Hey everyone! Please welcome Deb Marlowe to herding cats & burning soup! She's an awesome lady you can't help but smile around and she writes some damn entertaining stories too.
So, check out her guest post and don't forget to enter the awesome giveaway she's got for yall today :)
Then hop over to our review of her book, Tall, Dark and Disreputable for an entry in the Grand Prize!
The Birth of a Character
I was talking with the lovely Anna last week and she asked me if all of my books are connected. The answer is yes, in a funny way. Two of my books are part of a bigger, directly related series. All of the others stand alone, but they are loosely connected. They all take place in the same Regency world. Many of the characters are related or otherwise know each other. Characters from one book, both major and minor, often pop up in another.
I love this connected world. It feels like home to me. I know who lives where and who might bump into each other in the street. When I create a location or a secondary character, they may show up at any time, in any book.
One such character had a fun, but strange beginning. I was at the 2010 RWA conference in Orlando. The London editors from Harlequin Mills and Boon took the Harlequin Historical authors out for a fabulous high tea. We had a lovely time, and at the end we were served some lovely desserts. This was one of them.
As an author I sometimes get a ping in my brain. It’s a poke from my subconscious. It says Hey! Pay attention! This is important. We might use this! I’ve learned to heed the ping. And I got pinged by that little beauty of a swan pastry in front of me.
I looked down and I immediately saw a woman in my Regency world—a confectioner who might have made something just like that pastry for a noble customer. All the random facts I knew about sweets and bakers and confectioners began to coalesce in my head. Right then, a character was born. I didn’t yet know her name, but I knew where her shop was located. I knew her father had been caught up and killed in the French Revolution. I knew she escaped with his collection of sugar paste molds. I knew she was an artist and that one of her specialties was a swan-shaped pastry, and that she had named her confectioner’s shop Le Cygne, French for The Swan.
When I got home I named her. Madame Hobert played a small role in my last release, Unbuttoning Miss Hardwick. She also has a part in my upcoming series. And all because of a lovely dessert!
How about you? Do you find inspiration in odd places? Do you like connected books? Share with us and one randomly selected commenter will win a copy of Unbuttoning Miss Hardwick!
~Deb Marlowe
EFFICIENT SPINSTER OR DESIRABLE WOMAN?
Adopting the guise of a buttoned-up spinster is nothing new for Chloe Hardwick. But under the watchful eye of her unnervingly handsome employer, the Marquess of Marland, for the first time Chloe yearns to be unbuttoned! Yet he sees her only as his assistant, the efficient Hardwick-not as Chloe the woman.
Determined to escape Braedon's cold detachment, Chloe leaves. And when he pursues her to London, determined to entice her back, Braedon is utterly unprepared for what he finds there-the real Chloe Hardwick....
Determined to escape Braedon's cold detachment, Chloe leaves. And when he pursues her to London, determined to entice her back, Braedon is utterly unprepared for what he finds there-the real Chloe Hardwick....
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Deb Marlowe grew up in Pennsylvania with her nose in a book. Luckily, she’d read enough romances to recognize the true modern hero she met at a college Halloween party—even though he wore a tuxedo t-shirt instead of breeches and tall boots. They married, settled in North Carolina and produced two handsome, intelligent and genuinely amusing boys. Though she spends much of her time with her nose in her laptop, for the sake of her family she does occasionally abandon her inner world for the domestic adventure of laundry, dinner and carpool. Despite her sacrifice, not one of the men in her family is yet willing to don breeches or tall boots. She’s working on it. Deb loves to hear from readers! You can contact her at deb@debmarlowe.com 
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