Tiffany Faw asked Susan Mallery:

What is the hardest part of writing a book for you?

Susan Mallery The middle of a book is always the hardest for me, making sure that I have enough story to keep the readers' interest. Always beware of the dreaded "sagging middle." There's a term for it because it's something every writer faces. The beginning always has plenty going on because you're introducing the characters and setting up the situation. The ending is exciting because you've been working toward it the whole book, and it's probably the driving force of the whole idea. The middle is where a writer can get in trouble. You need to keep the characters in conflict with each other, bit by bit starting to resolve their differences, and you need to do it in an interesting, dynamic way. And for me, another layer of challenge is that I want to do it in a different way than any of my other 140+ books.

For those of you reading this who are interested in writing, here's a bit more of a technical explanation of my process: I think of the story structure as a circus tent. There are shorter poles holding up both ends, and then one big pole that holds up the center of the tent. That's the midpoint of the book. That gives me something to write to, and something to write from. The midpoint is what shakes up everything in the story, stirs it up, flips it around.

With DAUGHTERS OF THE BRIDE, I plotted each sister's romance separately, and then wove together the strands before I started writing. My goal with a story like this, with multiple storylines, is to make sure that the three stories are interconnected, so the book feels cohesive. So the events of one sister's story must affect the events of another's, and that in turn might affect the third. The midpoints fall close together for each of the three stories, and then of course, they need to come to their satisfying ends at the same time.

And of course, all of that must be done in such a way as to be a seamless reading experience. Readers should be able to relax into the story, feeling that it's unfolding in a very real and yet surprising way. I hope I've achieved that with DAUGHTERS OF THE BRIDE. It truly was a pleasure to write from start to finish. Loved every minute of it.

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