Welcome back to Romance Weekly blog hop. Today A.S. Fenichel wants us to choose one of our books and tell you where the idea came from and how it evolved into a full story. I'll share a snippet, too!

Marc Stevens is before me in today's hop. Make sure to check out his post.

I choose my first release, Circle of Lies.

The idea for this story came to me as I was working through another story I was writing. I wanted to write a Sci Fi Romance that was set in a contemporary setting. The story I was working on wasn't futuristic or set in outer space and I liked the feel of that. The story was actually more paranormal because one of the characters had psychic power and could control people with his mind.

I started with a love triangle that involved two brothers, Jamie and Sean, who liked the same girl, Luna, and I was struggling with why Jamie and Sean had such anger toward one another. Sean had the psychic power. Jamie appeared as human as you or I. In my frustration, I created their backstory to help me figure out their relationship. While working on the details, I discovered Jamie and Sean had the same father, Raz, but different mothers.

For some reason this really bothered me and I kept wondering what had happened to these characters' parents. Had the Raz had his own love triangle and how did this fit into the science fiction world I wanted to create, which was in the very beginning stages back then. The story still had more of a paranormal feel and I wanted to go more Sci Fi. So, I made Raz an alien and Sean's mother, Paris, was part alien. This shed light on why Sean was psychic. Jamie's mother, Sandra, was human and a scientist who had a part in the discovery of some life saving medicines for aliens.

I kept asking myself questions about the brothers. Why did Jamie do this? Why did Sean choose to do that when so much love had been in his childhood? But the more questions I asked about Jamie and Sean the more answers pushed me toward asking questions about their parents. How did this alien versus non-alien parentage shape the brothers' feelings about the world. What had happened to their parents before this point in the brothers' lives.

So to make this long story short, I became obsessed with what happened to the parents. What sorts of obstacles and conflicts had they had in life?

Circle of Lies is what came out of all those questions along with a series premise, Alien Prophecies.

I learned a lot about the 'past' in the world I wanted to create which I then realized was the contemporary setting and the rest of the series will start to fall into a near future setting. It will still feel like it takes place today, but with more tech or alien wizardry (at least to humans).

I hope to get back to Jamie's and Sean's stories some day, but I'm giving them some time to grow up.

Click Here for an excerpt of Circle of Lies.

Veronica Forand in up next. Let's find out which book she's blogging about today!