Let=s listen in on author Leigh Michaels as she recalls the process she worked through in order to create the characters and storyline in her contemporary romance, The Billionaire Bid.

     AI began working on the book which became The Billionaire Bid because my editor asked me to do a story for a mini-series within the Harlequin Romance line. Every romance novel involves a heroine who is seeking her dream (or sometimes trying to figure out what it is she wants to seek!), but in this mini-series, What Women Want!, my editor was looking for heroines who were truly driven to reach a specific goal, whether that goal was a baby, a new job, a particular guy B or something else entirely.

 The problem

     So I began to turn over in my head the question of what my heroine might want badly enough to ride roughshod over everything that gets in her way. Yet no matter what she wanted or how hard she went after it, she=d have to remain a sympathetic character, so her goal needed to be something that the reader could understand and believe in, too. What desires can everyone understand? It seemed to me that the editor had hit the main ones B family, marriage, job.

    While I=m making no judgments about other authors and how they handle story choices, I didn't think I could write convincingly about a woman who wants a baby above all else, because it doesn't seem fair to the baby if she=s putting her own desire to reproduce above consideration of what=s best for the kid. I didn't think I could write convincingly about a woman who will sacrifice everything to get one particular guy, because in my opinion she=d be setting herself up for a major case of co-dependency.

    That left the job. But if she doesn't already have the job, how can she know this particular niche is perfect for her? How can she be so certain of it that she'll sacrifice everything else?

     On the other hand, it made more sense to me that she=d be driven to action if she already had the job she wanted, but she was seeking to keep it, build it, and make it better. So what kind of a job might it be? And how would she go about making it better?

    It=s been my experience that the more concrete the situation, the more believable the story B besides being easier to write. So having my heroine simply wanting to make her working conditions better didn't have quite the oomph that I was looking for.

 The heroine

     Without a clear idea yet of what the job situation was going to be, I turned my attention to the heroine. What kind of a woman would be obsessive enough about her job B any job B to put her whole life on the line for it?

    It seemed to me that a woman who already had a well-balanced life wouldn't be so absorbed in her job, so I thought it likely that my heroine was younger than usual, without a boyfriend, maybe even without many close friends, and already fairly caught up in her work. But why was she so obsessed right now?

    There were many potential answers, but I found myself thinking that maybe it wasn't entirely her own dream she was chasing, but that of a mentor who had died. Trying to live up to the expectations, dreams and hopes of someone we've lost can be even more of a challenge than finding our own goals.

 The background

     Now I felt I was getting somewhere. My heroine had lost someone very important to her, and had stepped into that person=s job, and now she feels that in honor of that person she should .... do what?

     In order to help keep her sympathetic, I wanted the heroine=s goal not to seem selfish (as if might have if she=d set out simply to build a bigger business, or make a million dollars) but to be something that would benefit the community at large. That=s when I started thinking of a museum. She wants to build a bigger, better museum for the good of the community. But how is she going to do that, especially in a time when budgets are crunched and donations are hard to find? She=s not likely to be able to build from scratch. But if there was already a building B a big building which nobody else was going to use, a building which might be destroyed if a new use wasn't found, a building that she could preserve for the good of the entire community...

     I decided that a historical society museum B the kind that preserves family and local items B would be the most likely to tug at heartstrings, besides being something I could write about with enthusiasm and from experience. And if my heroine was already nuts about history, it would be a logical outgrowth for her to want to save an old building.

     Creating a believable historical museum in a real city meant doing a lot of research in order to get the history right. That=s why I opted to set my story in a fictional city I=d already created. That way I didn't have to deal with the real history B I could make up my own. And I could also use characters I=d created for other stories. (The newspaper publisher in The Billionaire Bid was the heroine of her own story a few years ago, titled Garrett=s Back in Town. And the CEO of the department store was the hero of O=Hara=s Legacy and appears in several other books.)

    So I had the background B the historical museum in need of space. And the heroine B the devoted director/curator of the museum, who wants to see it grow. And an answer B a downtown department store that=s about to close.

     Of course, there were still some missing pieces, and among them was one of the most important B the hero. We can=t have a romance novel without a hero. But we also can=t have a romance novel unless there=s tension between hero and heroine B and that tension needs to be over something more than whether they=re going to admit to being attracted to each other.

The hero

     So who is the guy who=s going to change the heroine=s life? What is the source of tension between them? Why is he so important? How does he stand in the way of her getting what she wants?

     Obviously he has to have something to do with either the museum or the building she wants. He could be on the board of directors of the museum, but for story purposes, having him connected with the building seemed to offer more conflict potential.

    If he owns the building she=s after, and he already has plans for it... But wait a minute. Why doesn't she give up at that point? It=s unrealistic to keep on chasing an impossibility B she doesn't look like a determined woman anymore, but one who=s ready for a straitjacket. Okay, maybe he doesn't already have plans for the building. That would encourage her to think that it=s not impossible, just a little harder than she initially thought. But what kind of a guy owns a building B a big building B that he has no plans for?

     A real-estate developer, of course B one who builds, but who also tears down. The very sort of person most likely to get the goat of a woman who puts historical value above almost everything else.

Building the action

    Because of the original premise of the story, Gina and Dez are a little more antagonistic toward each other than many of my heroes and heroines, something that didn't sit well with all reviewers and readers. That antagonism creates a sense all through the book that they can=t both win. Yet if either one gives in or loses, there can=t be a truly satisfying ending.

    So in this case I had to know exactly how I was going to solve the problem I=d posed B how to create a sensible ending that would be emotionally satisfying to the reader, an ending that would  be logical and sensible.

     In this case, neither of them gets what they expect, or what they=d hoped for. Gina doesn't get the entire building, but she realizes that the museum couldn't handle it all anyway. The tradeoff is that the rest of the space will provide the museum with income and an endowment so it can grow and survive. Dez gets what he wants up to a point B even though the site for his new buildings isn't where he initially expected it to be. Since it=s an ending which doesn't involve either of them giving up or giving in, these worthy opponents are well-balanced and ready to keep on fighting for the rest of their lives. Theirs will never be a peaceful marriage, but it sure won=t be a dull one, either.

     At last, the story was ready to go B with a heroine, a hero, a problem, and a solution. Some of the events along the way were still hazy in my mind B they would develop as I wrote B but the basics were in place. Then it was time to write.@