February 1, 2012

Anatomy of an eBook:  Untitled Sequel to Save The Best For Last/The Heat of Heat

In columns under this heading I'll be discussing how I construct a book, in case anyone's interested...

Obviously, I don't yet have a title for this book.  I was considering trying to combine the two, but unless I can come up with something better than She Who Heats Last, Heats Best, I'll abandon that idea.

I'll give you a little background information:

In Save The Best For Last, the main character was Genevieve L'Esperance, a citizen of a deliberately unnamed French-speaking Caribbean island (their political problems provide the background of Gen's dilemma).  Gen has two close friends, Francesca (Cesca) Perry and Olivia (Liv) Oliveira.  Not much is known about Cesca other than that her father is quite wealthy and owns an Upper East Side townhouse, and that she has an intense dislike of police officers due to their mistreatment of her and her family members.

Liv (who despite her Latino-sounding name is a black American; her paternal ancestors emigrated from the Cape Verde Islands, a Portuguese colony off the western coast of Africa) and her family also lived on the Upper East Side, but they are not rich:  Her father was a building superintendent and her mother a nurse.  The senior Oliveiras now work for a very wealthy family of magazine publishers in Connecticut, providing handyman, healthcare and valet services (for the elderly patriarch), as well as housekeeping.

The bridge between the two books is Liv's character, who is present in The Heat of Heat when the younger son of the publishing family, Ivan Price, brings Sinclair Hatchet to his family's home.  It's clear that something is going on between Liv and the older Price son, Brian, but since there were already three romances going on I couldn't go into any detail other than that they spent one night together that ended badly.  

Not surprisingly, readers have been asking me for more about Liv and Brian, and I'm working out the story.  It's going to be a challenge, since some of the action will take place in the period after Save The Best For Last ends and before The Heat of Heat begins, while other action will occur after The Heat of Heat ends.  But I love a challenge!

Stay tuned for more columns on this process.