All novels have three major elements—plot, character, and setting—but how novelists deal with them differs from novelist to novelist. We’re all individuals and we all tend to feel our way of proceeding is the best there is. That makes collaborating with other writers on a series an interesting experience.

My normal process for creating characters is just to let them develop as I work out the plot, although I’ve got some really useful spreadsheets I picked up a few years ago from Delilah Devlin that help in sketching out the general details. With Bolted, though, I was in a new situation since it’s part of the four-book Promise Harbor Wedding series with three other writers (Kelly Jamieson, Sydney Somers, and Erin Nicholas). The books aren’t really sequential—they all begin with the same, disastrous wedding ceremony and then take off from there. And some of the same characters show up in all four books. So although I could let my hero and heroine develop over the course of the story, I also had to keep my fellow writers up to date with how they were developing so that they’d seem the same in the other books. And some of my secondary characters, particularly the heroine’s mom, had to be changed slightly so that they’d fit everybody’s concept of what they were like. It was a different way of working and sort of fun.

Usually when I write plot and character develop at the same time. But with Promise Harbor, we all brainstormed the general plot, and then our characters took off from there. We all started with the same situation, seen through different characters’ points of view. In Kelly Jamieson’s Jilted, her POV characters were the groom who’s deserted at the altar and his former girlfriend. Both of them have reason to be heartbroken over what happens, and Kelly’s versions are very emotional. My POV character is the matron of honor. She’s less involved in the situation and a little more cynical herself. So my version tends to be more snarky than angsty. The same things happen in all the versions of the wedding that show up in the four books (in fact, we all had to work together to make sure the incidents in our scenes were the same), but the characters involved make all the difference.

Usually, I have to know how a story ends before I begin writing. I couldn’t really work with a story that was open-ended—I’d be afraid of getting blocked midway through. However, the way the characters get there may change as I work through the story. My heroine’s ex-husband pops up in Bolted, for example, but the idea of him I had before I started writing changed slightly as I began working with him. He developed into a much more interesting character as I wrote him into the story.

Then there’s setting. I’m more comfortable with settings I know. My Texas books all take place in settings I’m very familiar with so that I can describe them without too much strain—I lived in San Antonio (where the Medium trilogy takes place) for over twenty years and I spent a lot of time in the Hill Country, the location for Konigsburg. Again, Bolted was different because we all decided on the setting together. Promise Harbor is in Massachusetts, somewhere vaguely close to Martha’s Vineyard. I did, in fact, live in Massachusetts for a short time many, many years ago, but it’s been a while since I’ve been back. In this case, I had to refresh my memory about how things looked via Flickr and movies like Jumping the Broom that actually take place in the right area. The four of us decided on some common settings, like Barney’s Clam Shack in Promise Harbor. But we also introduced some places that were purely our own. In my case, it was a dilapidated hotel in a little town a few miles up the road that my hero calls Casa Dubrovnik (the owners are Alice and Nadia Dubrovnik). It’s sort of based on places I’ve stayed, but also some half-remembered movies.

So Bolted is different, but I hope it’s different in a good way. The process we used in developing the series was also different, but fun. Every once in a while, it’s good to get out of your comfort zone. So I hope you’ll check out Promise Harbor to see how well we did. Jilted is available now from Samhain. Bolted will be released on April 2, Busted on April 16, and Hitched on April 30. Vive la differénce!