Welcome Rebecca Minto

I want to thank the beautiful Ginger Simpson for having me as her guest today.  I appreciate the opportunity.

I am Rebecca Minto and my A Kiss To Remember is coming out January 7, 2012.  This will be my first published work since college, although far from the first story I’ve ever written.  I have written for pleasure as far back as I can remember, from poetry and short stories to full-length novels.  I have always considered it my therapy.

I stepped away from my comfort zone in writing this book.  I have always preferred writing in the Middle Ages, and this story is set in the Regency period, a time I have always avoided simply because of all the straitlaced rules of that time and because I have never been a big fan of Cinderella ballrooms with all the idleness of high society during that era.  My characters demanded it, however, and I am ever a slave to what my characters require.

The idea came to me in one of those exhausted, sleep-deprived dreams one has when my son was in his infancy, meaning he was up ever two hours.  It was a misty dream, full of the beauty of a lovely English manor of that time period, and I watched this beautiful golden young lady go through her morning libations.  I knew it was her birthday, I could feel her joy spreading throughout me, her excitement as she prepared to go on a morning ride with her father, but when she went downstairs she began screaming.  It haunted me until the story began to form, with names to go with the faces, with the joy, terror, laughter and sorrow that life entails. 

This story was a labor of love, but at times it was extremely challenging.  My main character, Daphne, was especially difficult for me.  She was a dreamer and an artist, a girly-girl and a peacemaker.  I had difficulty understanding her because, well, she was everything I have never been.  I was a tomboy who could be found playing with frogs and climbing hay bales and tormenting my poor brothers.  Daphne was the sort of girl who longed to wear frilly dresses and paint fantasies of the perfect knight in shining armor riding up to her enchanted tower on a glowing unicorn.  It took time, but eventually we were able to come to a comfortable compromise.

This story did not focus primarily on the hero and heroine of the novel as many stories do.  My heroine, Daphne, was not the sort of person who could maintain a single-minded intensity on only one aspect of her life the way you often see in many romance novels.  Family was important to her, as were her friends and her art, so it was often a balancing act trying to focus enough in each area that was so vital to her as a woman, which led to the greatest difficulty of all in writing this story: the secondary characters.

I absolutely fell in love with the hero’s sister and the heroine’s best friend, Annalise.  She was a strong character, with an intensity that simply drew me in.  She never overshadowed Daphne, but rather I think she complimented her and grasped the imagination.  Who was Annalise?  What drove her?  What would push her to the very bring of her haughty control?  What would she do for those she loved?

Those are questions I hope to find answered soon, in my next work in progress.  I hope everyone enjoys A Kiss To Remember when it is released January 7 by Eternal Press. 

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