Over the Author

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

Inspiration

Some writers get their ideas in dreams or mental flashes. Mine are more likely to start with a character or a problem, which is a much more workmanlike approach than waiting for inspiration B but this book was an exception. It started with a mental glimpse of a scene that actually ended up in the first chapter.

In my mind, I could actually see a young woman handing a man a slip of paper with a phone number on it B a number that turns out to spell 1-800-GET-LOST. At the time, though, I didn=t know who the heroine was, who the hero was, why she didn=t want to give him a real phone number, or why she didn=t just tell him she wasn=t interested, rather than making such a production out of it. So I definitely had some exploring to do.

Motivation

The first reason which comes to mind for why a woman would go to such lengths is that the guy=s being such a pest that she can=t think of any other way to get rid of him. But a romance hero isn=t that kind of a pest B oh, he can be an annoyance a real a thorn in the side, but a heroine with a scrap of honesty knows that she doesn=t really want him to go away. So my hero couldn=t be a true jerk. But if she just met this guy and instantly wrote him off, that makes her look pretty judgmental and unlikeable.

So they must have had a history B a real reason why she didn=t feel any need to be nice to him.

But if there was a history, why didn=t he recognize her? All right, it must have been a long time ago, and she must have changed a lot. Plus the circumstances of their present meeting have to be somewhere unexpected B so he wouldn=t be reminded of her B and in a way where her name wouldn=t be shared.

And their past must have been pretty painful B if it had just been ordinarily unpleasant, she might have taken pleasure in telling him to go to hell. How much worse would it have to be for her to not take that easy and satisfying route but go for a quieter sort of revenge, a sort that she could enjoy even if she didn=t get to see the effects firsthand?

What they must have been

The combination of things I needed to make the story work made me think that they must have been a very young couple when they had their first encounter.I think I glanced at my own high school graduation portrait and realized how much my appearance had changed by the time I was out of college. All right B my couple met for the first time in college, and so, years later when they meet again, it makes sense that they=ve changed enough that he wouldn=t automatically recognize her. Especially if she=s in a location, perhaps in a job setting, that he doesn=t expect. And if that job can be tied into why she=s still angry with him...

That was when I started to see Kurt as the privileged and lucky guy who seems to have always got everything he=s gone after B even if he didn=t try very hard B and Lissa as the hard-working young woman who=s down on her luck and can=t seem to catch a break no matter how hard she tries. No wonder she=s ticked at him B a guy who needed tutoring in basic math but has a nationwide string of stores, while she=s still struggling to get through college.

Keeping them apart

But it had to be more than that keeping them apart, or Lissa would just look sulky; life isn=t fair, and heroines who pout because it isn=t aren=t very sympathetic. So he had to have done more to hurt her than just be lucky B this pain needed to be personal. So I thought about what else he could have done which would make her still be wary of him years later. Setting her up and betting on whether he could get her to fall for him B yeah, that would do it. (Though if he did it deliberately, then he=s a pretty nasty piece of work himself, even it the incident is far in the past B so I had to keep that in mind too and handle his behavior accordingly.)

Bringing them together

At the same time, I had to bring them together. With that sort of a past, neither of them had any reason to want to get better acquainted now, so why wouldn=t they just wave and walk on by? That=s where Kurt=s grandmother came in, and it=s also why Lissa=s streak of bad luck had to get even worse at the beginning of the story so she didn=t have any choice about accepting help.

So I gave Kurt=s grandmother a situation that many of our older citizens are facing B a need to downsize but a complete lack of physical, emotional, and mental energy to do the necessary work. I found, however, that writing about Kurt=s relationship with his grandmother told me a lot more about him B like his parents= uncomfortable marriage, which had made him the kind of young man he is. That=s the best part of having secondary characters B they often function in multiple roles and help us learn more about the hero and heroine.

Starting to write

So I had a hero and a heroine, a situation to draw them together, and a history to make it difficult for them to trust each other. Then I could just let the story flow and let this collection of characters interact. What made it really fun was to take characters who would ordinarily be predictable and stereotypical and make them act differently. Kurt=s grandmother was almost guaranteed to be a matchmaker, for instance B so the fun was in letting Kurt think that=s what she was up to when it was really something else altogether. And though the Other Woman in this story wouldn=t mind ending up with Kurt, she too has an additional agenda.

Somehow, however, as I started to write, even the shared past I=d given Kurt and Lissa didn't seem to be enough. They've grown up since then; why would they still be holding grudges over something so essentially silly, something that happened so long ago? It was a fellow writer who mused to me that these characters seemed to be keeping secrets even from me, that there must be something much more painful in their shared past B and that was when I realized why their one-night stand was still echoing in their lives so many years later because of the baby that might (or might not) have been conceived.

Foreshadowing is the hints and suggestions which are dropped throughout the story and which make the reader want to hit herself in the head in frustration when she finally finds out what they mean. In most good fiction, the really stunning bits of foreshadowing aren=t there from the beginning, they=re added in the second draft B and that was the case with this story. Because Kurt and Lissa had kept so much information to themselves as I wrote the first draft, a good deal of this story didn=t get onto the paper until the second time through, once I knew much more about why she in particular was so sensitive, so wary, so touchy B and why it was all so important to him that once his suspicions were roused there was no stopping him.

The original plan for the story is all there in the finished product; it changed very little. But my initial vision of the story was of a much simpler plot and relationships between the characters, and the extra layers which were added later in the process made all the difference between creating a light and enjoyable story and an emotional and I hope memorable one.