TAKE ME FOR A RIDE by Karen Kendall

Every writer experiences a journey while creating a manuscript, and I’d like to share part of mine during my work on TAKE ME FOR A RIDE, the third book in my series about an agency that recovers stolen art.

The story depends on a little synchronicity, a little personal history and a lot of coincidences I encountered during my research.

First, I had left my characters Avy and Liam on their way to Moscow at the end of the second book in the series (TAKE ME TWO TIMES). So I knew that I had to have some kind of subplot, at least, happening in Moscow during TAKE ME FOR A RIDE.

I did a little Googling and discovered that the patron saint of Moscow is St. George. This is where synchronicity kicked in, because when I was growing up, my mom had a big rug hanging on the wall of our house that depicted St. George and the dragon. (It had been my grandfather’s.) While I no longer have the rug, it is one of those deeply entrenched images from my childhood.

Further research on St. George dug up the facts that Catherine the Great founded an order of St. George . . . and I had one of those “what if” moments! What if my characters were trying to hunt down a St. George necklace that had belonged to Catherine the Great?

I thought about my proposed main character, Eric McDougal, who is definitely no saint, LOL. He’s never been anyone’s idea of a knight in shining armor. And again, I had a “what if” moment. What if McDougal was forced to become a girl’s knight, against all of his instincts? What if he suddenly discovered a conscience after all these years of womanizing . . . and had to struggle against his true nature as well as the external plot of the book?

Better yet, what if under all that attitude and bad boy bravado, McDougal was really, secretly, a nice guy . . . with a lot of hidden psychological reasons for behaving the way he did? Hmmmmm.

And so, TAKE ME FOR A RIDE was born. But my personal journey with this book gets even stranger. My grandparents were very much affected by World War II, and I’ve always thought about that. While my grandfather himself wasn’t Jewish, he had many Jewish friends and was penalized for trying to help one in particular. It led to his personal ruin.

During the writing process on RIDE, which contains a Nazi restitution element, I received a phone call from a lawyer in Berlin . . . and the hair on the back of my neck stood up, because he was calling to tell me that I might be part heir to a piece of art wrongfully taken by the Nazi’s. Never mind that the piece isn’t worth much . . . it’s a piece of family history, and that phone call was eerie beyond belief!

So these are little bits and pieces of my writer’s journey during the creation of TAKE ME FOR A RIDE. I hope this opens a window into how personal writing can be. Have any of you experienced strange hints from the universe while you’ve been working on a creative project? If so I’d love to hear from you!

To read an excerpt from TAKE ME FOR A RIDE, or to enter my contest to win a gorgeous sterling silver St. George necklace, visit me at http://www.karenkendall.com/.

Post a comment and you could win a signed copy of TAKE ME IF YOU CAN, the first book in the series.

Happy Holidays! xoxoxo,

Karen