MORPHING INTO A SERIES_MARCH MADNESS

This March Madness has been extremely successful thus far and the gifts are wonderful. Today, you have an opportunity to claim your forever fame. My dear author friend, Zee Monodee, is coming to us all the way from the beautiful island of Mauritius, located in the southern Indian Ocean. Read on to find out what you have a chance to win today...


How the story of one Corpus Bride morphed into a series!Hey beautiful people! Pleasure to be here today—thanks Chelle for having me over. I know ye all are celebrating romance, and so am I, in a way…

Because, you see, I’m a sucker for secondary characters. I just have to give them their story, and of course, their HEA.And this definitely happened to me with my latest released series, the Corpus Brides, who are secret agents, spies, and even assassins, inside a clandestine agency that operates mainly in central Europe.

I sure didn’t start this series as one… It all began with one book…About 7 years ago, circa 2008, I started a stand-alone story where the heroine had amnesia. To recover what’s been erased from her memory, I made her travel to Marseille, where the accident that made her amnesiac happened. The buried pieces of the puzzle were there, in that old city, and a handsome and sinfully sexy police officer helped her in her quest there. I planned this to be a novella, 40,000 words tops.But that story idea fizzled after only 2 chapters... and I found myself with a snippet of an idea and no clue what to do with it. There definitely needed to be ‘more’ to make this more gripping; if I couldn’t be excited about a story, how on Earth could I make an editor and a reader interested?

Shortly after, I got sick, with the worst flu bug I’ve ever encountered in my life! I spent my days in a haze of slumber and wakefulness, doped up on cold medication that kept me loopy.

*eureka!* What if this was how my amnesiac heroine felt... because the man in her life kept her plied with drugs? Now, why would he be drugging her? Maybe so she won’t recover her memory...? What’s there in that buried past of hers? What doesn’t he want her to know, and why?I had the new start of a story—I took the old idea and worked if off this one. The sexy French cop turned into the woman’s former lover, whom she ‘sees’ in dreams when she is in her drugged-up state. She ditches the drugs, manages to lose her ‘husband’ in London, and escapes all the way to Marseille, to find ‘her’ cop!

And when she does find him, she also opens a can of worms, finds secrets beyond anything she could’ve imagined... as well as the existence of a clandestine espionage agency called the Corpus. Inside the ranks of this agency, a mutiny is brewing. Anyone could be a bad guy; no one you can be sure to trust...

I finished that story, and started shopping it around. The title was Walking The Edge. Around the same time a now-defunct publisher requested the full manuscript, a few friends prompted me to write a story about best friends turned lovers. I had this idea of a comedy-type story, where a spy returns to civilian life, but she reckons she’s never faced any mission as dire as being in her nutty family’s fold once again.
In another *eureka* moment, I saw an opportunity—all those backstory questions not answered in Walking The Edge, well, what if they were answered in this story, which I could turn into the prequel to this mutiny plot inside the ranks of the Corpus?I now had 2 books taking place inside the ranks of the Corpus – both heroine-centric, about strong, kick-arse women who worked for that agency. Dilemma, dilemma – what publisher will be interested in taking only 2 books about the same theme?I started the outline of Book 2, and suddenly, I ‘met’ this secondary character—a medical doctor, with a past shrouded in secrets, and who has a turbulent relationship with the head of the Corpus agency. What is her story? And how is she involved in this whole mutiny backdrop? What if everyone believed she was the mastermind behind that mutiny?

And there I had my idea for the third, and last, book based on these Corpus agents. Corpus agency; strong women; spies; all of them finding love in the midst of the turmoil in their lives... the name of Corpus Brides came to me, and that’s how this series got named.


You learned a bit about Amelia Jamison up there, the heroine from Walking The Edge (Corpus Brides: Book1). Come read the story of Rayne Cheltham, the spy who left the agency in the name of love, when she meets her childhood best friend, Ash Gilfoy, once again. Laugh at her foray back into the fold of her crazy Irish-Russian family... and see how she will deal with the danger that shrouds her life, the secrets she is forced to keep, and how she will have to stay alive when the rebellious group from inside the Corpus decides she shouldn’t bow out so easily. All this and more, in Before The Morning (Corpus Brides: Book 2).

  And finally, wrap it all up with Let Mercy Come (Corpus Brides: Book 3), the story of Valeriya Morozova, a woman who was known as Anastasiya inside the Corpus, and one who has cut and run from her duty. Why? Is she the one responsible for the mutiny? Or could she be harboring some other secret? The man sent to find her—an agent who goes by the moniker of Scott—reckons it must be something like the latter if not the former…but even he is not ready for the full scope of the skeletons buried in this woman’s wardrobe. Is she innocent, or is she playing everyone?You can find all these books which I have chosen to bring out as an indie author on this page http://zeemonodee.blogspot.com/p/corpus-brides-trilogy.html

I was totally bamboozled into giving secondary characters their story. What about you? Do you cheer for secondary characters to get their own tale? If yes, what’s your criteria that makes you go “OMG! He/she has got to have their own story!!!”?Tell me in the comments and you can enter the draw to create and name a character in one of my ongoing series! You can even give him/her your name and thus live eternally in a book J

I look forward to what ye all have to say!Again, thanks Chelle, for having me over and for allowing me to be part of this lovely event!

 From Mauritius with love,Zee
 

Zee Monodee
Stories about love, life, relationships...in a melting-pot of culture
 
Author, editor, smitten wife, in-over-her-head mum to a tween boy, best-buddy stepmum to a teenage lad, bookaholic, lover of all things fluffy & pink (& handbags!), chronic shoeholic, incompetent housewife desperate to channel Nigella Lawson (and who’ll prolly always fail at making domestic goddess status)...




Zee hails from the multicultural, rainbow-nation island of Mauritius, in the southern Indian Ocean, where she grew up on the figurative fence—one side had her ancestors’ Indian and Muslim culture; the other had modernity and the global village. When one day she realised she could dip her toes into both sides without losing her integrity, she found her identity.
This quest for ‘finding your place’ is what she attempts to bring in all her stories, across all the genres she writes. Her heroines represent today’s women trying to reconcile love, life, & relationships in a melting pot of cultures, while her heroes are Alpha men who often get put back into their rightful place by the headstrong women she writes. Love is always a winner in her stories, though; that’s a given.
 
**Find exclusive content about the latest on Zee and her works in her monthly newsletter before anyone else! http://eepurl.com/5GULr
 
**Read about her life & find out about all her books at her website/blog http://zeemonodee.blogspot.com/
 
**Friend her on Facebook (she loves to make friends & meet new people!) https://www.facebook.com/#!/zee.monodee
 
**Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/ZeeMonodee
 
**Email her at this addy (she loves to talk...prolly too much, even!) zeemonodee@gmail.com
  I hope you enjoyed this post. If so, please share it with others by clicking the social media icon below. Thanks for dropping in and as always please leave a comment, because I just love chatting with you. You can link up with me online using the icons above. Until the next time I'm just... WRITING MY DREAMS, CHELLE RAMSEY