more cat pictures

A few weeks ago I wrote the synopsis for Something to Talk About, thinking I'd enter the PASIC contest. Well, I didn't enter, but I liked the way I'd worked out the story in the synopsis. The grand gesture at the end is PERFECT.

It's not coming out that way at all in the story.

The hero is a widower who worries that falling in love again makes him too vulnerable. He's already had two crises of faith with my heroine, and after the second, something happened to realize he doesn't really want to live without her.

In my synopsis I have him making another mistake, then making up for it with a grand gesture, but I think three crises might be too much.

Also, he seems pretty determined to have her at this point.

So I'm thinking the heroine is going to have to have the crisis. After all, this is her best friend's widower, and the town already thinks she is trying to step into her friend's shoes. Still, that doesn't seem big enough. Initially I was going to have her mother, who ran off 14 years ago, return here, shake things up, make my heroine wonder if she really ISN'T good enough for the hero, but I'm afraid that makes her seem too weak. Plus, I'm already at almost 350 pages...is that conflict strong enough for a book this big?

Honestly, I had this all figured out Thursday morning, but by the time I started writing Thursday evening, everything shifted.

I just love this book and I want it to be GREAT. I have another grand gesture in mind, but I have to give them another crisis to overcome first.