If you've never heard of Julie Lessman let me just forward you to her website at
www.julielessman.com . Her passion-packed-tight-tension novels inspire a heatwave of fury, fascination, and faith. AND since she's been so wonderful to provide you guys with some tasty excerpts from her work, I'm going to let her get on with her tips for today.
Leave a comment and have your name placed into a drawing to win her newest novel,
Love at Any Cost.
What has been one of your
favorite scenes to read?
Well, there’s only been one scene in my
life from another author’s book that literally pounded my heart so hard, I
thought I was having an atrial fibrillation attack, seriously. And that scene
was from Laura Frantz’s latest release, Love’s Reckoning. I contacted Laura and
she graciously allowed me to provide the clip here. It takes place in a
ballroom where the hero and the heroine who were once madly in love and parted
on bittersweet terms, see each other for the first time in years.
A momentary hush in the large room
made them turn. Another arrival?
“Ah, at last.” Judge O’Hara’s resonant
voice overrode the conversations swirling around them as he glanced toward the
parlor door. Isabel was threading her way toward them through the press of
guests, a man following. “Stephen, Miss Lee, allow me to introduce my good
friend and business partner.”
Isabel stepped into their circle,
transformed, beaming. The tall figure at her side became clear, and Eden’s
composure collapsed. She went completely still. The fan she held fluttered to a
stop.
Silas.
“My apologies for arriving late.
Business, ye ken.” His rustic Scots speech had mellowed to a more refined lilt,
smooth and self-effacing. He was looking at Stephen Elliot, extending a hand.
He hadn’t yet seen her, and Eden felt an overwhelming urge to pull
back—disappear. Stephen shook his hand heartily, inquiring after some business
matter, to which Silas answered thoughtfully.
Dumbstruck, Eden drank in every
freshly shaven, tailored inch of him. Clad in rich, charcoal broadcloth, he
looked the equal of any man she’d seen in Philadelphia. His ivory cravat set
off his deeply tanned face and turned his gaze a keen, unforgettable green.
Her heart was pounding beneath her
stays, as loud as the clock chiming nine across the room. When Silas turned
from Stephen to her, she met his eyes reluctantly. His handsome, composed
features went slack. He looked . . . stricken. Speechless, he
shot a questioning glance at Stephen before returning to her. Did he think
Stephen was her husband?
“Mr. Ballantyne, permit me to
introduce Miss Eden Lee, assistant director of the Philadelphia Foundling
Hospital.” Stephen’s warm voice reached out to her, jarring her into coherency.
Her voice came out a whisper. “Good
evening, Mr. Ballantyne.”
“Miss Lee.”
What has been one of your
favorite scenes to write?
A scene that comes to mind is from my new book Love at Any Cost between the widowed
matriarch of the family Caitlyn McClare and her rogue brother-in-law Logan
McClare (subordinate love story in book) with whom she was once in love.
Engaged to Logan at a very young age, Cait broke the engagement when she
discovered Logan’s infidelity, resulting in her marrying Logan’s brother
instead. Now, twenty-seven years down the road, Cait is a widow and Logan is
determined to win her back, so the romantic tension between these two was and is
SO fun to write, such as in this scene where Logan gives her back his brother’s
ring, even though it belongs to him as the McClare heir.
She pulled away and swiped at her
eyes, her lips quivering into a smile. “You must think I’m crazy, but I’m just
so very grateful . . .” Peering up, she gently braced his jaw
with her palm, eyes shimmering with gratitude. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved
you more than right this moment, Logan McClare. Thank you.”
He stopped breathing when she pressed
a kiss to his cheek, and almost by accident, he turned into her touch, their
lips so close he could smell the hint of hot chocolate they’d enjoyed around
the fire. They froze in the same split second of time, and his pulse thudded
slow and hard as he waited for her to pull away. Only she didn’t, and heat
scorched his body.
“Cait,” he whispered, barely believing
her lips nearly grazed his. He waited, not willing to push for fear she would
retreat, but when her eyelids flickered closed, his fate was sealed. “So help
me, Cait, I love you,” he rasped, quickly caressing her lips before she could
pull away. The moment his mouth took hers, he was a man hopelessly lost,
bewitched by her spell. She jolted in his arms as if suddenly realizing her
folly, but he refused to relent, his grip at the nape of her neck strong and
sure, allowing him a taste of the sweetest lips he’d ever known. A groan
trapped in his throat, and he devoured her, delving deeper with a passion
stoked by almost twenty-six years of denial and longing. “God help me, Cait,”
he whispered, voice hoarse as he nuzzled her ear, “I need you in my life.”
He felt it the moment the winds
shifted, pulse skyrocketing when her blanket dropped to the ground and she
melded in his arms. His mouth explored with a vengeance, the frenzied beat of
her heart throbbing beneath his lips as he grazed the hollow of her throat. He
skimmed up to suckle the lobe of her ear, and his heart swelled with joy when a
soft moan escaped her lips. Blood pounding in his veins, he wove fingers into
her hair to cradle her face. “Marry me, Cait, please!”
Her eyelids fluttered open to reveal a
glaze of desire so strong, his mouth descended again, dominant and possessive
until her lips surrendered to his. “Marry me,” he repeated, his kiss gentling
to playful nips meant to coax and tease. “I need you, Cait . . . and
I want you.”
In the space of a painful heartbeat,
she hurled him away, breasts heaving and eyes wild. “You’re a devil, Logan
McClare, always lusting after what you can’t have!”
Sleet slithered through his veins. “No,
Cait, it’s not true—I want you because I love you.”
He reached for her, and she thrust
back, fury welling in her eyes. “You want me because you can’t have me. And
once you had me, you would just throw me away again, returning to your old
habits of carousing with women all hours of the night.”
“You’re wrong—let me prove it, please.
Marry me.”
She shook her head, an auburn curl
quivering against her neck. Her tone trembled with a violence that stunned. “I-don’t-want-you,
and I-don’t-need-you, do you hear?”
His anger surged, but he tamped it
down with a clamp of his jaw, his words as hard as hers. “Really, Cait? Why
don’t you tell that to the woman whose body just responded to mine?”
The lightning force of her slap
shifted his jaw clean to the right, the sound of it like a crack of thunder. “How
dare you?” she whispered, tears streaming her cheeks. “You forced yourself on
me in your usual callous way, and if you ever do so again, it will be the last
time you step foot in my house, is that clear?” He didn’t answer, and she took
a step forward, her jaw engaged once again. “I said, is-that-clear?”
Gritting his teeth, he turned away. He
sucked in a harsh breath and released it again, fighting to keep his temper
under control, the only control he apparently possessed with the woman before
him. Well, she might hold all the cards and he might lose this hand, but he
would not lose the game. With a heavy
blast of air, he turned—and stopped—all anger fading at what he’d reduced her
to. A quivering mass of tears. God,
forgive me . . . He
studied her with sorrow in his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered, all of his emotion
finally spent, “it’s clear.” She started for the door and he stopped her with a
gentle hand. “Forgive me, Cait—I never meant to hurt you. Not then, not now.”
She nodded stiffly and started to
leave.
“Cait?” She turned at the door. He
plunged his hands in his pockets, no longer a man of the world, but a little
boy whose heart was on the line. “I love you, and deep down inside, I think you
know that, know I would never cheat on you again.” He stared, his eyes naked
with the truth for the very first time. “That said, I need to know why? What
else are you afraid of?”
She must have sensed his honesty
because the hard plain of her face ebbed into a look of such sorrow, it plucked
at his heart. Her voice was gentle and low once again, the Caitlyn he was
privileged to love. “I love you as family, Logan, but I can never be ‘in love’
with you again.”
The words stabbed. “Why?” he
whispered, his voice no more than a croak.
Her bodice quivered with a burdensome
sigh. “Because I don’t trust you.”
“Why? I swear to you Cait—I will be
faithful.”
“No, Logan, you can’t. A man of your
habit and ilk can’t be faithful without God.”
“Let me prove it. I can do this.”
“Maybe. But I can’t. I refuse to fall
in love with a man who doesn’t share my faith.”
He took a step forward, his eyes
intense. “I believe in God, Cait.”
“No, Logan, you believe in yourself
first, God after. There’s a difference.”
His jaw sagged in disbelief. “You’re
attracted to me and love me, yet you turn me away because my faith isn’t up to
snuff?” Fury boiled in his veins, trumping his passion. He chilled her with a
look so cold, he saw her shiver. “Even if it means your precious Vigilance
Committee?”
The blood leeched from her face. “You
wouldn’t,” she whispered, her words laced with shock. “Y-you agreed, and it’s
the decent thing to do.”
He moved in, fists clenched and a
nerve twitching in his cheek. “No, Cait, the decent thing to do is to forgive
the past and admit you’re in love with me.”
Her legs faltered before steel
appeared to fuse in her spine. “That’s your price, then?”
He stared, his jaw as rigid as his
pride. She loved him, she wanted him, but she wouldn’t have him because of God?
Outrage like he’d never known singed his very soul. “It is.”
She winced as if she’d been struck,
pain contorting her face while she listed against the wrought-iron chaise.
Firelight flickered across her beautiful features, illuminating myriad feelings
that tore at his heart. Shock, fear, fury, resolve . . . and sorrow.
The same sorrow he saw in himself, a man of missed opportunities. The flames
spit and popped behind him, as if portending a fiery future that would ravage
both him and the woman he loved.
He watched as the anger slowly
siphoned from her body, softening her features, welling her eyes, and he was
reminded once again what a rare woman she was. Prone to gentleness rather than
anger, giving rather than taking, others rather than self. Despite the fact he
would rob her of something so dear, her eyes bore no retribution or blame, only
a sadness that seemed to personify Caitlyn McClare where he was concerned.
“Then it’s too
high,” she whispered, the trace of a tear glazing her cheek as she placed his
ring on the chaise. She turned away, her voice a broken whisper that prophesied
their doom. “Even for my precious Vigilance Committee.”
What are some key
elements to writing a powerful scene:
Well, being a bona-fide CDQ (caffeinated drama queen),
I would have to say the most important components for me are
TENSION-TENSION-TENSION!! I’ll take it anyway I can get it — romantically,
spiritually or relationally, but take me on a roller-coaster ride and make me
beg for mercy—please!! J Ways I like
doing that are having lots of ups and downs in a single scene where I take both
the characters—and the readers, I hope—on an emotional roller-coaster such as
in the scene above from Love at Any Cost
Even in interviews she PACKS a punch! Thanks for sharing with us today, Julie. I'm so tempted to put up my Cassie McClare look-alike shot :-)
Do you have a scene you've read or written lately in which you savored the moment? Share!
