I’m honored to have multi-published author Sherry Gloag as a guest on my blog today. Sherry is a transplanted Scot now living in the beautiful coastal countryside of Norfolk, England.

She considers the surrounding countryside as extension of her own garden, to which she escapes when she needs “thinking time” and solitude to work out the plots for her next novel. She says while out walking she enjoys talking to her characters, as long as there are no other walkers close by.

Apart from writing, Sherry enjoys gardening, walking, reading and cheerfully admits her books tend to take over most of the shelf and floor space in her workroom-cum-office. She also finds crystal craft work therapeutic.

Sherry is also a pantster (one who “flies by the seat of their pants” when they write versus a plotter who well, plots out every bit of their work.) She’s here to share about her “pantstering” and FAITH. Heeeerrrrreeeee’s Sherry:

or a ‘panster’ writer like myself, creating characters is never straightforward. It almost amounts to ‘plotting’! rofl. So how do I ‘get’ my characters when I start writing? Well, strange as it may seem, they come to me. Usually when I’m at the kitchen sink. I’ve still not worked out how or why it happens that way, but it does. Sometime they give me a name, sometimes I’m given a full scene. Then it’s up to me to work out where in the story that scene’s got to be placed. Many’s the time I’ve assumed I’ve been offered an opening scene only to discover it belongs somewhere else in the book.

nother thing about being a ‘panster’ is the capacity for me to write myself into a corner and then spend ages trying to work out how to get out of it. I can hear so may people asking why I don’t get myself better organized and plot my way through the story instead and thus save myself getting sidetracked. It just doesn’t work for me, and there are many times when those side journey’s unveil an unexpected gem of a twist in the plot. Does that also entail re-writing vast tracks of story? Quite often. Does it bother me, sometimes, but not always.

nstead I concentrate on the bonus of the unexpected, that twist that often lifts the story to another level. In From Now Until Forever, the first of my four books Gasquet Princes series, published by Astraea Press in December, Melanie, the heroine’s use of a dust/garbage truck as an escape vehicle had me chuckling all the while I wrote the scene. When I began I assumed they’d use some fast flashy make of car, but no, up trundled a dust/garbage truck!

he arrival of His Chosen Bride the second book was a great surprise to me when Henri, Liam’s eldest brother of the hero in From Now Until Forever demanded I write his story about a week after the first book was published. As for Monica, the heroine in this book, she turned up before I realized she was destined to be Henri’s Bride. She is also a completely different kind of heroine from Melanie. Where Melanie is an ‘in your face, get things done’ heroine, Monica is quieter, more introvert and yet she has qualities that compliment Henri and makes her his perfect choice.

enri and Liam have two more brothers, twins Sacha and Simeon. Writing their stories is creating several problems because they keep walking in and out of each others’ stories, and this makes keeping my plot lines straight quite a headache.

For this ‘panster,’ FAITH is a big part of my writing. Faith in my characters, faith that the plotline will evolve in a ways that makes sense and faith in my writing as with each new book comes a new challenge that having faith in the unknown will prevail.

For Now And Forever Blurb: For Prince Liam, families meant bad news, unwanted commitments, and the loss of his personal freedom. Love spawned white picket fences, slippers at the hearth with a wife and kids making demands, so why did those images disappear when he met Melanie Babcot? Melanie Babcot fought hard to escape the horrors of her youth and vowed to remain single and free, so when paid to protect Prince Liam from insurgents why did her personal pledge fly out the window?

Purchase: Amazon.com   AmazonUK  Barnes&Noble.com    AstraeaPress.com

His Chosen Bride: Prince Henri Gasquet is happy to let his father, the king, choose his bride for him until he meets Monica Latimer. Monica Latimer is not prepared to risk letting any man close enough to learn about her Gift. A gift that normally has men running for the hills when they find out about it. Purchase through Astraea Press or Amazon.

To contact Sherry:  SherryGloag.com    Twitter    Facebook   LinkedIn   

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