Linda Kage, Creating the Perfect Ten

Ten’s Origin Story guest post by Linda Kage.

Seems like Linda has the same problem I do with my supporting characters. They somehow find a way to weasel their way into a bigger storyline until they get a whole book dedicated to them. Sheeh. Gotta love writing. These guys are worse than working with real actors because they live inside your head. LOL

Please enjoy Linda’s post.

Oren Tenning, better known as “Ten,” and less commonly called Zero hurled himself into the Forbidden Men series in Book Two (To Professor, with Love (Forbidden Men Book 2).

Over the last four books, this guy has slowly developed into a man who’s wormed his way into my heart. He’s probably my favorite Forbidden Man these days. (But shhh…don’t you dare tell the other guys that!)

I had no plans for him at all when I started To Professor, With Love. He was just some character for Noel to interact with, someone to help highlight Noel’s better attributes. But then he grew a bigger role in the story when I went and made him Noel’s roommate (still don’t know why I did that) and even further so when they ended up working together too and being teammates on the football team.

I totally did not know he was going to show up at Aspen’s house to bitch her out on Noel’s behalf before he was there, pounding on her door and demanding to know what her problem was. That kind of shocked me and made me think, “Huh, maybe there’s more to this annoying, crude, doesn’t-know-when-to-shut-up loud mouth a-hole than meets the eye.” He still wasn’t my favorite person on earth at that point, but he’d definitely caught my interest.

I still didn’t have a story planned for him, though. As far as I was concerned, he’d just fade away and be forgotten at the end of To Professor with Love. Except then he surprised me again when he helped Noel out in the locker room and then again when he went with Noel to gather Noel’s siblings.

By then, I was like, yeah, I guess he’s okay. It wasn’t until he first met Caroline that I was like, whoa! I mean…WHOA! If I’d been able to have a conversation with him, it probably would’ve gone something like this:

ME – Wha…whoa. What was that?
TEN – Nothing.
ME – But—
TEN – Dude, she’s hot. That’s it. Mind your own f—-g business.
ME – (Pfft, as if…) No seriously, WHAT was that?
TEN – SHUT UP! I did not just screw her rotten, marry her, and have ten babies with her in my head. Nu-uh. No way. Not with my best friend’s little sister.

So, from there, little ideas for a Ten/Caroline story started growing in my head. When people began to read To Professor, with Love (Forbidden Men Book 2), I received a little feedback, asking if Ten and Caroline would get a story, which helped me confirm I wasn’t the only one who’d felt the spark between them.

While I was working on Be My Hero (Forbidden Men Book 3), two of my nieces were brainstorming ideas for Ten. I kid you not. After they pried it out of me what I wanted the basic plot to be, they got together one evening and wrote out like fives pages, front and back, of things they wanted to happen in Ten’s book! So when you get to scenes with Caroline’s younger brothers, or all the shipping terms, you can thank Shi and Alaina for those! They wanted them in there. I think they even wanted Pick to know early on about Caroline and Ten’s relationship, and they definitely did not want Ten left in the dark about his Midnight Visitor for very long. It was even Shi’s suggestion I used to decide who would give Ten his black eye in his story! So much of Ten’s story was written for them, and I had loads of fun writing it!!

As impatient as Ten is, he bulldozed his way into With Every Heartbeat (Forbidden Men Book 4) and kind of stole a couple scenes (or a lot of scenes!), and now here he is, ready for the world to meet!

And that is how Ten came to be!!

Click here to read an excerpt of A Perfect Ten.

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A Perfect Ten (Forbidden Men Book 5) by Linda Kage

Synopsis

Let your hair down, Caroline, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.

I know I’ve closed myself off in a major way in the past year, ever since “the incident” where I messed up my life completely. It’s past time I try to live again or just give up completely. But this is quite possibly the craziest thing I’ve ever done. In a last ditch effort to invigorate myself, I’m standing outside Oren Tenning’s bedroom, I just peeled off the sexiest pair of underwear I own, and my hand is already raised to knock. My brother would disown me for doing anything with his best friend, and he’d probably kill Oren. But if I play my cards right, no one will ever know about this. Not even Ten.

Maybe after tonight, I’ll finally get over this stupid, irrational crush I hate having on the biggest jerk I’ve ever met. Or maybe I’ll just end up falling for him even harder. Maybe I’ll discover there’s so much more to my crude, carefree hunk than meets the eye.

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About Linda Kage

Linda grew up on a dairy farm in the Midwest as the youngest of eight children. Now she lives in Kansas with her husband, daughter, and nine cuckoo clocks. Her life’s been blessed with lots of people to learn from and love. Writing’s always been a major part of her world, and she is so happy to finally share some of her stories with other romance lovers.

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