Behind the Book with Wynter Daniels

TSH_500 Writers can be a nutty lot. Sometimes our characters talk to us a little. And sometimes they talk a lot. Does this little tidbit mean I’m suffering from multiple personalities? I sure hope not.
Lucy from The Surrogate Husband began speaking to me long before her story took shape. It just happens that way on occasion. I saw her pink hair, her multiple piercings, her wrists covered in bangles, and her short, sexy skirts. I knew she was smart and sassy, that she had a great head for business, but that she liked to date below her IQ.
I was certain that she kept her armor firmly in place at all times because she was a survivor, a protector to her younger sister, and a best friend to her mom. Family meant everything to her, unless it was that no good son-of-a-bitch father she hadn’t spoken to in a decade.
Yeah, she told me all that stuff before I wrote the first line of dialog, or even a single word of the synopsis. I knew that as tough as she was on the outside, she was just that fragile on the inside. So it was going to take one heck of an extraordinary guy to talk her down off the ledge of her self-imposed singlehood.
And sure, I love it when the men talk to me, too. It’s no coincidence that Dex rhymes with sex! Because he oozes it. And maybe he’s based on someone I knew a very long time ago, who happened to be an accountant as well. Just please, don’t tell that part to my husband.
After my agent read the manuscript, the first thing she said was, “Dex is perfect. He’s so sexy.” Which I needed to hear, because so many women love bad boys, myself included. But sometimes, I want the good guy, the starched shirt, every-hair-in-place, play-it-by-the-rules guy.
Oh, and if you were thinking he plays by the rules all through the story, think again. I couldn’t let him be good all the time. Lucy has to make him lose his mind to some degree. I mean, don’t we all want to be the woman that makes a man so crazy with longing that he loses his mind?
I say this, yet I’m the one with a dozen voices in my head at any given moment. Nah, I’m not crazy. I’m just a writer. I hope my characters speak to you long after you finish the book. It’s okay. I’m still having conversations with them, too.