From the Brokken Road to The Grooms of Tonica

The Brokken Road series was the first time I had been involved with a multi-author, shared universe. There were a lot of reasons why the series failed to gain traction, none of which I am comfortable going into. Let’s just say that writing in that series opened my eyes to a lot of things.

When the other authors in the series decided it had run its course and began discussing closing the Brokken Road and pulling their books from publication, I found myself on the horns of a dilemma: pull the books from publication, rename them, recover them, and republish them OR completely rewrite the two I had in the series. I chose the second option, but something was missing.

During the course of writing the original series, I had brain-stormed some ideas for a secondary character with the owner of the series. He was her character, but I had fallen for him. So, when the decision was officially made to end the series, I asked if I could take that character and write him. Graciously, Shelia said yes and even put it in writing that I could “take possession” of her “intellectual property” and she would not make any claims on him.

I completely rewrote the stories for Mathew and Jon. One of the things I did was throw the bedroom door wide open. I can write closed door romance (I have three of them) but these books always felt incomplete before the massive rewrites. And then I sat down to write Klint St. John’s story. Almost none of the backstory that Shelia and I had brainstormed was kept. He became a whole new character. To be honest, he’s one of my top three favorite characters.

If you read The Grooms of Tonica series, he might become one of your favorites, too.