Strange Love ... maybe

Raul, he's in charge by the way, decided that not only did he want a steady of the NNNM (nearly naked and naughty men) but he wanted names, dates, and places.

Unfortunately for him, I have been haunted by old family photographs.  And I do mean OLD.  Think 1920s to 1940s ... small town, big Catholic family, and lots of people with unusual names.

Specifically the last name of Strange.

True enough.

I don't know which of my great aunts married a Strange, but one did and she had multiple children. (It could have been Agnes or Gertrude, I'm fuzzy on which one it was.)  I don't recall ever having met the aunts or those cousins, though I am sure that we were inflicted on them at one time.




The point?

More to the point, do I have a point?

Raul is HAPPY!  Very, very happy and he is insisting that writing commence - he'd prefer the pitter patter of fingers on the keyboard, but he says more when it is long hand.

Take a woman, put her in an unusual job, give her the strange last name, and see what happens.  Especially if she were proud of the last name and it was part of the name of the business.

Add someone who is Manny-esque ... insert a fear of commitment (been there and done that), a pair of dogs who don't belong together ... shake (or stir) and see what comes out.

Why am I so happy to be related to a family of Stranges?

It feeds the muse and the imagination.

PLUS everyone talks a lot about a platform and a tagline.

A family of Stranges does lend itself (themselves?) to all kinds of tagline possibilities.

Same Story, Different Title?

For a long time now, I've used the excuse about my writing that the 'muse was quiet.'

Ram/Evan aka Matt Jett Schaefer

Frankly, Raul has a MASSIVE crush on a character I used named Manny.  He has a smaller crush on Evan, but in his heart of hearts, there is only one MANNY.

Why do I bring this up?

Frankly, I loved Manny, too.

I know what kind of soap he uses ... his favorite brand of salsa (trick question, he makes his own) ... and what he likes to do in his off time, but we won't go there.

The problem?

I didn't want to recreate and rewrite the wheel.

But as I've been reading authors who do a lot of series work, even if the series has multiple hero types in it, the authors use the same themes/descriptions/plot devices. Sure it looks like things are different from story to story, but read enough of their work and you will find the repetition.

I have a feeling if I had ever read Jane Austen closely enough, or if she had written more than six books, she would have done the same thing.

My point and do I have one?

Sure.

A friend told me she collected books by Betty Neels.  She wrote 134ish books for Harlequin in the 60s through the 90s.

Why is this important (other than the massive output)?

Manny aka Alejandro Fernandez

The hero is virtually always a Dutch doctor and the woman is either a nurse or a caregiver or sorts (who is woefully underemployed).  The stories are quiet, chaste, and fairly simply laid out.

Therefore, I CAN and I WILL write Manny as many times as Raul wants me to - I will type a different name but it will always be the same man ... hey if it could work for Betty Neels, why not for me?