For What It's Worth: Guest Post: Five Songs That Helped Shape My Heroes by Tammara Webber

I've asked my favorite authors to join me all this month to celebrate my 6th year Blogoversary. My last guest to help me close out the celebration is Tammara Webber.

Tammara contacted me in my early blogging days to review her self published, YA book - Between the Lines. I accepted and the rest is history as they say. She's always been professional, kind and generous. Not to mention one of the most talented writers I've had the pleasure to read. Her novels examine real life issues with honest portrayals of flawed teens and *new adults* but always manages to give the reader a well earned romance and HEA. She is a must read - auto buy author for me.

That wonderful experience has influenced how I've blogged ever since. I'm always willing to give a new author a try and not turn my nose down at self or small press authors. One of the best things to happen in blogging is to discover your next favorite author! That's exactly what happened to me with Tammara. She's the BEST!

Also, if you're a fan of the Contours of the Heart series - there's a little treat at the bottom of Tammara's post....we find out her next hero!

Five Songs That Helped Shape My Heroes – Tammara Webber

At times an author needs absolute silence to write. In my case, composing dialogue requires the sort of quiet only found with earplugs. So I’m more likely to listen to a current manuscript’s playlist while driving, cooking, or taking a walk. I obsess over character development, work through plot blocks, and stumble over turning point epiphanies about central themes during these non-writing moments, and each novel’s playlist—carefully cultivated from the story’s conception until I write the last sentence—can effect essential details of the storyline, including the hero.

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As my first heroine struggled with her fear of following the life and career she really wanted, my first hero, Graham Douglas, struggled with his fear of wanting her. His apprehension made sense—once the reader knew it—but that boy deserved an HEA, and he wasn’t going to get one without making himself vulnerable and risking his heart. Just Say Yes by Snow Patrol signified his moment of truth, when he realized everything he wanted from the girl he’d fallen for. I may have discovered my repeat: one button with this track.

Reid Alexander was the ultimate redemption project. When I wrote Between the Lines, I had no intention of redeeming this anti-hero—but he had a pigheaded desire to be a better man, and saving him became a challenge I couldn’t ignore. I just had to find a girl who saw through his celebrity arrogance to the emotionally destitute man who needed someone in his life to see his potential. Enter Dori: dedicated do-gooder and inveterate non-fangirl. Anywhere But Here by SafetySuit was the track on replay for Reid inspiration while I wrote Good For You.

Lucas Maxfield was tormented by misplaced guilt. He’d shut himself off from any chance of emotional connection until Jacqueline came crashing into his life, in need of his protection and support. He couldn’t turn away from her, or from his own intense need for her. What surprised me most about their relationship, however, was the gentleness of their fall despite the violence they’d each endured. I discovered Hardliners by Holcombe Waller just before I began writing Easy. Tender and haunting, it became one of my all-time favorite tracks the first time I heard it, and it was the perfect expression of Lucas’s feelings about Jacqueline.

Boyce Wynn grew up on the Gulf Coast of Texas, so I listened to lots of mood-setting country music while writing Sweet. The alt-country band Green River Ordinance (from my hometown of Fort Worth) gets an honorable mention for holding ten tracks out of forty on my playlist, but it was Who I Am With You by Chris Young (released just after I’d turned in final edits for Breakable) that kept Boyce’s voice in my ear. The lyrics articulated his adoration for the girl he’d loved since childhood, and every time it played, all I could hear was Boyce’s drawled, “C’mon now. Tell our story. You know you want to.”

My current work in progress, a spinoff from Easy, owes its hero’s initial development to a deep track on a popular album. The identity of my shadowy hero may not have been clear to me when I began contemplating this story, but I knew my heroine inside out. Erin McIntyre was a loyal, empathetic BFF to Jacqueline in Easy, but where all else was concerned she was a firecracker—energetic, independent, flitting from one interest to another, never settling down or falling hard for anyone. When I heard Sam Hunt’s Make You Miss Me, I knew the type of man who would eventually be her match. Coming in 2016, get ready to meet Aaron Maat—the man determined to be Erin’s exception.

About Tammara:

I write contemporary, romantic, coming-of-age fiction (Young Adult and New Adult). An international andNew York Times bestselling author with books translated into 24 languages, I'm represented by Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. Please contact DGLM regarding any rights requests.

I'm a hopeful romantic who adores novels with happy endings, because there are enough sad endings in real life. Before writing full time, I was an undergraduate academic advisor, economics tutor, planetarium office manager, radiology call center rep, and the palest person to ever work at a tanning salon. I married my high school sweetheart, and I'm Mom to three adult kids and four very immature cats.