Welcome Heather Domin to the blog. She’s here to talk to us about another Hidden Book Gem I found while wandering the internet. ~B
Stories come from all sorts of places – this one came from a newsboy cap.
I get most of my ideas from images, usually a random visual that pops up in my head and spins itself first into a character, then into a premise. Back in 2004 (dear lord, I just realized that was 10 years ago) I was watching an interview with an actor I had a crush on; he was wearing a gray newsboy cap, and I said jokingly to my roommate that he looked like an Irish terrorist. It was a throwaway comment (and not even a clever one), but over the next few days the image kept coming back to me, like a montage in a movie trailer: not a terrorist but a hero, running through smoky streets, dodging gunfire, trying to rescue someone he loved. Thus Adam Elliott (and his gray cap) was born. William developed just as quickly – I knew I wanted a cinematic drama with lots of danger and a love story to match, and what could be more dangerous in 1920s Dublin than falling in love with another man who’s secretly working for the Crown? I’m a sucker for the enemies-to-lovers trope. I wanted Adam and William to be two sides of the same coin, two people who had been through similar traumas but reacted to them in a very different ways. I decided to tell the story from William’s point of view so the reader could experience Adam along with him, but it didn’t take long to realize that it was William’s story I was really telling. The outline came together pretty quickly, and everything took off from there. There was so much to explore: history, culture, religion, class, love, loss, fate…. plus, you know, beautiful men with accents angsting all over the place while wearing (or not wearing) period clothes. Because newsboy cap. [Read more…] about Book Gems come from all sorts of places
I thought we’d do something a bit different on the blog this year. Last year, we had authors talking about the books they wrote and why one in particular was their favorite. Every author has a fav and I’ve always found their reasons fascinating.