Booklover asked Shail Rajan:

What comes first for you—the plot, the characters, or the setting?

Shail Rajan This is such a great question! I can still remember the exact moment when a fully formed character – the one who would eventually become the MC in The Summer Breeze Series – popped into my head. I was sitting in my office in downtown San Diego, staring out the window, feeling a little bored and daydream-y. I wasn’t thinking about books or writing at all – but suddenly, Callie popped into my head. I knew what she looked like, how she spoke, and exactly what kind of personality she had.

It wasn’t the first time a character had popped into my head. But what was different this time was that I happened to be sitting in front of a laptop.

As I sat there daydreaming about her, I thought: Wouldn’t it be fun to give her a career? A family? A favorite meal? So purely for my own amusement, I started typing. And I kept going…until I had written 80,000 words.
Those words sat quietly on my laptop for years—seventeen, to be exact. And then I hit the publish button on my debut novel The Summer Breeze Bed & Breakfast.

I’m now getting ready to release Book 4 in The Summer Breeze Series, and I often find myself thinking about that moment that I first met Callie.

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