The Stolen Brides 02 -His Forbidden Touch (48 page)

As I read, it also struck me that I have a
lot in common with one of the protagonists. Not Ciara, but Royce:
he’s coming back to a place he once loved, after many years away,
hoping for a second chance after being banished—but unsure of the
reception he’ll get.

Royce’s journey home felt like a metaphor
for my return to writing novels. Romance fiction is my writing
home, and I’ve been away much too long—not entirely by my own
choice.

In chapter two, when Royce thinks, “Until
this day, he had expected to spend the rest of his life as an
outcast…” I found myself blinking back tears. When I wrote those
words in 1996, I had no idea that they would someday apply to
me.

In the end, my hero gets a warm welcome home
and a happily-ever-after.

My journey just started, so only time will
tell whether the same will be true for me.

Changes

I actually made very few changes to
His
Forbidden Touch
while preparing this new digital edition.
Which surprised me. As any of my past editors will tell you, I’m a
perfectionist, determined to get every scene, sentence, and
semi-colon exactly the way I want it before I’ll let go of a
manuscript.

Now that I’m an indie author, I have total
creative control and no deadlines—so the temptation to tinker with
every page endlessly is incredibly strong. But this book received
only a light edit: I cut a few adjectives here and there and
changed some punctuation, mostly semi-colons. I used to have a mad,
inexplicable love of semi-colons, which I’ve since outgrown.

If you own the original print edition,
pretty much the only change you’ll notice is that I cut almost
every ‘
twas
, ‘
twill
, and ‘
tis
. I made
that change for the sake of consistency across all four books of
the Stolen Brides series. When I read all four back-to-back this
summer, I realized that I went a little crazy with ‘
twas
and ‘
twill
in
HFT
. As I started working on the
new editions, I felt it was important that all four books “sound”
the same, so I went through the dialogue line by line to get it
right.

Have I mentioned that I’m a
perfectionist?

Future Sequels

I just hate to leave any unmarried males
wandering around in my fictional worlds, so I’d love to expand the
Stolen Brides series. First, I want to give Prince Mathias his own
book. As he said himself, he needs a queen for his kingdom. I have
an arranged marriage in mind for him, with a wonderful heroine
who’s keeping a painful secret. I’ve never written a virgin hero
before, so that would be a fun challenge. It’ll all depend on
reader interest—in other words, on sales of the first four books in
this series. I’m just getting started in this digital publishing
adventure, so we’ll see where it takes me.

Follow Me

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little trip behind
the scenes of
His Forbidden Touch
. If you’d like to
receive advance notice about my upcoming books, special discount
sales, and exclusive sneak previews, please visit my website and
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Website
www.shellythacker.com

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Until next time, best wishes & happy
reading,

Shelly

I want to express my deepest gratitude to my
critique partners, LaVerne Coan, Elizabeth Manz, and Linda Pedder,
for their creative insights, helpful suggestions, and endless
support as I wrote and revised the original manuscript of
His
Forbidden Touch
. Now that we’re scattered across the country,
I miss you like crazy. You truly are the sisters I never had.