Welcome my first blog on my new website.

When I knew I had to write this, I began mulling over ideas and almost immediately I decided to write about.

It’s a question that is often put to writers and every one of us will probably come up with a different answer, but I’ve put my thinking cap on and this has been my experience. When I wrote my first published romantic suspense, I was still obeying the write-what-you-know rule. Living in a winegrowing area with a brother-in-law who was a viticulturist made my decision easy. Each day I’d drive by the vineyards going to and from work. For the local population, the seasons are measured by the colour of the vines. One winter’s day we drove past bare vines, stark against the horizon as if they would never be green again. I had this sudden thought that this is ‘The Dead Season’ an appropriate title for what I came to think of as my serial killer romance. The publisher had other ideas and the book reached the shelves with a pretty cover that read, THE MAN FOR MAGGI., Although it was titled ‘The Dead Season’ when it won the Clendon Award and as it was being judged, it caught the eye of the senior editor at Silhouette Intimate Moments.

The second book was a no brainer as it flowed naturally from the first. I had two characters who were made for each other, I just needed to prove that to them. Jo Jellic played a secondary role in book one, almost the other woman but not quite. She loved the hero, but to him she was a friend, the DC to his Detective Sergeant. The end of book one left her in a very bad light. Of course I needed to redeem her and in her backstory I discovered she had four brothers. I just love when that happens. Rowan McQuaid. Now he has to be my favourite hero. I could slip into his persona without thinking, which is probably why he appeared in almost all my ‘Intimate Moments’. A wounded hero, Rowan was the one who paid for Jo’s moment of madness. In my next book he becomes the lover who paves Jo’s path to redemption. Add all that to a true-life incident that happened a few years earlier and I had the perfect idea for LOVE UNDER FIRE.

Talking about those brothers…well since I was writing romantic suspense at least a few of them had to be engaged in protecting the world. HEARTBREAK HERO began in Sydney then San Francisco – I love that city – where the heroine lived, and then moved back to New Zealand. Hey, these are international intelligence agents. But the heart of the story that drove the plot, I found in a tiny book on the history of New Zealand greenstone. A greenstone legend that, pointed me in the direction my plot needed to take, an awesome trip fraught with danger. One of the other tropes of romance writing is keep-the-hero-and-heroine-together as much as possible. That’s why I sent Kel Jellic and Ngaire Two Feathers McKay on a bus tour of New Zealand.

The year before I won the Clendon Award, I came third with another book that never saw the light of day, and the best thing about computers, nothing you write need be wasted. The one thing that really stood out for the judges that first time was the hero’s family. So in ‘SHADOWS OF THE PAST’ I gave that family to the heroine. Franc Jellic was a businessman, one with a lot to prove to both himself and his family. Yet the protective instincts honed by rest of the Jellic family hadn’t bypassed him. And when he discovers the woman he’s falling for is being stalked, these instincts immediately come to the fore.

It was the fiftieth anniversary of Edmond Hilary conquering Everest and there was a ton of research around for the taking. Surprisingly, when I wrote ‘Heartbreak Hero’ I gave Kel a twin, Kurt Jellic who just happened to be a guide and mountain climber based on Everest. The heroine, Chelsea, wanted Kurt to guide her to the spot where her sister and brother-in-law had been killed – murdered she believed – the season before. Unlike my other books in STRANDED WITH A STRANGER the heroine works for an international intelligence agency in Paris. I wrote this book with a map of Everest on my knee, so it was very flattering to be asked when I’d visited the mountain.

The fact that Mac, the agent who flew Chelsea back to Paris from Nepal turned out to be a half-brother of the Jellic siblings, by now shouldn’t come as any surprise – after all he was such a hunk. That’s the way my mind works when I’m writing suspense. HONEYMOON WITH A STRANGER is filled with intrigue, both past and present. Yet I can say that all these books originated from the same idea and the linking facts I discovered from their backstories. And though I did start out writing what I knew I ended up using facts I could find through research. Small ideas that grow, like the plot in Heartbreak Hero and all that enticing information hiding in a tiny little book.

Now I couldn’t finish this blog without writing about how I discovered the idea for THE CHIEFTAIN’S CURSE – my latest book released by Harlequin Escape Publishing. You might find this hard to believe, but the idea came to me in dream. And I admit this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. I went to bed one night and wakened in the morning with a complete short story, beginning, middle and end waiting to be written and it won the competition. Even so, Chieftain was different. I was lying in bed one Sunday morning – half asleep – waiting for my husband to get out the shower and wondering what to write next. Wondering if it was time to write my first Scottish book. All at once, as if he was in the same room, I saw and heard this tall, long-haired man shouting at the top of his lungs. Broad shouldered and completely naked, he shimmered with energy in a room lined with grey stone walls. Arms held high he shook his blood-stained fists and roared like a bull, ‘Will this bluidy curse never end…’ Oh yes he was Scottish, I recognised the accent.

Of course, my first task was to discover the identity of this tall handsome Scotsman, who had cursed him and why. These three questions took me on one of the more interesting journeys in my writing career. And I discovered that it doesn’t matter where an idea comes from, it’s what you do with it.

Frances Housden.