Anatomy of a Narrative

In which I tell a story about telling a story…

Without telling too much of the story itself!

It’s almost time for my annual Christmas holiday to the States to hang with fam and friends for the perfect number of weeks (I have this down to a science at this stage).

Every year I say to myself, “I should write a Hallmark movie!” I love a good, goodish-bad Hallmark movie and – FUN FACT – got into this whole writing business via playwrighting and screenwriting. I’ve had plays produced off (off, off) Broadway, and have produced and directed several short films. I’ve also got a feature length screenplay in the drawer.

And with all my recent experience writing romance, I reckoned I was on to a winner.

Except for the fact that I didn’t have an idea…

***

Enter Christmas 2021, a mildish weather event as has been the case for the last while, and several cocktails around my brothers’ fire pit. I expressed my now annual impulse to write a Hallmark movie, and we chatted a bit about setting. Not another cupcake bakery or bookshop or Christmas tree lot, no ma’am and/or sir.

My brother went inside to get another round and in the interim I got the inspiration I was lacking: what better place for me to set anything than an equestrian centre?

Lil bro came back and lucky him, got brainstormed at for twenty minutes.

The next morning I asked if he had any paper and pen and I made my first notes.

***

Two years later almost to the month, and I have a third draft of a screenplay that I am pretty much in love with.

She went on a journey: from initial conception as a screenplay to a novel to pitch to the actual Hallmark book publishers; an 11 page novel synopsis; the closure of the Hallmark publishing company that utterly took the wind out my sails; to waking up one day and deciding ‘feck it, I’m writing a movie’ and thanks to that synopsis, having the spine of the thing there to be fleshed out.

It’s the fastest I’ve ever written a screenplay, and I think that my novel writing background has really made it rich.

So now I’m going back to that other script to see what shape it’s in, and I’m adapting one of my early novels, which I’ve been meaning to do for actual years. I’m on a roll!

***

This is also a way of saying that I’ve no novels scheduled to come out next year… so far. The publishing company who published The Shapeshifters of the Beau Monde did not see their way to extending me another contract, despite having the next two books written.

I’m considering self-publishing them, and will have news of that in the new year.

I’ve also got the first novel in a new Shifter series, and a contemporary paranormal novel sitting in the drawer. It’s not for lack of material, anyway – I’ll keep you posted!

I wish you joy if you observe the annual celebrations, and I wish you peace and relief if this a hard time of year for you as the season passes.

xoxo Susanna

***

Here’s a link to the series, if you’re so inclined!

***