book three: marriage make-over

1. WORKING TITLE - "Love Schmove"

I love this title. I think this is the greatest title ever invented. Truly. Especially considering the premise - our fearless heroine has a great job writing a column for a magazine called, you guessed it - "Love Schmove", which is all about being happily single in the city. The one problem is, she is actually married. But long since seperated and therefore believes that love is a whole lot of hooey.

Now did I mention I loved this title? Well, I did. But noone at HQ agreed. It was too tricky and too many readers would not understand what it meant. Apart from the fact that it was hardly aspirational. I was even asked to change the columm title, which I did, becaus eI do in fact want people to read my books and uderstand them. The new column became "Single, and Loving It".

That book eventually became Marriage Make-over which I think suits it really well as the hero of the tale is the heroine's husband. Though after three books I felt like the queen of alliteration.

2. CAST – Keanu Reeves & Jennifer Lopez

I went back and forth between Keanu Reeves and Ben Affleck on this one, primarily because I had a great picture of Ben wearing chinos, a button down shirt, and reading glasses that was just lovely. But my Simon was a sexy son-of-a-gun and I just had too many pictures of Keanu looking scruptious to pass them by. I mean just look at this picture.

Did I end up soaking my boy through and through to get this exact look into the book? Did I ever!

Long dark hair, sexy clothes, and a riotous temper defined our Kelly, so she was Jennifer Lopez from day dot. Many of her outfits in my book came from pictures I found of J Lo. Sexy suits, midrif baring tops, and low cut jeans. All of these details really helped round out Kelly as a single girl happy in her singlehood. So when she finally takes a step back and realises its all for show, she ends up in comfort clothes of jumper, jeans, and favourite old scruffy beanie.

A picture tells a thousand tales...

I love this cover. Love it to bits. And after the tough six months it took to write my second book, I really loved writing this book, it flowed, and made me laugh out loud. And I hoped so hard that the cover would do it justice. And boy did it ever. The heroine is a perfect match, the setting on the beach at St Kilda where important scenes in this tale took place is lovely, and the hero is totally gorgeous (I would be happy to have him on my covers every time!) Yum!

3. MUSIC - "Escapology" by Robbie Williams

I listened to this CD non stop when writing this book. Over and over again. For days. Weeks ata atime. And still to this day I can listn to the whole thing without being sick of it. It's such a vibrant CD, with great emotioanl lyrics and sing-a-long tunes.

I especially love a song called Hot Fudge makes me get out of my seat and dance. Every time. In fact its become a sort of rule. When I have all of my CD's on random, and when Hot Fudge plays, no matter how engrossed in a story I am I have to get up and dance about the house. It gets me out of my chair and gets my blood flowing again.

4. FAIRY DUST - heroine only POV

I started the book in Kelly's POV and never left. Once I was about three chapters in and realised what was happening, it felt so right that I just keep on going that way. Each chapter began with a Kellyism, a line from one of her columns, and the chapter's just grew from there, mirroring or more likely negating her earlier words the further she falls back under Simon's spell.

Kelly was the one with the conflicts all over the place. She was the one who didn't want back into her relationship with Simon for any number of reasons. Whereas Simon was ready to reconcile from page one. He had nothing holding him back. Therefore the important story to tell was hers.

Some readers loved this and understood that Kelly's journey was the interesting one. Others were a bit set back by it and couldn't see past this bending of the "rules". But I love this story and its one of my all time favourites.

MARRIAGE MAKE-OVER
Available still from Amazon.com

Watch out later this month for news of Book Four: How to Marry a Billionaire