That question . . .

You know the one - it’s the one that readers ask all the time. And it’s usually the first, or at least the second question in any interview, right after the ‘are you a romantic person.’ It’s the ‘where do you get your ideas’ question.

Of course the answer is – from my imagination , but in order to get into my imagination, there has to be a process of ‘seeding’. I talked about this when I was writing about The Italian’s Forced Bride, because that was a book where I could clearly remember the seed being planted. I can remember the seed of my current book too – but it was a much smaller, much less noticeable one. Perhaps that’s why it took a while – in this case a couple of years- to grow.

Or perhaps that was because with this particular ‘seed’, I knew that I was looking for not one but two stories and two stories that had to be linked from the start.

Let me explain. In 2002 I went to my first RWA Conference in Denver Colorado. I met a lot of great people there – many of them were people I had communicated with by email or via the eHarlequin site message boards.. One of these was Lori, whose family came from Sicily. And it was Lori who planted the seed of Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Bride when on one occasion when I told her that my then Sicilian hero of the time – who would, I suspect, be Gio in A Sicilian Husband– wasn’t behaving and I was finding him difficult to write. She told me that if he didn’t behave she’d ‘send Guido and Vito over to talk to him. And that’s when the names Guido and Vito Corsentino became stuck in my head as perfect Sicilian hero names.

But at the time I was sick of Sicilians. Before Gio, I’d written his half-brother Cesare, and I wanted a change. I wrote a Greek hero (Damon in The Married Mistress) a Brit (Rhys in Their Secret Baby) and then The Alcolars hit me. The Alcolar Family was a trilogy – and an on line short story and by the time I’d written those, I wanted a break from linked stories. And in my mind Guido and Vito had to have linked stories. I couldn’t write about just one of them. So I wrote The Antonakos Marriage, The Italian’s Forced Bride, At the Sheikh’s Command – and all the time Guido and Vito were in the back of my mind waiting for the right stories, the right plots – the right linked plots. Because I knew that there was no way I could separate these two. They were brothers and their books had to be written together.

And then there was the ‘what if’ moment. For some time I had also had an opening scene in my head. A scene in which a wedding is taking place and that moment comes – you know the one – the one where the priest says, ‘If anyone here knows of any reason why these two people should not be joined together, let him speak now of forever hold his peace.’ I’ve been to lots of weddings and no one ever steps forward at that moment and says anything.

But what if someone did?

For a long time – longer than I’d had Guido and Vito at the back of my mind, I’d also had a scene in which that did happen. But I didn’t know why it happened – or why the marriage was taking place - and I definitely didn’t know who it was happening to. But I’ve often found that the process of leaving the idea at the back of my mind, like a seed planted deep in the soil and growing, slowly and steadily, works wonders. One morning you wake up to find that a little green seedling has poked its head up above the soil and you have the beginning of a story.

And so one morning I woke up and knew that it was Guido Corsentino who walked into that church and waited for that moment . Well, obviously said my imagination, it had known that all the time. It just had to wait for me to catch up with it. And now that I had, there was only way that Guido’s story could go – and I was launched on the Sicilian Brothers’ duo, and Guido and Vito’s time had come. Luckily my editor agreed to the linked books and Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Bride, out now in the UK and in April in USA and Australia, is the first one of the two linked books.

Of course there is a problem with the cover of this book - it shows that there is a scene at a wedding - but it makes it look as if Guido Corsentino is at his own wedding - and he's not - most definitely not.

He also doesn't look like that. The back cover blurb says that Guido is "Dark, proud and sinfully gorgeous" - the guy on the cover is not my Guido. And so that you can imagine him with more accuracy - and specially to brighten up a Monday morning for Mags! - I've posted a picture of the inspiration for my Guido.