I had a horrendous realization on Monday—none of my hero’s story was going to work. I had to complete rewrite his entire story line. Argh!!

When I originally plotted out this book it was a stand-alone Regency romance (this was a number of years ago). Then, a few months ago, when I remembered that I had a book all plotted out and ready to write (yay!!) I thought it would be perfect as the second book in my new Grace Sisters trilogy – Rose Grace is the heroine of A Dandy in Disguise and has two younger sisters who, clearly, needed their own books. So, Dandy will be considered the first book of the new series and then I thought this one that I already had would be perfect for the second book.

…Until Monday when it suddenly hit me that I had to work with the time-line I’d already established in Dandy. That book took place in 1817, which meant that this new book had to take place two years later in 1819. But my hero’s story involves traveling to France to rescue his brother during the Napoleonic War (which ended in 1815, for those of you who don’t know that off the top of your head).

Umm…

After much screaming, crying and cursing, my husband (fantastic, wonderful man to whom I owe more than my life) said “Why don’t you have him go to America instead?”

Well, that stopped me.

Of course, he could go to America. There’s no reason why my hero’s brother couldn’t be captured by the Native Americans instead of the French. It’s way too late for the War of 1812, but the British (and French, and Americans) were trading with Native Americans in what would become Illinois and Wisconsin at the time. The fur trade was big business. I’m sure the Native Americans wouldn’t be above taking a hostage if they felt the need, right?

New story!

And, thus, I spent a good chunk of my week rewriting my hero’s story, which

necessitated re-writing his entire back story and figuring out the time-line of his entire adult life. Whew!

So here is my question to you this week: how much of your characters’ back story do you figure out before (during or after) writing your book? Do you know exactly how they grew up? Where? What they’re favorite toys were? Who they played with? Where they went to school?

I needed to figure out some of this in order to figure out the antagonist’s motivations (moral of the story: be careful of those you are closest to). But how much do you do?

On one other, unrelated topic, but apropos of last week’s blog: I did finally set up a Facebook page for Anessa Books. If you would, I would appreciate it if you would hop over there and “Like” it. I’ll be posting formatting tips and answering any questions you might have about formatting, self-publishing or, even, just working with Microsoft Word. Thanks!