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| Barbara White Daille |
Hello,
and thank you to The Roses of Prose for inviting me to visit! I'm looking forward to chatting with y'all.
Since
there's a great topic up on the blog this month, I'm going to run with it, too,
and talk about where I get my ideas.
I'll continue the trend and give away a book, as well, so stay tuned.
Confession
time.
I
don't normally go out and "get" my ideas. Usually, they come to me. Unfortunately, when they do, it's often as a
flash of illumination that introduces a character or shows an action. After that, I'm on my own!
With
my first published novel, THE SHERIFF'S SON, I envisioned a small boy twisting
and turning and trying to get free from the large hand—attached to the much
larger man ;) —holding him up by the back of his T-shirt. Kevin's on tiptoe. And in big trouble. When his mama sees the local deputy sheriff
who has captured her son, she knows she's in big trouble, too, because he's the
man she'd once loved and lost. That very
brief vision of Kevin twisting to get free turned out to be the catalyst for
the book.
In
a more recent story, A RANCHER'S PRIDE, Sam Robertson comes home to discover
he's a daddy. He's never known about his
four-year-old daughter and doesn't believe she's his. But when he meets her for the first time,
he's confronted with evidence he can't deny.
She is his flesh and blood. She's also deaf, and he has no way of
communicating with her. Trust me, that
was one tough book to write. Sam has such
a heart-wrenching decision to make regarding his daughter, I didn't know how he
would ever reach a happy ending. And the
entire book started with one peek into Sam's living room.
With
those stories, at least I had a visual to work from. That's not always the case. For another of my earlier books, COURT ME,
COWBOY, I had nothing but a sentence to start me off:
One day soon, he'd get rid of this wedding ring.
That's
it. Nothing about the character—except
that he was male. No setting. No clue who the ring belonged to or what this
was all about. (I'm happy to say my
readers start the book just where I did, with that very sentence.)
I
figured out...eventually...the male was Gabe Miller, and the wedding ring was
his own. But then I had to get him to
reveal why he no longer wanted or needed that wedding ring. An emotion-packed revelation, for sure, but
enough to tell me this man truly deserved a happy ending.
In
my current novel, HONORABLE RANCHER, I had much less than a sentence to
kick-start my imagination. All I had was
the memory of how I felt about my first crush.
This somehow turned into the story of a man suffering—and I do mean
suffering!—the same feelings.
Unfortunately, Ben Sawyer has it much, much worse.
This
explains his dilemma:
Bound by a promise
to watch over his best friend's widow, what can an honorable man do when the
woman fights him at every turn? Buy the house she lives in, for one
thing--and that's when their relationship really gets heated.
He's keeping a promise to
her dead husband; she's keeping a secret she refuses to share. They can't
fall in love--but they can't stay away from each other....
Ben's
not the type of hero I usually write about.
That didn't matter. In the space
of a few paragraphs, I found him sexy and intriguing and endearing and as
worthy of love as any character who's ever come knocking on the door of my
imagination. I had to tell
his story. After this very brief setup,
I'll show you why:
Ben
and Dana are groomsman and matron of honor for their best friends. They're alone in the garden outside the
banquet hall, while everyone else is inside at the reception.
In all the years since
grade school, nothing had ever come between Paul and Dana. Ben had always honored that. Now he had to make doubly sure not to cross
the line. "Today has to be hard for
you," he said, keeping his voice low.
"Seeing Tess and
Caleb so happy? Why should that cause me
any trouble? I'm glad they're finally
together."
She meant it, he knew,
though her words sounded as brittle as the chipped ice in the banquet hall's
champagne buckets. In the moonlight, her
eyes glittered. Had she tried for a
lighter tone to keep tears from overflowing?
Or to prove how comfortable she felt around him?
Why did she have to prove
anything? Why the heck couldn't she
enjoy his company, the way she always used to?
If she'd just give him that, he'd feel satisfied.
Sure, he would.
She'd grown quiet again,
and he gestured toward the fountain.
"What brought you out here?
Wanting to make a wish?"
She shook her head. "No.
Those are for people who aren't willing to work hard to get what they
want."
"I can't argue with
you there." Still, he felt tempted
to toss a coin into the water for a wish of his own—that for once, she'd let
him make things easier for her.
"But there's such a thing as working too hard, you know."
"Ben,
please." She gathered up her dress
and stood. "You called the truce
yourself, remember? I know you only want
to help. For Paul. And because we're friends." Her voice shook from her stress on the
word. "We've had this conversation
before. Now, once and for all, I'm doing
fine." As if to prove her point,
she smiled. "And I have to go
inside. Tess will be tossing her bouquet
soon. I wouldn't want to lose out on
that."
A tear sparkled at the
corner of her eye.
Missing the chance to
catch a handful of flowers couldn't upset her that much. He knew what she really missed—having a
husband by her side. Her husband.
His best friend.
But neither of them would
have Paul back in their lives.
Before he could get to his
feet, she left, running away like that princess in the fairytale his niece
asked him to read to her over and over again.
No, not a princess. The one who took off without her glass
slipper—Cinderella.
Dana was no
Cinderella. She hadn't left a shoe
behind. Hadn't even dropped a button
from that pink dress as something for him to remember her by. As if he could ever forget her.
She'd been the heroine of
a story he'd once created long ago, a story he'd had to write in his head
because he hadn't yet known how to spell all the words.
How did it go? Like in his niece's storybook...
Once upon a time, that was it.
Once upon a time, in
the Land of Enchantment—otherwise known as the state of New Mexico—Benjamin
Franklin Sawyer had high hopes and a huge crush on the girl who sat one desk
over from him in their classroom every day.
No other girl in
town, Ben felt sure, could beat Dana Smith, and most likely no other woman in
the world could compare to her, either.
In any case, without a doubt, she was the cutest of all his female
friends in their kindergarten classroom.
Unfortunately, when the teacher moved his best friend, Paul Wright, to
the desk on the other side of Dana's, Ben saw his hopes dashed.
The crush, however,
continued. For a good long while.
As for Benjamin Franklin Sawyer's hopes...
Well, not every story had a happy ending.
At
the beginning of this post, I said ideas come to me. That's true.
They pop into my head and spark my imagination, making me want to tell
the stories, not letting me rest until I do.
This
isn't an easy job, since they've left me hanging without much to go on! ;) But
by the time a book has ended, I'm happy to have found out what the story is all
about. I'm thrilled to see the hero and
heroine have found their happily ever after—and I hope my readers are, too.
~~~
Originally from the East Coast, award-winning author
Barbara White Daille now lives with her husband in the warm, sunny Southwest,
where they love the lizards in the front yard but could do without the
scorpions in the bathroom.
From the time she was a toddler,
Barbara found herself fascinated by those things her mom called
"books." Once she learned the words between the covers held the
magic of storytelling, she wanted to see her words in print so
she could weave that spell for others.
She hopes you will enjoy reading her
stories and will find your own storytelling magic in them!
Please
look for HONORABLE RANCHER, in both print and e-book, at the following
locations:
To
win an autographed paper copy of your choice of THE SHERIFF'S SON, COURT ME,
COWBOY or A RANCHER'S PRIDE, please leave a comment or question for
Barbara. Check back in the comments area
here on Saturday, September 29th, to find out if you've been selected as the
drawing winner!
Then reality hits. You can only read and really savor one
book at a time (at least, I can). Your To Be Read pile already competes with
Mt. St. Helens – and may also be ready to erupt all over your bedroom floor. Your
book budget (if you actually had one) is already shot. Your friends, neighbours,
significant other, are all going to roll their eyes when they see you sneaking
in the back door with your books. True addicts actually change from the bookstore
bag to a grocery bag in an attempt to hide their addiction. On your credit card
statement, you have the bookstore’s bills hidden under the ‘household’ or ‘car maintenance’
tags. 
Often I will start out on one idea, only to realise my Muse,
or subconscious mind, needs more time to work on it, then I have to close that
file and look for another candidate. Many of the book ideas consist only of a
paragraph or two, a signpost towards greater creative effort. Some are several
pages, others just a couple of links to news stories or bits of research I've
discovered on the web which seem to be crying out for a novel plot. Some will
never make it as viable books alone – but joined in matrimony with another book
idea, suddenly there’s hope of a long and happy relationship.
