Ever Fall in Love with a Character?

When I wrote A Rancher's Woman, I realized I fell in love with my hero. Let's face it, I think every author has to fall somewhat in love with their characters or they'd never get the stories written.


Creative people do weird things like that! But this time it was different.

As a manuscript goes through its final process for publication The author or publisher has a small window of time to pull the manuscript instead of publishing it. Oh, I've had those niggling feelings and pulled something only to discover I had a spelling error or some such thing that my subconsciousness knew but had escaped a few editors' eyes. Except on this book, I stretched that window of time. It wasn't a feeling of something missed in edits. I didn't doubt my research or have any desire to check a few more sources. I just wasn't ready to let it go.

A semi-new genre for me. Would people accept a historical that I wrote? At least I knew mine was historically correct.  And as for the story, well, people like my contemporary novels so why wouldn't they like my historical ones? All the second guessing that every author feels was put aside, and I still didn't want to release it.

Then as I snuggled in one night, it hit me. As soon as I give up a book to publication, I no longer have those characters to myself. I've given them away to the world. I didn't want to give Mark "Many Feathers" Hunter away. That little girl in me didn't want him to go away. He was mine! He was everything I loved in a man. I published the book the next day.

Seems quite a few other people feel the same way, as the book has had some super reviews. A reader emailed me to tell me that her daughter had read the book and was so thrilled with it that she bought a large print for her mom. When it came,  the mother was excited and immediately began to read it. She fixed dinner that night one-handed as she read the book. She read until she fell asleep and started on it the next day. So caught into the story, she called into work and took a sick day. She finished it that evening and then cried. Not because it had a sad ending, but because she'd reached the end of the story and didn't have any more book to read. She said she kicked herself for not reading it slowly.  She swore she moped for a few days and then decided she'd re-read it.

Then an acquaintance bought hard copies of A Rancher's Woman and A Rancher's Dream, probably out of curiosity. He thought he'd read a few pages before going to sleep. He never quit reading. He asked me if A Rancher's Dream  was going to cause the same problem. I laughed and told him to read it on a rainy day when he didn't need to cut the grass and to start reading early in the morning.

I love having that effect on readers. I love creating great stories and making certain that they are written to the highest standards. Maybe that makes me strange, but I've always been a reader, and time is precious to me. I don't have time to waste it! I don't want to read a lousy book. If an author wants me to spend my valuable time with their story, it had better be good. So why would I give my readers anything less? 

For the next few days, A Rancher's Woman will be on sale in the Amazon.com store for 99c USD.  This is the first time it has ever been offered at that price. So I hope you grab a copy and get sucked into the story.