloths. I always want to capture these soul-deep emotions in words of my own and in a love story.

Just occasionally I know exactly where a story idea comes from because I have chosen to set a book within a definite historical event. It doesn’t happen often, but I can think of three of my books that came into being that way. I wanted to set a love story in my native Wales, and chose to set it in one of the coal mining valleys of South Wales during the early years of the Industrial Revolution, when the resources and the workers of Wales were terribly exploited for the profit of wealthy mine and steelwork owners, mostly Englishmen. I had to do a great deal of research for LONGING and make sure that my story was woven about authentic events. Nevertheless, my passionate identification with the Welsh (even though my hero was one of the English owners) helped me keep the story on track as an intense love story, I believe—and hope. My use of Welsh music in the book helped with that! Then there was another Welsh book, TRULY, (I hate the title, was assigned to it when I was away from home for a few weeks and had no input). The third book based heavily upon actual historical events is BEYOND THE SUNRISE, my most action-packed book, set in Spain and Portugal during the Napoleonic Wars. My hero and heroine helped shape those events, so I had to make them accurate.

And then there are the stories I can’t account for in any rational way. They come from an inner place that is virtually impossible to describe in words. I have often complained that I find it impossible to think. When I sit down to try to work something out in my head, my mind either turns blank or it wanders off on a thousand tangents—or I fall asleep. At school whenever I had a paper or essay to write I could—and did—do exhaustive research, but then I could never think through what I was going to write. If a teacher demanded a detailed outline, I always wrote it after I was done with the paper. The only way I could write that essay was to sit down with paper and pen (yes, I am that antique) and write. Then ideas I did not know I had flowed with no trouble at all. The same thing happens when I write a book. Every morning (EVERY morning) when I sit down to write, I have no idea what is going to happen. I could easily plead permanent writer’s block. I have to take a few minutes (sometimes more than a few) to focus in and then just start. My daughter, who is a trained hynoptist, tells me that what I am doing is hypnotizing myself. However it is, the act of writing enables me to by-pass the mind and put myself into some other dimension—the sub-conscious, consciousness itself, call it what you will. But it works for me. Do you wonder that when people ask me where I get my ideas I find it almost impossible to answer?

To one person who leaves a comment below before the end of next Wednesday, September 19, I will send a signed copy of LONGING, the Welsh historical mentioned above. The winners of the two tote bags last week were MELISSA  RENNER and MARTHA JUDITH DURICK.