Prizes include:

* A Murder Among Friends, The Face of Deceit, and The Taking of Carly Bradford, autographed
* Field of Danger, autographed
* New Hampshire: A Living Landscape, Peter E. Randall
* Assorted teas in a gift basket
* Assorted chocolates

Just email me at ramona@ramonarichards.com with CONTEST in the subject. Everyone who has already done so will be entered.

Thanks!

It was a most innocent time.

That ended with my divorce in 1993. He got the CS account, and I spent three years under a rock, doing little more than working and caring for my daughter. No writing. I just wanted to survive. Finally, I started to dig out. I bought a condo, started dating a new guy, and rejoin the web via AOL. Then the dating ended in 1999, and it took everything I had not to return under my rock.

But in April, Warner Bros and Vertigo Pictures released a little film called The Matrix, and my world permanently shifted, as completely as if tectonic plates had opened a new fault in the world.

Y’see, in the years following my marriage, I had walked away from everything important in my life. My faith and my God. My writing. The intellectual loves of my life, including Joseph Campbell’s Hero Quest, on which I’d based my master’s thesis. Now, in one 2-hour rollercoaster ride, God picked me up by the nape of my neck and shook everything free. Over the summer of 1999, I saw the movie 18 times. (Yes, I have serious geek potential.)

And I returned to the world of heroes. Within a couple of weeks, I had dragged out a story that had stalled five years before and finished it. While I tried to sell “Dream Killer,” I turned to fan fiction, renewing my craft and stretching all the dormant writing muscles. The fanfic found a minor home, and I realized it was time to leave behind the science fiction I loved and turn to romance.

I took one of the fanfic pieces, transformed it into a novella and, low and behold, sold that sucker. I began working on two different books, including a 20-year-old story that just wouldn’t leave me alone called Jackson’s Retreat. Following a conversation at CBA that July, I realized that it needed to be a Christian book, and I went back to Chapter One on it.

The road to publication wasn’t easy. Or short. But I’d found my voice and my direction. When I finally submitted Jackson’s Retreat to Steeple Hill, it sold in 6 weeks, and the editor asked for the second book (which she later rejected).

But, by the time Jackson’s Retreat released as A Murder Among Friends, life had changed forever.

Now my heroes were coming to life on a regular basis. Plots began to pour from my fingers like creative rain – which is not always a good thing. The next step was to focus, turn my thoughts toward not just writing but a career, a brand – a serious direction.

As I wrote and plotted and dreamed, slowly I realized that the direction had been there for more than 30 years, since I had, with my childlike glee, typed out a fourteen-page “novel” at the age of 10.

Romantic suspense. With strong men, determined heroines, and a seat-of-the-pants plot.

Sometimes God takes awhile, especially if you don’t cooperate. But, eventually, He gets you there.

Thus, He returned me to the world of heroes . . . . and an odd search began.

After yesterday’s post, someone asked if I always developed the hero from a celebrity crush. Actually, it’s usually the other way around. The hero is built, then I cast him. For instance, Fletcher MacAllister, the hero of A Murder Among Friends, came into existence in about 1982 (and I still have the first rejection letter to prove it). He was always tall and lanky, of Scottish-Thai descent, and had a quiet determination about him, calm and strong. It wasn’t until about 2003 that he started to look like this guy:

The character definitely came first. After all, in 1982, Mr. Reeves was still a spritely young’un hanging out in Canada. (Although I did lift Fletcher’s first name from Mr. Knight’s character in The Immortal.) Likewise, Mason DuBroc, my half-Cajun, slightly hyper, art crime investigator in The Face of Deceit bounced around in my head for almost a year before starting to resemble this young man:

I suspect most writers work in that direction. As Marti and Jen pointed out previously, other characteristics tend to blossom first: their hero’s integrity, an intriguing past, or some physical aspect. A voice, heard in the night, or the movement of the head. Words or phrases that linger, telling you a lot about a man . . .

I, for instance, have a weakness for intelligent men with a twisted sense of humor. Also a weakness for floppy hair. And strong forearms. And a bright, unexpected smile that reaches into the eyes and lights up a face. And light hair.

*ahem*

Back to the hero at hand, who will take up residence in The Bones of Gregory Miller. Set in Nashville, it’s actually four books away (I hope), following three I’m proposing to Steeple Hill, and Reclaiming Daisy Doe, which I plan to finish by November 1. Although the plot is new, my hero has been growing in my head for a long time. Take, for instance, this slight side trip through the 80s, when one of my celebrity “crushes” was on a woman (and, no, it’s not THAT kind of crush).

I became fascinated with Beryl Markham, a remarkable woman.

When the announcement of her death made the news, along with a number of brief bio sketches, it set me off on a whirlwind of research. Among other details about this fascinating woman was the tidbit that one of the great loves of her life was Denys Finch Hatton, who had previously been in a hot affair with Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) – an affair richly portrayed in the movie Out of Africa, with Robert Redford (a blond!) taking the role of Denys, to great acclaim.

I read everything I could on Beryl Markham and Denys Finch Hatton. Then, in 1988, there came a television bio pic starring Stefanie Powers.

I was glued to the screen, discovering that the guy playing Denys looked an awful lot like 1979′s Jonathan Harker.

Well, yeah. Same guy. But, again, this was the 80s. British character actor not seen in the US much. Had to shelve the interest. Just not a lot out there.

But that was about to change . . .