Feeling the Love -- Avonlea and Brian
It's just days before Valentines Day! Despite how you feel about the actual day itself or whether you intend to celebrate it, this week I will be posting about the characters I've created -- The couples within my stories. If you've read my books, you'll recognize them and you can comment on your own views. If you. haven't, I hope these intrigue you to read more.
Now, I should remind everyone that I write clean romance. My reasonings were discussed in last week's post (Feb 03 2025, titled "Where's the Romance?") but you can expect PDA and flirting at most in my books. Insinuations and innuendoes as well. But does that make for a crappy romance book? Nope. In fact, I doubt you'll even miss the spicy scenes.
(NOTE: All photos are AI representations of the characters created using various AI apps on Canva.)
So let's get started!
Q: How did you come up with Brian and Avonlea?
Brian has been a part of my writing brain since I was around 10 or 11 years old. He was a character that hijacked my writing of stories about phenomenal racehorses and their owners and journey (and trust me, I wrote about them all of the time, had pedigree charts, knew the terminology, and had character profiles built.) Avonlea didn't appear until a few years later. As I've said in my previous blog post ( Nov. 11, 2023, "Why Should You Read an Em Brooks Book, Part 2") about Brian, "And then, as I was writing about horses, I tapped into this boy named Brian who was definitely not a horse. He was a child soldier. He seemed 'a lot' older to me and was interesting, so I just kept on writing his story in between my race horse stories. Those pieces I first wrote are actually found in book 2 of the series, The Legend of CùSithGrim. I was never going to share this novel series with anyone. It was one that I wrote for myself because the characters intrigued me. It was what I wrote because I wanted to. It became a book that I would want to read myself."
Q: Why are they both secretive about who they are?
Obviously Brian is a classified military secret who is part of an even bigger covert military force. He doesn't exist, remember? He doesn't appear in any state or federal systems, he doesn't have a social security number, he doesn't have a drivers license, and it's safe to say he doesn't have a passport either. He does not "exist" in our world. Avonlea was open with her life when she was a teenager. She dated, she was in the news and gossip, everyone knew who she was. But then when her stalker attacked her -- And here we haven't had more details other than she was out with Dave Garton and this man got past security with a knife and stabbed her. That was pretty much her breaking point on being in public and discussing her personal life again. She became reclusive and secretive as a form of self preservation. Why did I make them both this way? Brian, being non-existent, would never be the perfect match for a celebrity who is always in the limelight and never heard of a secret.
Q: Talking about the Portrait of an Unlikely Affair series, would you and your main characters of Portrait of an Unlikely Affair get along?
That's a funny thought because I do often wonder if they are 'real' people sometimes. Perhaps not with these names, but who and what they are. I've always loved the idea that real life is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense, life does not. I'm envisioning a formal event, like a reception, where I have all of these characters invited for, say a book launch, and I'm having to mingle with them. (The thought is rather awe-inspiring because I know them so well. They are superstars to me.) We'd get along, I think. I have always said that knowing Brian Ridley in real life would be interesting simply based on everything he knows! It'd be like having your own personal encyclopedia of the world. He'd be very handy when writing and homeschooling! Also, he isn't big on social settings and people and neither am I so there couldn't really be much of a conversation outside of knowledge. Avonlea would be an interesting person to know as well but I'd have to know her for several years to be totally comfortable with her overall characters as a person. I'm not sure what I would even talk to her about. She'd likely be nice and personable and I'd hope that I'd be able to converse well and not blubber. Of course, seeing them as a couple, I think they'd be rather intimidating to have a conversation with. I'd be rather star-struck. I actually feel like the Ridley family themselves would be more of the people that I'd likely be more at ease with because they are all much more 'normal.'
Q: Would you have changed anything about their story or their romance?
I couldn't even if I tried. I have tried writing from a storyline. I have tried plotting out their futures and all I get from it is writer's block. So, I let them "tell" me where they want the story to go. So, even if I would have wanted their story to go differently, it went the way it was meant to go.
Q: It's Valentine's Day. What songs are Brian and Avonlea going to dance to?
Their song. It's a totally fictional and made up song that I titled "You." So I imagine they'd dance to that. Out of curiosity I did a title search for the song (because you know, what if there are actually these people out there and what if the song exists too?! You know how writers think.) and the closest song to it that I could find was a song from Paul Brandt called, "You." Otherwise I think they'd dance to the King of Country music and Texan George Strait and his song, "The Man In Love With You." Or perhaps "What Else Ya Got," by Brett Eldredge.
%20(2).jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment