Behind the Scenes: Love's Intensity

Love's Intensity delves into a love drama with many of the complications that come with having one's possible soul mate and family move into the same house as employees. Then, things get even crazier when their kids stumble upon a telepathic attraction.

Inspiration / Muse:
I am a teen at heart where love is continually coming alive and evolving into something more than when it began, constantly renewing itself. My interest in young adult stories and motion pictures paved the path to writing this Young Adult paranormal romance with tension, passion, and martial arts. (I grew up looking at Bruce Lee, so, yes, martial arts.) What I found interesting was that the biggest muse for this story was Christian music. What now? With keys of G and C, those songs fueled the love center of my brain. How in the world does that happen? I wish I knew. Although I enjoy experiments, science may not be able to figure this one out. Oh, and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet left a huge impression on me, so there's elements of that story in Love's Intensity (hint: sword fighting).

Theme:
In a word, LOVE. Of old friends, of young friends, of parent to child, of child to parent, of young attraction. It affects how someone deals with grief and anger and sorrow. Love heals where indifference cannot and can be reborn in interestingly powerful ways.

Journey:
Starting out as a dream, this story took nine months to write, another nine to fix up for submission to yield a contract, and yet another nine to edit. But even after its release, this labor of love (no pun intended) required many more months of work before the print, which is coming soon, can be released. As for the characters? There's a bit of me in both Brad and Kressa, but characteristics of people I've known also found their way into Bradford and Nina, the soul mates, as well as the other characters, even the bullies, who scarred my high school experience. So it's no surprise there's negative drama for Kressa in that space. She had Brad. I had the intuition God gave me to make it to graduation day.


Meaning behind the cover:
Nine tries at a cover and a few hundred dollars later strained my sanity and my pocketbook. No one warns you about the challenges behind creating the right cover for a story. This cover was no doubt my biggest challenge (and I thought editing Love's Intensity was tough).

Impact / Tribute:
This story is a tribute to everything Shakespeare and my dad who often performed monologues with me after watching one of Shakespeare's plays on PBS. Those are precious and happy memories for me. Over the years, I've learned to be grateful for the ability to love and be loved. So, in your life's journey, remember two things. Live Life. Love Intensely.

The fourth in the Behind the Scenes series is planned for April 18, 2020.