posted on October 8, 2019 by Eileen Dreyer

Miss Felicity Arrives

It all began with a challenge. “Write one page,” my publisher said, “with a hook at the end.”

To what purpose? I asked.

We’re going to us it as a light bit of marketing for your next book, said they.

Well, okay. I like challenges. I like deadlines (let’s be honest. I can’t produce without a hot deadline). I went about my business until about twenty minutes before that one arrived. And then, out of the blue, the first line came to me:

It was Miss Felicity Chambers’ considered opinion that more time needed to be spent cleaning beneath beds.

Hmmm, I thought. That’s promising. Definitely light, right in my historical period as far as atmosphere, and easy to explain why (she is, of course, hiding under a bed). I wrote the page, it turned out to be even more fun than I’d thought, and then put it aside to concentrate on the full-length Drake’s Rakes historical romance I was finishing, TWICE TEMPTED.

But Felicity Chambers would not leave me alone. She belonged nowhere in the bible I’d put together about my gentleman spies and their prospective mates. The tone of her story was far lighter than anything I’d been writing, and it seemed she wasn’t going to share any of her love-making. Her story was sweet, in fact, which has never been my forte. Short and sweet and light.

So I worked on it for myself, especially during this last three years when life has interfered to the point where the regular voices in my head went silent.

My Drakes seemed to be hiding. But Felicity would not leave me alone. Like most of my favorite characters, she nudged and prodded and whispered to me as I was falling asleep until I had no choice but write down her story.

She isn’t a fashion queen. She isn’t nobility, at least not legally. She is, in fact, the newest instructor of piano and deportment at Miss Manville’s Academy for Superior Girls. Which makes the summons to the home of a duke all the more confusing. What is she doing there? Who wanted her to come? Why?

Before she gets her complete answer, she is insulted, shot at, and set loose on a terrified horse. She is introduced to Lord Flynt Bracken (named after incendiary rocks and prickly bushes, as Felicity tells him) and given an opportunity that seems to be too good to be true. She just has to stay long enough to find out if it is.

Here’s the best part (at least for me). As I was writing Felicity’s story, I realized that she had found her way into the world of Drake’s Rakes after all. And so, in between the 5th and 6th books of my 9 book Drake’s Rakes series, TWICE TEMPTED and the book I’m currently calling THE CHRISTMAS BOOK WITH A THREE IN IT, Felicity has popped up as the short before the next story.

   

Eileen Dreyer

Eileen Dreyer

Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Eileen Dreyer is actually evil twins. Known as Kathleen Korbel to her Silhouette readers, she has published thirty-seven novels and novellas and 11 short stories in not only the various genres of romance (including historical, suspense, fantasy and contemporary) but suspense---most particularly medical forensic suspense, where she kills off the people who annoyed her when she worked as a trauma nurse She came to publishing from that world of trauma nursing, which taught her some very important lessons, the most important being "don't sweat the small stuff," or, as her family puts it, "come see me when you get hit by a bus." In addition to trauma, she is trained in death investigation and Tactical Medicine (technically she is eligible to be a medic on a SWAT team). Eileen won her first publishing award in 1987, being named the best new Contemporary Romance Author by Romantic Times. Since then she has garnered not only a prestigious Anthony Award nomination for mystery, but five Rita Awards from the Romance Writers of America, which afforded her a place as only the fourth member in the RWA Hall of Fame. Eileen is a voracious reader---of everything---who started writing at ten, when she ran out of Nancy Drews. She writes in two genres, because she believes in the message of both: hope and justice. (well, and because she hasn't finished that big fantasy yet) You can figure out which is which. A frequent speaker at writer's conferences and universities all across the country (and more recently, Italy), Eileen is a member not only of Romance Writers of America, but Novelists, Inc, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and, just in case things go wrong, Emergency Nurses Association. She has also assumed the mantle of unofficial mascot for the International Association of Forensic Nurses, a new forensic subspecialty that, amazingly enough, has begun to show up in her work. A lifelong resident of St. Louis, Missouri, Eileen has been married for forty-four years to husband Rick, and has two children and might have grandchildren. She also has animals but refuses to expose them to the glare of the limelight. An addicted traveler, she has sung in some of the best Irish pubs in the world, and enjoys the kind of hands-on book research that lets her salve an insatiable curiosity. She counts film producers, police detectives and Olympic athletes as some of her sources and friends.

https://www.eileendreyer.com

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