Our favorite characters from The Royal Romance are U.S. citizens in this Alternate Universe, and are involved in the military life. In this series, the characters will be members/spouses of the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force. You will foll...
This is Behind the Scenes of Always Faithful! I took a lot of the questions and comments from the survey last week, and compiled a post explaining my thought process throughout the book, I share some results of the survey, and I answer your questions! See below for a behind the scenes look!
There is mention of sex in this post, but no details of scenes. There are no other warnings for this post.
Ask the Author:
From what did you base the character of Bragnae?
The inspiration for Bragnae came from a few different things. Her military background was actually identical to my military background. I was in the Air Force, and I was an imagery analyst. A lot of what she did, I did. Same for Drake. Aside from him being a sniper, a lot of what he did, his skills, his demeanor was based on my husband who was also in the Marine Corps.
Bragnae's personality is half me and half what I made her from TRR. In my eyes, she is a "10" when it comes to being attractive. Although I believe myself to be good looking, I've never considered myself a "10", so it's fun to write a character that is, so she can experience some things that I didn't.
Why did you decide to make Bragnae and Liam get together so soon after Drake's "death"?
This is a very popular question, and I'm happy to address it. Originally, I was going to have Bragnae only kiss Liam after she found out Drake was killed. However, after talking it out with my husband and a friend, I realized that them having sex wasn't farfetched at all. The quickness, however, is debatable.
Some people, when they grieve, will recluse themselves and will not move on for years after losing their significant other. Others have been known to have sex with someone nearly right after the death of a loved one. A good friend of mine told me that sex is life-affirming. After a death, sometimes people need that reassurance of life because of how devastating the loss was.
I ran with the latter notion, and since Liam and Bragnae's tension was built up since Chapter 11, I decided to give them a chance to sleep together. This, in my opinion, did a lot for them. For one, they needed to see what it was like being with each other after all that tension between them. Another reason is that if sleeping together never occurred and Drake still came back, they may have always wondered what it was like to be with each other which could have created an unfaithful issue later on. They had their moment (a week to be with each other), and they realized how much they both cared for each other. With Drake's return, I felt that it made it easier for them to both walk away and leave their bond/connection as it was rather than pining after it because they didn't really get to fulfill their needs.
What inspired you to write this story?
As I mentioned, my husband and I were both in the military. While I was never stationed in Okinawa, my husband was. I really wanted to write a unique twist on the TRR story, and since my background is military, I thought it would be fun.
Some of the things that happened in this story happened to either my husband or myself. I chose to put the story in Okinawa because that is one place in the world where both the Marines and the Air Force would be stationed ten minutes apart. Otherwise, they are few and far between.
The scene in Chapter 15 where Bragnae picks up Drake after his second deployment actually happened to me when I was meeting my husband after his. Here is the picture that I had to have my husband take because I was shaking so bad – just like Bragnae. Haha!
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