Things I learned while writing Kissed

We are exactly four weeks out from release day! I’ve got a lot planned over the next month and I can’t wait to share it with you all. I’ll be blogging once a week (on Thursdays) and posting things on Twitter and Facebook everyday. I hope you’ll join me on this countdown to release day.

This week I’m going to be talking about things  I’ve learned while writing the book.

The first interview question people always ask when asking about a book is, “Where did you get the idea for this book?”

That answer is complicated. There’s a lot to a book. What part do you want to know about? The kissing, the cult, the roses, the Ozarks, Vegas, the list goes on and on and on. A book is so much more than just one idea. In every book I read there are literally thousands of ideas.  I will say this, this book started with the idea of the first kiss of the book (more on that next week.)

I love learning things from reading fiction. Mostly this is about places. I’ve read books set in India, Australia, England, China, and more. Each one fuels my desire to travel and see those places. (Most of the time. Australia is still on my no way list. Too many snakes.) But other books have taught me about things the main characters were interested in. Falconry, Geocaching, elephants, and BMX biking. I love books that teach me something new. Something that I’d never sought out myself if I’d never read the book. I try to infuse that into all the books I write. Of course, Kissed was about the roses.

When I was a child I spent every summer with my grandparents in western Michigan. My grandfather always had amazing rosebushes. I loved helping him trim the bushes (in another words, hold the bucket while he deadhead the roses) and taking in roses to put in a vase on the table. One of my favorite memories was when I decided I wanted to make rose perfume. My grandma obliged and in no time we were boiling rose petals. Let me tell you, rose perfume does not come from boiling petals. The whole house stank for days. I can’t even describe the smell.

When Naomi needed an obsession I decided on roses. I checked out all the books in our little hometown library on growing roses (a total of six books) and my research began. Soon, just reading about them wasn’t enough. We went to Lowe’s and bought five rose bushes. I loved those roses and they flourished. I’m firmly convinced that plants can tell when you love them because roses are supposed to be tricky to grow and I had no trouble at all. Anything else I’ve ever tried to grow died in a couple of weeks. I have a black thumb. (The pic above is from my own rosebushes. I was so proud of them.)

Here are a few things I learned:

There are over 1500 species of roses.

There isn’t just one rose smell. Roses can smell like oranges, cinnamon, clove, sweet, or spicy.

You can make rose tea from rose petals. I imagine it would taste a lot like the smell from my grandma’s kitchen the day we made rose perfume. Yuck.

Join me this week as I share other things I learned while writing the book. 28 days until Kissed is released.