Indie Author Weekly

155: Some of the inspiration for Small Town Stilettos: a modern marriage of convenience

• Sagan Morrow • Episode 156

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In this episode, you'll get an overview about the plot of Small Town Stilettos, plus background about the real-life inspiration for this story and how some of the ideas in this novel came about.

Small Town Stilettos on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/174111898-small-town-stilettos

Small Town Stilettos on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Small-Town-Stilettos-marriage-convenience-ebook/dp/B0C776DB4M

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Hello and welcome to the indie author weekly podcast where you get to hear about the behind the scenes journey of my adventures as an indie author. I'm your host Sagan Morrow. And to date I have written and published seven rom coms in the polyamorous passion series plus several business books for solopreneurs. My next romance novel small town stilettos a modern marriage of convenience is coming out very soon on Tuesday, July 25 2023. So with that in mind, today, I want to share with you some quick background about small town stilettos what really inspired the book so a few little tidbits of real life inspiration that made their way into this story. So small town stilettos this idea for the novel. It's about a fashion designer who goes to a small town and she is there because her aunt has recently passed away and she's in charge of handling the estate. And while she is there in this small town, but she cannot stand she absolutely hates it. She ends up realizing that the only way to access her inheritance is if she marries her childhood sweetheart. And also at the same time her other friend from childhood happens to be in town so there's a love triangle aspect. She herself the main character Margaret is not at all interested in marriage. She really digs her heels in but she also wants the money because it will allow her to create a fashion line for bodies like hers. So there's there's a lot of different moving pieces to it. It's a lot of fun. It's a really good contemporary romance novel. So the idea for small town stilettos came to mind when I myself was living in a very tiny town for the first year of the pandemic. There's a kayaking scene in the small town stilettos novel. And I'm pretty sure that I came up with the idea for small town stilettos while I myself was kind of game. Now I was in this very tiny town because my spouse Mr. Science had a job there and when the pandemic started you know, before that he'd been coming back and forth to Manitoba where we were living at the time. He would come to Manitoba for a week and then he'd go back to work for a couple of weeks in BC. And that was kind of a situation. But of course when the pandemic started, air travel was not possible. So as a result, because I have my own business where I work from home, I moved out to this little town to be with him. And it was an experience to say the least I am not a small town sort of person. I love living in the downtown of the city. And it was it was again, it was an experience. So as a result, you know, it really helps me to deal with living there to be able to write a fictional version of it. That's really what kind of started it. So I really love this whole idea of playing with the troops of small town life and exploring small town through the eyes of my protagonist, Margaret. So that's really what what started the entire concept of the small town stilettos novel. Now, the town itself in the book is a fictional town. It's called Fort Edwin, and although it's a fictional town, it has a very similar layout and population size of 1500 people and that type of thing. So the descriptions of the town are not they're not an exact by any means replica of the town that I was living in. But there are some similarities. For example, the the pub that Margaret goes to in these small towns stilettos book, the pub, she mentions how it's on the outskirts of town. It's not even in town, so you actually have to drive to it. And that was also the case with this little town that we were living in that I was living in, I suppose. And you thought that that was the weirdest thing that you are basically encouraging people to drink and drive if they want to go out to this pub because the only way to get there was to drive to it. So there's like little facets like that. That are included in the novel. And some of the things that happen in the novel, you know, they are they are tropes of small town life, but they aren't really that big of exaggerations. They might seem like stereotypes but there's actually quite a bit of truth grounded in the small town, you know, quote unquote stereotypes that I've included in the small town stilettos novel. And I will say I know I've mentioned this in previous episodes, but then the sequel to small town stilettos is going to treat small towns much better. It's much kinder to small towns. So I do just want to mention that. But for example, a couple of these like small towns, sort of stereotypes that happens to Margaret is in one instance, a person who lives in the town tells her immediately they're like, you're not from around here, I know that you are not from town, who are you? And that actually happens to me and my spouse, we were at the laundromat and this woman came in and she looked at us and she was immediately like, I don't know you Hi, my name is who are you? Just immediately was wanting to know who we were and what we were doing in town. And you know, another aspect in small town stilettos is that the lawyer or not he mentioned to Margaret how the town Facebook group has been talking about her. And this is something that happened to me and my spouse, we kayaked a lot on the lake and people would see us on the lake, they knew us as the kayakers they would they would talk about us. So there are little things like that, that I felt were so I don't know it's amusing to me living in cities my whole life, but I just I had to I had to kind of include a few other personal sort of inspirations for this story that I wanted to share with you today. The name of the company that Margaret works for the fashion company that she worked for is called not cool girls and CG. And that is a nod to a group chat that I had with some friends that really got me through the early stages of the pandemic. It was so nice to have this really delightful group chat. And you know, we would often joke about how we have no chill and we're not cool at all. So we ended up renaming our to be called the Nakul girls, and that really became the inspiration for naming the fashion company that Margaret works for. Margaret also does you know zoom dates with her best friend Rachel because Rachel is still living in a big city. And so she will you know, be drinking wine and having zoom dates with her. She also at one point is starting to clean clean the house while she's you know on speakerphone with Rachel and both of those are things that I do with a couple of my own besties So, one of my best friends and I we both have assumed sparkle dates where we eat, drink bubbly and have zoom dates together. And another best buddy of mine we will both be cleaning our houses while we're chatting on the phone on speakerphone. So both of those were again nice little nods to those two very dear friends of mine but you know the actual character of Rachel isn't anything like either of those two friends like Rachel herself the best friend that Margaret has, is not either of my he's not any of my friends. She is completely her own character is just these little details about how they connect how they stay connected while they're in this long distance friendship that is inspired by real life. Another thing that is a ongoing sort of keys in small town stilettos is that her aunt Eleanor requested for her ashes to be displayed in an antique milk bottle that is a direct nod to one of my honorary amps who has a antique peanut butter jar and she has requested that I make sure that her ashes go in there when she passes away. So I felt like it was necessary to include that. And then the last thing that I wanted to mention, with kind of the little inspirations and nods and things like that throughout the story is not the name of the town, Fort Edwin in small town Saludos is a nod to Twilight, because there's you know that moment when when Charlie Ellis dad refers to Edward as he calls them like Edwin and a couple of other names like that he can't remember whatever his name is, or he doesn't want to remember and so I just I've always found that particular you know, way that Charlie would act around that Bella's dad, I always thought that that was very charming. And so the tone is actually named after that specific type of thing. I also did kind of like the idea of including that in because in Twilight, it's a really tiny town and it just it fell in line. Very beautifully. So it's just a fun little little piece there. Whenever you are writing things that are inspired by real life, I do think it's very, very important to make it your own. There is a difference between a launch and inspiration versus copying and plagiarism. There is a huge distinction between needs. So that's why I just wanted to point out you know, as I'm kind of sharing these different pieces with you that were inspired by real life, you can see how the aspects of them have been changed to be fictionalized. So I'm not you know, taking, taking things that people have said to me and using their words and adding them into dialogue. In my books, that's not what I'm doing. There have interestingly been a couple of cases when I have written dialogue into my books, and then people have ended up saying things very similar in real life after the fact which is always just fascinating to me. When that when things like that happen. But yeah, so just I want to kind of mention that but it's really, really important. Anytime that we are doing this type of creative work. We really want to think of it as what is an homage a nod and inspired by sort of thing and how can I make this my own? How can I fictionalize this, as opposed to, oh, this thing happened, or I was in this town, and I am now taking this exact, this exact real life scenario and just plopping it into my book, right. We don't really want to do that. We always want to play with it, and do some kind of spin on it to really create your own version to truly fictionalize it to truly haven't as inspired by. So, that is what I wanted to share with you for today. Just a few little examples of things that were inspired by real life and incorporated into small town stilettos. Now again, small town stilettos is going to be released very soon. On Tuesday, July 25. You can pre order it on Amazon. It's also available on Goodreads. There are already some reviews out from early reader so you can see what other readers are saying about the book on Goodreads. So you can access those links by you know, you can search on Goodreads or Amazon smalltime stilettos. Or visit Sagan morrow.com/books And I will also post those links in the show notes below.

All right, that my friend is a wrap for today's episode of indie author weekly access the show notes for this episode, including all links and additional resources at Sagan morrow.com/podcast. And share your thoughts on this episode on Twitter or Instagram my handle is at Sagan lives and if you have anything else that you're wondering about with the story, if you have any questions for me or topic ideas for future episodes of the Antioch weekly podcast, then you can submit those at Sagan morrow.com/question. Please take two minutes to rate and review in the author weekly on Apple podcasts. Or if you are watching this episode on YouTube, subscribe to my channel and give this video the thumbs up. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will see you next week for another episode of indie author weekly

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Sagan Morrow

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