Fiction Friday–Some Quilt Trivia

To continue the double-release month of October, let’s talk about a few more trivia tidbits for the novella in Holiday Defenders from Love Inspired Suspense and Quilted by Christmas from Abingdon!

This week, some QbC trivia:

When Josh first showed up, he was tall and dark, sort of a young Nathan Fillion type, though not exactly.  That sort of build and hair, I guess you could say.  (Ask an author, it’s actually kind of hard to describe the pictures in our heads sometimes except to say, “It sort of kind of looks like that but not exactly the same as that.”  Or maybe that’s just me?)  He was also working construction with his dad and was a volunteer fireman.  Well…  I wound up cutting the part about the volunteer fireman.  Why?  Because my brother works in construction and is a volunteer fireman and, though he looks and acts nothing like Josh, it still came across as a little bit creepy to write a guy with my brother’s jobs.

In the original draft, Taryn was deep into some family history research and getting a little bit too close to some big secrets, so a prominent family sent their very handsome family historian in to distract her from the truth, that her family was related by marriage to some very big money.  That one got cast to the side when I decided not to do the Titanic tie-in.  But it was fun to write.

Minor spoiler on this one…  Jemma doesn’t die in the book because I couldn’t do that to Taryn or myself.  I had wholly intended when I started the book for Taryn to lose everything, but when it came to it, the more Jemma came to life, the less I liked the idea of losing her.  My grandmother, who is very much like Jemma, had only died a year before of a heart attack and it just hit way too close to home.  In the end, the book wound up better for Jemma surviving and being the bearer of a Very Big Secret.

Want to know some more behind the scenes trivia?  Tune in next week!

-JB