Thursday, April 10, 2008

Guest Blogger Ashlyn Chase



If you base your love story on real people, should you tell them?

Death by Delilah is based (loosely!) on my brother’s real life romance with his wife. I dedicated the book to her for making my brother a happy man. He’s gone now and we all miss him terribly, but thanks to her, he had twenty very happy years.

But she doesn’t like erotic romance, or comedy, and as a writer of erotic comedy, well, the story and their characters went though a bit of transformation. On the other hand, so did mine! Yes, I wrote myself into the book. I’m Gabby. The hero’s younger sister. I added a couple of characters too…in the form of two ghosts looking out for Delilah. But even meddling ghosts have challenges and policies to overcome when communicating with the living.

The conflict was real. He was a Naval Officer when they met. She was enlisted. The Navy regulations prevented them from dating and as far as marriage—forget it! They lived together off base and had to come up with a solution to their dilemma before they got caught…and they did!

My solution is more creative and somewhat different from the one they found—unless they didn’t tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—so help them! It’s well known that for a story to be interesting, even though you may love your characters, you have to torture them a bit. I sincerely hope they didn’t experience the torture I inflicted on Josh and Delilah!

Will I tell my sister-in-law about the book? I doubt it. Will I tell her I dedicated it to her? I don’t know. She probably won’t read it, anyway. She even unsubscribed from my mailing list! Oh well. I’d rather be down one fan than down a family member. What do you think? Should I tell her?

Speaking of my mailing list…I have a contest going on to celebrate the release of Death by Delilah for members only. It’s so easy and the prize is so cool, you’ll have to check it out! Would you like to be in the running for a large Coach designer inspired bag with the logo prominently displayed? All you need to do is be a member of my emailing list. That’s it. I’ll draw a winner from fans willing to put up with an occasional e-mail from me…how hard is that?

Death by Delilah releases Aril 11th from Ellora’s Cave. See all my Ellora’s Cave books here: http://www.ellorascave.com/AuthorsBooks.asp?AuthorCode=ACha
Sign up for my mailing list on the front page of my website. http://www.ashlynchase.com/

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