PRIDE AND PROMISES by Karen Lingefelt

Who’s up for some “fun facts” about my newest Regency Historical? 

Pride and Promises was written in 2006.  It was the first book I wrote on a laptop, which Mr. Lucky gave to me the previous Christmas. 

I saved my work in a folder marked “UR5” for “Unpublished Regency No. 5.” I was about a third of the way through the book when I decided the story wasn’t working at all, so I dumped the whole thing and started over. 

But before I started over, I wrote a 5-page (approx. 1,400 words) synopsis for the story as part of a Tampa Area Romance Authors (TARA) critique workshop.  Usually I can’t write a synopsis till after the book is written, but in this case, I forced myself.  It took me all of one day, about eight hours, to write it.  To this day it remains the only book where I wrote a complete synopsis of the story before the book itself was written.  I really need to make that a regular habit!   

In submitting the synopsis to the aforementioned workshop, I had to come up with a working title besides “UR5” so I called it Malcolm in the Midden.  While there was never a scene where he found himself stuck in a dungheap, he does find himself tangled in quite a mess, figuratively speaking.  A fellow writer critiquing the synopsis suggested Malcolm in a Muddle, which I had to admit was a slight improvement. 

I underwent some stressful life events while writing this book:  Mr. Lucky was deployed to the Middle East, while our firstborn moved away from home, leaving just me and Baby Bear.  And there was other doo-doo flung by doo-doo flingers who didn’t think I had enough doo-doo already.  Yet all of this was nothing compared to what I endured while writing PR1, or Published Regency No. 1. I continued writing, and managed to complete the book before Mr. Lucky returned home.

 

The book went on to win the 2006 TARA Book Challenge, in which participants feed $10.00 into a kitty at the start of the year for every book they plan to write that year.  Completed manuscripts are brought to the TARA holiday party the following December, with the authors’ names entered into a drawing.  Whoever wins collects half of the pot, with the other half going to TARA.  I won $200.00. 

Several years later, the book, now titled Pride and Promises, was a finalist in the 2009 TARA Contest. 

Three years later, it’s finally published!             

Malcolm has to be one of my favorite heroes.  He first appeared as a secondary character in Confessions of a Lady Ruined, in which he was shot and wounded by a bungling sniper who mistook him for the hero of that book.  He played a larger role in The Truth About Georgiana as the title heroine’s older brother who was abducted and briefly held captive, only to observe afterward, brandy in hand, that if misfortunes happen in threes, then all that remained for him after being shot and abducted was marriage.   

That finally got him the starring role in Pride and Promises.

Buy here.