Hey Bookclub friends! Here are some fun fact about writing and researching The Other Sister.
I originally wrote this book with another title as a romantic suspense. Half the POVS were from Charlotte and the other half were from Christian Patrick’s POV and it was a lovely romance. But I was rejected by all the Christian houses…until Love Inspired Trade imprint was born. I decided to give it a shot as a psychological thriller because it already had some of the elements and if they wanted it great, and if not no harm no foul but it was just sitting there! I changed the title to The Other Sister and tweaked my blurb and they contracted it!
I thought I was going to do a little tweaking but ended up rewriting the whole book! Since it was a romantic suspense and I was making it a psychological/domestic thriller, I decided to go first person when it was all third. I realized I didn’t need Christian’s POV at all and that it wasn’t going to be a romance though, there is a hint of a future one. Also for this genre, I needed a THEN or BEFORE section and Petal was born along with three new twists. I also changed the villain. I cut a few characters and added a few new ones like Teddy, Bianca, MacKenzie and their families.
It was the hardest book I’ve ever had to write because I kept trying to hold on to elements of the old when it needed scrapped and I struggled with overt faith threads over more like CS Lewis and the book of Esther which never mention Jesus or God but still show divine providence and biblical principles instead.
I originally wrote the book because I was sad to see the CW show Ringer go, with Sarah Michelle Gellar. This book has nothing to do with that plot line but I wanted to do my own spin on a twin story. I see SMG as Charlotte and Acelynn still. You can visit the storyboard to see who I would cast for the movie and fun places I modeled the setting.
Originally Charlotte went from Chicago to St. Louis and I spent a day there with my sister (though I’ve been many times having grown up 70 minutes away). But I wanted a more southern elegant setting and chose Savannah since I’d recently visited. All the setting had to change!
MacKenzie was named after a reader who won a contest naming Acelynn’s dogs and she had a character named after that–that was the prize!
This was my first official foray into writing psych thrillers/domestic thrillers. I loved it!
The biting scene with Petal came from personal history. I was 2 and bit my newborn brother on the leg. I did not draw blood though. 🙂
My sister is a therapist often working with deviants and I spent a lot of time asking her questions about Petal and medications and trauma. She is very helpful!
