Guest Blog - Kate Davies

Taking a Chance – On Coincidence!by Kate Davies
My newest ebook, Take A Chance On Me, is going to be released in print in January, and recently I had the opportunity to re-read it for galley edits. Going over the galley is the final opportunity to check for errors and typos before the book goes to print. And once again, reading over the manuscript, I was struck by how closely my hero Tom resembles my favorite actor, Eric Sheffer Stevens.
That's not unusual, I know; many writers find inspiration in actors or singers or athletes when creating a character. What is unusual, however, is that I wrote the book well before I ever laid eyes on ESS.
(Who's Eric Sheffer Stevens? Well, if you don't watch American soaps, you'd likely never have heard of him before. He's a stage actor from New York who was cast as Dr. Reid Oliver on As The World Turns last year. It was originally supposed to be a secondary character in a secondary storyline, a few months of steady work between stage gigs. But his talent – and the fan response – ended up being far beyond anyone's expectations, and he stayed with the show through the final episodes. He's now been cast in a new FOX comedy starting in November, called I Hate My Teenage Daughter. So his relative anonymity may be coming to an end soon.)
In a way, it shouldn't have surprised me that there was a connection to Eric Sheffer Stevens. Ever since I started following his career, I've found our paths crossing in some unexpected ways.
First, through a network of friends, I was able to score an interview with him for my blog. I wasn't a soap writer, or professional journalist, and I didn't have an entertainment-themed website. But the hottest discovery on daytime television last year agreed to a phone interview with me. Check out the interview!
Then I had a chance to fly down to California on short notice to attend the filming of the pilot for his new show. (description of that trip, including the part where he runs after us in the studio lot to thank us for coming, is here.)
Although I didn't deliberately base my hero on Eric, once I realized how much Tom resembled him, I decided to run with the connection. When I turned in my cover art sheet, I attached a photo of Eric for the cover artist to see what the hero looked like. And when it came time to work on promo, I turned to Hayley Charlesworth, a cartoonist I knew from the ATWT days. She'd created the Reid Oliver Cartoon Saga, which gained a major following on YouTube, including the actor himself, who declared them "genius". She made a book trailer for me, using Eric as inspiration, and it turned out fantastic. And the drawing of Tom from the video also made it onto my Romance Trading Cards for the book.

So sometimes, connections spring up in unexpected places. The challenge, for me, is to recognize and embrace them when they happen.
Discussion time! What unexpected connection surprised you recently?