My Favorite Book...

At the conference, I was asked to chose my favorite of all my books. It's a bit like asking a parent which child is their favorite. At the time, I chose Tarnished Knight. Jack, the hero, appeared a few years before his story. I wrote a few paragraphs to an unknown stories simply to remove the scene from my head. Shortly thereafter, he showed up in one of the hero conversations.

April 27, 2012

Luck: Where's Laurel?
Matthew: Is she missing?
Luck: I haven't seen her for a week.
Matthew: *smirks* She finished rough edits for our story, last night. Mayhap she needs a break.
Luck: She needs to do some serious edits on our story.
James: Why are you complaining? At least she's finished your stories. We're still waiting for our HEA.
Jack: HEA?
James: Happily Ever After.
Jack: Stop complaining. At least you aren't stuck in the first chapter, wearing a kilt.
*snickers all round*
Jonathan: Stand down, gentleman, our fair lady is attending her first writers' conference.
Jack: Do we need to mount a rescue mission? I'm a fair hand at those.
Jonathan: *one brow raised* No. This is a long-expected party.
Luck: She's at another Lord of the Rings conference?
Jonathan: *huffs* No. A writers' conference.
Luck: Tolkien was a writer.
Jonathan: You're hopeless.
Luck: No, I'm not quite finished, and it's unsettling. Wipe the smug look off your face. We don't want to hear about your story being with the editor.
Jonathan: Life is good, gentleman.
Matthew: She's worked hard. She needs a rest.
Jack: *whispers* I peeked at the schedule. It is many things, but restful isn't one of them.
Jonathan: It will be a change, for her, and she'll return soon, fresh, and inspired.
Matthew: So, we wait?
Jonathan: We wait.
Luck: God bless.

I'd attended the Desert Dreams Conference hosted by Desert Rose, a chapter of Romance Writers of America.

Looking back, I think it's interesting that this is the first of the conversations to fit this format, which the gentleman have insisted be used ever since. Bossy characters.

Jack evolved and changed and evolved again. He even spent a brief period as a hero in a time-travel romance. Perhaps I'll share what little I wrote of it, sometime, as it will never be more than the page or so I jotted down to remove it from bouncing around in my head.