Willow Winters on the inspiration for Heartthrob

By Willow Winters

The inspiration for Heartthrob came to me in small batches.

I knew that I would be writing about an actor, in the Expose series we each took a trope and that’s the one I chose, which is different for me.  I also knew that I was going to make him a former bad boy who was trying to clean up his act.

In life, you’re either running towards something, or away from something and I knew Nathan, my hero, was running away from whatever it was back home. I wanted him to take the first chance he got to leave, which happened to be a role to play basically the person that the world perceived him to be: a bad boy from New York who would never amount to anything.

I wasn’t sure where my heroine came into play until I realized that he was running from her.  And thus it became a second chance romance.   I wanted them to be high school sweethearts, who were “that” couple who always fought.  The ones that just could not have a disagreement without getting into an argument.  An on again off again relationship that quickly escalated, but only because they came from different worlds.

The failure with young love is that it’s difficult to understand that people process things differently and approach things differently because their experiences and upbringings are so different.  Especially in this case, where he’s from the bad part of town, and she’s from the Hills, a more affluent area.

But the crux of what tore them apart is something you don’t see coming.  A night that ended it all and left both characters damaged forever.  Until fate brings them back together.

And that’s why I love twists and being an author. I can’t tell you anymore, you’ll have to read the story yourself…