Lorraine Hall joins us on our blog to talk about writing her very first Modern romance and the inspiration behind it!

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Even though it’s been almost a year since I sat down to write my first Mills & Boon Modern, and I’ve written a handful since, it still doesn’t seem real! One of the things I love doing with Modern is taking the seed from a fairytale or story and use that as a jumping off point to write an emotional, sizzling romance!

With The Prince’s Royal Wedding Demand, I started from a somewhat unusual spot. I was at Disneyworld, trying to come up with an idea for Modern, surrounded by fairytales and princesses and you’d think that would be a great place to start. However, and I can’t remember what exactly it was, but something reminded me of the book Heidi. I haven’t read Heidi since I was a little girl, so I don’t remember much of the details of the story, aside from them living on a mountain. But that started the idea for my heroine. A poor woman, working as a farmer/sheepherder thrust into a world she didn’t understand.

So, what better world than a royal one? I decided to invent my own European mountainous country, a very uptight and controlled prince, and had to decide what circumstances would throw these two very different people together.

One of the things I love best about category romance is the more fantastical and high fantasy tropes. They just go along so well with the authenticity and truth of the beauty of love and forgiveness.

So, I wanted to do a kind of mistaken wedding, an accidental marriage, but how to make that happen? Again, I can’t remember exactly what sent me down this thought process, but I remembered watching reruns of The Patty Duke Show when I was a kid and the theme song getting stuck in my head. “Cousins, identical cousins…” So I gave the heroine, Ilaria, an almost identical cousin. A nearly identical cousin who needed a stand-in, so said cousin could escape her strict father’s commands and leave the country with her one true love.

What Ilaria didn’t know is it isn’t just a date she’s attending in her cousin’s stead, it’s a wedding. And what our hero, Prince Frediano, doesn’t realise at first is the woman who he’s just swept into saying I do isn’t the cousin, but poor sheepherder Ilaria.

In an effort to protect his grandfather (the king), Frediano can afford no scandal, so he figures he’ll have to make the best of a marriage with Ilaria. Of course, it doesn’t go quite the way Frediano imagines…

The Prince’s Royal Wedding Demand was so much fun to write, and I am so excited to see my very first Mills and Boon Modern out in the world!

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The Prince’s Royal Wedding Demand by Lorraine Hall

Read now in eBook or in paperback which also features Marriage Bargain with Her Brazilian Boss by Tara Pammi.

By Lauren Gardiner