Fiction Friday | Novel Inspiration by Carolyn Miller

I’ll admit it: I find inspiration for my books in lots of places.

News items, personal and God challenges, historical tidbits, overheard conversations, and travel have all formed the inspiration behind various books I’ve written. For my new contemporary romance series I’ve used a number of places I’ve personally visited. For The Breakup Project, I based scenes on a number of places I saw in and around Boston. In Love on Ice, I loved setting scenes in Wollongong and Austinmer, two places I’ve visited many times. For Checked Impressions, I loved setting this partly in the wonderful Chicago Art Institute, as well as a bunch of other Windy City locations I was lucky enough to visit (including a Chicago Blackhawks ice hockey game!). Muskoka Blue is set in Ontario, in a beautiful lake-filled region two hours north of Toronto. My upcoming release, Hearts and Goals, out next week, is set in Montreal.

My husband and I loved visiting Quebec, especially the fairytale-like Quebec City. Montreal was another fascinating place, complete with a historic cobblestoned downtown and the most beautiful Notre-Dame Basilica. My husband and I enjoyed the French vibe, and watching a hockey game in a pub while eating great food.

But for us the highlight was visiting Le Jardin botanique de Montréal, a quiet haven in this busy French-influenced metropolis, that consists of an arboretum, an insectarium, various hothouses, and a series of themed gardens, including a Native American, medicine, Chinese and Japanese gardens which were fun to explore.

At the time I simply enjoyed my visit, especially the Jardin japonais, probably my fave Japanese garden I’ve seen, it’s so peaceful. It wasn’t until a number of years later that I realized this could be the perfect setting for a book. I love how God can inspire us so we can use our experiences creatively, even years after the fact. Hearts and Goals features a (fictional) employee of the gardens, a young widow called Maggie Joly, whose role involves both garden and social media work that ultimately leads her to an unnerving encounter with Montreal’s new hockey goalie, southerner Beau Nash.

It was so fun to research a place I’d been, to discover more about the climate and the language and even the types of names used by French Canadians. And it was fun to present this from the perspective of a new-to-the-city character as Beau struggles to get his head around the language and different culture, which leads to a number of humorous encounters. I also enjoyed using Canadian French to give the story a little more Montreal flavour. I’ve used some phrases from other languages in my historicals, but using Quebecois French (it’s different to the French we study in school) meant asking some Quebec readers to proofread and correct.

It’s funny how we can simply be doing life, but these become experiences that ignite a future dream. I love how inspiration for books comes in many ways.

Here’s a bit more about Hearts and Goals:

He’s a goalie with a big heart, while she’s afraid to trust again. Can he learn the language of love to win her heart?

After a series of tragedies, Maggie Joly’s dreams have been confined to her work at Montreal’s botanic gardens and caring for her little boy. Besides, wishing for more would simply be selfish, especially when she’s already loved well. But when a surprising workplace encounter sees her in the arms of a handsome sweet-talking stranger, she’s soon forced to reassess whether romance might still be in her future after all.

Working in this fairytale-like city is a dream come true for Beau Nash, Montreal’s new goalie. And while he’s excited to explore all his new city offers, he hadn’t counted on meeting a striking brunette with heart-melting eyes, or so quickly bonding with her and her son, even thought Maggie’s faith is a little tenuous, and shadows from the past mean she might never really be ready to love again.

An incident at the Gardens forces Beau to choose between his dream job and the woman of his dreams, while an accident on the ice invites Maggie’s deepest fears. Perhaps a Pumpkin Ball might help convince them to believe in happily-ever-afters once again.

Hearts and Goals is the fourth book in the Original Six, a sweet and swoony, slightly sporty, Christian contemporary romance series, perfect for fans of Becky Wade, Kara Isaac, and Susan May Warren.

Buy links for Hearts and Goals:

Amazon, Apple, Kobo, GooglePlay, Nook, Koorong

So let’s talk:

Can you think of any memorable settings you’ve seen depicted in a book? Is there a setting you’d like to see featured in a book? If you’re an author, what kinds of things have inspired you to write a novel? Have you visited Quebec?