We at SmexyBooks are always delighted to welcome Shiloh Walker back to the blog.

YAY!!!

Today, Shiloh has stopped by the blog to give our readers some insight and thoughts into the process behind her small town romance suspense series, trilogies, and how they come to be.

Hi Shiloh and welcome to SmexyBooks. We are so glad you stopped by to visit and chat with us. So, please, tell our readers a little bit about your writing and where all your fabulous ideas come from.

When I decided to try my hand at romantic—straight romantic suspense with no paranormal elements, the first idea that came to me ended up being what would become my Ash series, and all of that started with Lena, a woman, living in a big house outside of a small town…and she hears a scream coming from the woods outside her home.  If you’ve read the books, you probably can understand why this series wouldn’t have worked as well if I’d tried to use a setting other than a small town, and small towns are something I’m comfortable with.

But the idea was too much for one book and as I started to rough out the idea, a few more characters came to me.  I’m not a plotter by nature, but I was sketching down notes and other people—the characters who’d eventually become either the heroes and heroines of the series, or major characters in their own way—made themselves known to me and that’s where I draw the story from.  My stories come from the characters as I discover who they are.  Basically, it’s like they have a story to tell me, and it’s my job to write it down.  The town of Ash had three central stories—thus the trilogy.

It turned out to be a method that’s probably going to work well for me.

Why small towns?

I grew up a ‘big’ small town, although it’s getting bigger—it’s close to Louisville, Kentucky so I’m also familiar with bigger cities…the best of both worlds, really.  As to why I like using small towns, I dunno exactly but it’s probably because there’s a sense of intimacy.  You get to know people more—it’s like they become their own little world and you get to know everybody—or you think you do.  Which makes it that much more riveting when the skeletons start falling out of the closets.

On writing trilogies and small town and suspense, well, there are a couple of ways I guess I could go about trying to do it, I guess.  But again, I want to point out that I am not a plotter…I don’t sit down a notebook or index cards…the closest I came to anything organized is a giant dry erase board that will have the names of the major characters—the heroes, the heroines, the bid, bad thing that will happen and the bad guy.  That’s usually how it works and the big bad thing that happens is something that unfolds through the series.

Sometimes readers don’t like how they have to read all three books to figure out the mystery—they want the suspense plot resolved by the end of the first book…and maybe another suspense plot for book 2, and then a third for book 3?

But that’s not a method that would work for me, and it’s not just because I want people buying the entire trilogy.  I’m certainly not opposed to that… *G*

Why drag it out over three books?

It’s not dragging it out.  :OP The ideas that come into my head for the trilogies I write just don’t work as stand alones. Now the romance arc—the hero and the heroine featured in each book—they will have their resolution.  They will end up together by the end of the story, but the mystery/suspect aspect, that’s not as easy to wrap up in one book, not with the kind of stories I’ve branched out into writing.

I write small town suspense and to be honest, it’s more realistic to have the suspense arc run through the whole series.  A trilogy is going to be set in one locale…that’s kind of the point of doing small town stuff, so people can get to know the people who live in that town, not just the hero and the heroine.  But everybody else, the bookstore owner, the nosy woman who runs the salon…or the coffee shop…the lady who has a bookstore and the cop who everybody hates and they just want to get rid of him.  The people who are the gossips, the one who you know you can count on if you need a hand, the good people and the bad people.  That’s the point of writing small town stuff…or that’s why I like writing it, and reading it.

But how realistic would it be if I…oh, I don’t know, let’s go some made up place—and I’m making this up, haven’t googled it, so if it’s real, it’s pure chance.  But let’s say there’s a town, we’ll call it Abbott Point.

OooooO, Abbott Point. Tell us more!

Abbott Point is a nice little small town, or so we think.  There’s a capable chief of police—they’ve got all of two full time cops and a part-time. There’s a sheriff and two deputies who handle the county stuff.  The sheriff is your typical good ol’ boy…in short, he’s a sexist asshole and the town council is biding time until he retires.  A busybody grouch who owns the bookstore just across from the police department—his estranged daughter has moved to town because the man has cancer and she wants to try to mend fences before he dies.  There’s a man in the building next door who owns the pub.  He wants to buy the bookstore so he can expand.  She wants to keep the bookstore.  They are going to fall in love, clash, have lots of smexy times…but first…the old grouch sees a murder.  Now he’s on a lot of pain meds and he’d also been sipping some whiskey—which is a no no with narcotics, BTW, so the cops aren’t entirely sure whether they believe him, especially because there is no body.  But then the man who goes through town collecting cans, picking up garbage, that kinda thing comes across something…weird.  Turns out  he’s found himself some body parts.  We have a killer.  Maybe it’s a serial killer, maybe not.  I just might make the nice, respectable chief of police a killer and it’s the sexist asshat sheriff who actually pins him down, although he dies in a wicked firefight at the end.

Viola.  Book 1.   Mystery solved, everybody in town breathes a sigh of relief, cuz it’s over…except, it’s not.  I still have book 2 to write.

Book 2, well, we had a killer.  Can’t do another killer.  So, girls are getting drugged at the local high school.  FYI, I don’t write about rape because it’s fun—I’ve got several reasons but I’m already going on a lot here, so that’s a topic for somewhere else.  Now, we have a new and improved chief of police and he is going to pair up with the even more newer and much more improved county sheriff, heya, we got a woman in this job and that’s going to turn the heads of the remaining good ol’ boys in town.  So the cop and the sheriff meet at the absolutely awesome, new and improved pub/bookstore that has recently been renovated after the marriage of wonderful hero and heroine from book 2.  They don’t know who each other is, cuz they are both new in town and they end up out in the back parking lot, fumbling, hot and heavy and sweaty all over each other.  The next day, they meet at the town council meeting where they are formally introduced and well, it gets weird, but then, a mother shows up with her daughter, filing a rape complaint against an unknown assailant.  The cop flips on, personal matters get pushed aside. To complicate things, we have some star athletes at the high school that just have to be connected and half the town wants to protect them, while the others are determined to see justice done.

I’m thinking I really want to read this trilogy. *laugh*

But I haven’t even finished…that’s only book 2!

So far, we have a killer who was a cop and now a string of teenagers being assaulted.  By this point, I’m thinking a good third of the population are reading to put their houses up for sale.

I wasn’t going to plot out book 3, but I’m on a roll…I might have a cat burglar—she’s going to hit the houses of the older people and take all their precious jewels, because she’s angry at everybody in town, because everybody in town forced her and her mother out when she was just a child and her mother slaved away, working her fingers to the bone before she caught pneumonia and died when the heroine (and the cat thief is the heroine, naturally) was only ten years old, leaving her in foster care where she never again knew love.  The man who catches her in the act is going to be the DA when she attempts to break into his grandma’s house, I think.

And all of this is happening in this small town…probably within 3-12 months.  Cuz I don’t linger in one town too long.  I have others to mess up. ;)

So, this will never make it to print? *sad face*

No.  You won’t see it in print.  Could I make it happen?  Maybe. Once. But it would be like juggling dynamite and if I tried to keep doing this? It would get old, very fast, not just for me, but for the readers.  Because while this brought a smirk to my face thinking up three plots that I could tie together in one small town that I could wrap up within the span of one book, it wouldn’t work for long.  Not for me and if I can’t buy the viability of a story line, a series arc, there’s no way I can convince the reader it’s worth taking a shot on.

I know small towns.  I was born in Louisville, but raised in various ‘big’ little towns and now I live in a small town.  Weird things happen, yes.  I was in high school when a classmate was pulled in as a character witness for a friend of hers–a friend who’d been charged, and was later convicted, of a brutal murder. Yes, absolutely bad things happen.

But we don’t tend to see tragic event 1 followed closely on the heels by tragic event 2, then a third…just weeks later. Not only do we not want to see it, I just don’t think it happens.  Unless you live in Sunnydale.  I write fiction, yes… but I try to be realistic when I can.

I think I rambled on long enough there…

You never ramble. *laugh*

Thank you Shiloh for stopping by today and giving our readers a valuable and informative behind the scenes look at the magic behind the books.

Shiloh currently has a new romance suspense series slated to release-Secrets & Shadows- with the first novel- Deeper Than Need- releasing June 3, 2014 by St. Martins. Walker has also released three prequel novellas that introduce us to this small town and the residents that inhabit it.  You can read more about this series and her other books at www.shilohwalker.com.

Later today we are reviewing  the last novella in the Secrets & Shadows trilogy-Long For Me.