The heroine doesn’t need to wait for love
A heroine doesn’t need to be sitting around waiting for her prince. A backstory can serve different purposes. It can establish a secret relationship, a reason the character acts a particular way, or it can summarize action that has occurred before the story begins. For a romance, the story usually begins when the hero and heroine meet, but what were they doing before that moment? In “Impending Love and Lies,” both the hero and heroine have backstories which are revealed later in the story. Instead of a flashback like the one in “Casablanca” the characters either show or tell portions of their stories.
Historical romance novel “Impending Love and Lies” is available at http://goo.gl/B7lKMs and other distributors in print and ebook format.
Colleen’s backstory is typical for a young woman. She has been courted for several months and expects a proposal of marriage any day from Simon Blackwater. Instead, she reads that he is engaged to a socialite, Margaret Radcliffe, he met on a trip to New York. Anyone who has read “Gone With The Wind” will recognize this situation. Scarlett expected Ashley Wilkes to propose to her but learns he is announcing his engagement to Melanie Wilkes. Like Scarlett, Colleen confronts Simon in the parlor of her grandmother’s inn. He admits the engagement and asks her to be his mistress. She throws him out. Like Rhett, our hero, Blake Ellsworth, is resting in a sofa and overhears the entire exchange.
Blake owns several hotels which he has inherited from his father. He sold the one in Tennessee under suspicious circumstances since the Confederate Army was leaving and gold went missing. He was being set up by Clyde and Buck Cassell who hope to steal the gold from him once he passes Union lines. He avoids them by boarding the canal boat owned by Colleen’s grandfather. Blake is shot by the Cassell brothers and Colleen keeps him alive until her father, Dr. Sterling Beecher, can remove the bullet. Blake wants to join the Union Army but now must wait until his collarbone is healed. While Colleen nurses her broken heart, he travels to New York to confront his stepmother, Nancy, and stepsister, Valerie Ferguson, about their spending habits. Valerie is best friends with Margaret Radcliffe and the reader should know they will cause trouble for Colleen, who travels with her sister, Jessica, to Washington to help their sister, Jem, who is expecting a baby. Blake’s personal life and goal to have his stepfamily taken care of so he can join the army makes him avoid Colleen as far as matrimony. He does not want to marry her and leave her a widow, which keeps them apart even as they fall in love. In a love story, you need a reason to keep the couple apart until the end. A backstory helps with that delay.
Blurb: The scruffy-looking passenger turns out to be more trouble than Colleen “Cole” Beecher bargained for, especially since Blake becomes her patient. After a suitor spurs her to marry a rich socialite, she travels to Washington City and throws herself into work to help the Union cause. When Blake offers her a job at his hotel, she takes it for the money, but her heart desires more.
When hotel owner Blake Ellsworth boards a canal boat to escape the Cassell brothers, he meets a headstrong beauty who saves his life when he is shot. Despite his attraction to her, Blake is determined to join the Union army once his shoulder heals. Fearing he may make Cole a widow, Blake won’t propose marriage, but eight weeks is a long time to spend with a woman who stirs more than his imagination.
#CivilWar #historic #romance #Antietam #canal #wrpbks
