WRITING: I'm not a writer who already knows how her plot ends on the last page. My first regency Warrior was a major who married -by proxy- a slightly blemished woman, who owns a fortune. In the series this (...)

What is your creative process like? What happens before sitting down to write?

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Constance HamptonJones [constancehamptonjones]

I'm not a writer who already knows how her plot ends on the last page.
My first regency Warrior was a major who married -by proxy- a slightly blemished woman, who owns a fortune. In the series this story became volume 4 Mercenary Major (The Bride) + volume 5 M.M. (The Blessing of Marriage). At the time I had a huge book of 600 pages, but did not think anybody was going to buy such a tome.
When I decided to Indiepublish at Amazon Kindle (e-books) I took out the story of Mercenary Major, rewrote it and published it. I decided to write separate stories about the Mercenary major's (Lord Kit Andover, Viscount Brondemeire) officer-friends.
Due to my non-existing creative process it ended up with 2 ducal families forming the thread:
Volume 1: Lochiel Cameron (illegitimate) son of Jonathan Montgomery, Duke of Rothford.
Volume 2+3: Hengist Agnew, son of the Earl of Loghaire. He gets into business with Richard Grey, Duke of Lindley, stepson of the Duke of Rothford. Hengist's mother was Jonathan Montgomery, Duke of Rothford's lover at a later age.
Volume 4+5: Although about Kit Brondemeire, Richard Grey Duke of Lindley plays an important part in those novels.
Volume 6: Lionel Armstrong, heir to the Earl of Wentworth is a good friend of Kit Brondemeire. We see the rappearance of Lochiel Cameron in this book.
Volume 7: Officers and Gentlemen is the time-period between Napoleon's defeat in 1814 and the Battle of Waterloo. Prominent is Lizzie Montgomery who set herself the rather desperate task to win back her husband John Montgomery, marques of Lorna and Kintyre. (Brother to Randolph Montgomery, Duke of Rothford.)
Volume 8: Waterloo Warriors is mainly about Kit Brondemeire's best friend Devon Broadhurst, the Earl of Allington's third son. This volume will appear in autumn 2012
From a very irregular idea I wound up writing a series about Georgian Regency.
I am certain I will start writing a bit more accoring to known 'processes' if it comes to my future books.

I just wake up and sit behind my laptop. (Coffee and breakfast next to it). I do about all my Social media myself and wrote my own websites. That truly takes a lot of time. It happens often that I work until it is time to go to sleep again.
I founded my own company (HamptonJones Books) and outsource all the work that is part of that. I have two excellent translators: Andreas von Pronay (German) and Lucie Durocher (French) and a great editor/corrector Linda Singh.
Still I sometimes think there are not enough hours in a day.