The Birth of a Book

I woke up one morning a couple of weeks ago with a new story idea in my head. It had to do with a woman having to marry this man with a bunch of kids. Now I’ve been working on what I thought would be a trilogy of stories that would go in a book called Love With A Twist Of Lime. The three stories (2 of which are already mostly written) were to have the common theme of each of the main female characters being unable to have children and it making them feel somehow unworthy to be a wife. Crazy idea perhaps but, hey, it was the one I had and they were turning out pretty good.

Now, as I said, two of the stories are pretty much done and now I have to decide what I will do with them because this third story quickly let me know it would not be told in 70 pages. It wanted full-length novel status. So what of the other two? I’ve considered lengthening them into their very own stand-alone books or, perhaps I’ll have to write another story that will go in the trilogy in place of my current project and the subject that led me to create this blog. (A bonus of being self-published; I can make those decision changes at whim.)

Back to the original line of this post…I sat down at my computer and began to type the story that was unfolding in my head. I hardly ever do that – type it directly into the computer. I almost always write longhand in a notebook and then transcribe, making changes as I go. But not this time. I started the story, got to a good stopping point and zipped it off to my mom and author/illustrator friend Christina Janzen. “Read it,” I pleaded (had to twist their arms, of course). Almost immediately they shot back requesting I get busy so they could read more which, of course, prompted me to continue.

The book is titled A Marriage of Necessity and is, of course, evolving into much more than just a woman having to marry a man with a bunch of kids. As the teaser says, there’s an unfortunate accident, the death of a spouse, a man in need of help, and the threat of a lost inheritance. If you’d like to read that first part I sent to them, it is available on the preview page of my author website: http://lindaboulanger.com/PreviewPage.aspx. I haven’t fixed the errors yet and a couple of things have changed. That always happens as the rest of the story is written, but hopefully it will be enough to bring you back to see how it’s going. I’ve managed to type in about 51 pages though I have a lot more handwritten ones (yes, I reverted back). The 51 typewritten pages equate to approximately 130 book pages. How many pages do I expect it to be? As many as it takes to tell the story to completion though 300 seems like a pretty good number to me….always subject to change. :)