It’s Trivia Thursday instead of Trivia Tuesday this week because I was out of town, but better late than never!

Today’s trivia revolves around our Recipe for Romance series. Two stories in the series have already been published, the third will be published on July 24, and the fourth will be published later this year. Right now, we’re planning to end the series with #4, but the door is open for future stories if we ever get a plot bunny that bites hard enough.

As part of our collaboration process, we have to decide which of the characters we’re going to write. We start by picking which main character we want to write (or sometimes they pick us!) and then divide up the secondary characters more or less equally so we have about the same writing load throughout the story.

In the Recipe series, I’ve been writing against type. I tend to write the characters who are more inclined to brood, snark, and angst, which means I’d usually be the one to write a character like Stephen Pierce. But not this time! For those who might be curious, here’s a breakdown of the characters who have been seen in the series so far and which one of us wrote them.

Rhys Montgomery – McKay (i.e. me)
Clay Turner – Ari
Robert Logan – McKay
Stephen Pierce – Ari
Max Boyd – McKay
Darius Cooper – Ari

For minor characters, such as Stephen’s hapless sous chef Craig, we tend to trade off. For example, Ari wrote Payton Wilkes in the scene that created the main conflict for Rhys and Clay. The scene was in Rhys’ POV, so I was writing the bulk of the scene, and she picked up Payton so I’d have someone to play off of.

As a side bit of trivia, Payton got his name because I was thinking about Peyton Place and Ashley Wilkes from Gone With the Wind while trying to come up with a suitably Southern-sounding name.

I liked writing Rhys and Max since they were different from my usual characters. Rhys in particular was a nice change of pace for me; I liked writing a charming Southern gentleman who gets so caught up in making plans for a perfect confession of love that he almost loses his man. One of Rhys’ particular quirks is alluded to throughout the series, but I don’t think it’s ever been spelled out: when he gets depressed, Rhys holes up with a bottle of the best bourbon he can buy and listens to Patsy Cline songs on endless repeat until he starts feeling better. The worst instance occurred after his father’s death, a bit of info which I don’t think made the final cut of Bay Leaves and Bachelors. I can’t hear a Patsy Cline song now without thinking about Rhys and Clay, so she’d definitely be on the series soundtrack!

So far, my characters in the series haven’t been snarky at all, but that’s going to change with Ginger and Gentlemen, which is the third story in the series. For that one, I wrote Ian Pierce, Stephen’s younger brother, and let’s just say certain traits run in the family. 😉  Ian is hands-down one of the most fun characters I’ve ever written because he rarely bothers to censor himself. He was also one of the more mouthy characters I’ve ever had in my head; he choreographed sex scenes and insisted I take notes so I wouldn’t forget what he wanted when the time came.

Readers will be able to find out more about Ian and his rocky relationship with his snarky older brother, Stephen when Ginger and Gentlemen is released by Torquere Press on July 24!

Stephen Pierce and Robert Logan are secondary characters (so far) in our Recipe for Romance series, but their predecessors have been leads in our stories for years.

Ari and I began writing together when we met as fanfiction writers in the Harry Potter fandom, and we bonded over a mutual love of the characters Remus Lupin and Severus Snape. In fact, we spent years writing those two characters, and over that time, we developed definite preferences for their characterization and interaction. After the book series ended, we kept going more and more AU (alternate universe) until we finally decided we might as well start writing original fiction.

One of our AUs involved casting the characters as a chef and his personal assistant. Snape was a snarky, demanding perfectionist and Lupin was his devoted PA. It was that version of the characters we had in mind when we began developing Stephen and Robert in “Bay Leaves and Bachelors”, both as a nod to our fanfiction roots and as a way to revisit variations on character types we wrote and loved for so long.

The original chef and PA story is wildly different from the path Stephen and Robert are currently taking, but writing those two feels (for me) like slipping on a pair of comfortable old shoes.

The newest novella in the Recipe for Romance series, Fennel and Forgiveness, is now available at Torquere Press. Fans of Stephen and Robert may be glad to know that the next novella, “Ginger and Gentlemen”, will focus heavily on Stephen and will introduce his younger brother, Ian, with whom he’s always had a rocky relationship. Let’s just say snark runs in the family. 😉  “Ginger and Gentlemen” will be published by Torquere Press on July 24!