Stephen Michael Natale

The simple answer is that’s just how each story worked itself out. When I write, I begin with a base premise, perhaps it even starts with just a plot twist, but I never really know where the story is going to go until I get there. I may start with a particular genre in mind, but sometimes it doesn’t stay there, most of my stories end up crossing genre lines.

Starting with the Children’s Book, ‘Christmas Light Crusader’ the story begins with a true account, perhaps stylized; of when our dogs found a baby squirrel in a downspout; we named her Pearl. That fight to survive is combined with a real problem we have a Christmas time, and a whimsical story developed from there.

The latest release, ‘The Reverie of Jedadiah’ is a pure Romance Novella. I wrote it after seeing a photograph in a beauty salon and decided to explore the genre. My editors were working on the fourth book and there were some changes I wanted to make to it, so I decided to experiment. When I sent the manuscript to some of my test readers they loved the story, so I published it.

Now the first book, ‘The Shopkeeper’ was conceived with purely one aspect in mind; that was simply keep the reader guessing. I didn’t even have a story. The plot developed from the “who done it” genre, but as the story took shape it gained facets of Suspense, Thriller and Romance, most of that came from developing the characters.

The fourth book, ‘The River Kings’ came basically from a great number of reader requests wanting more of the character lives from ‘The Shopkeeper’. I had an adventure storyline I wanted to write and that fit very well with these characters, so The River Kings is the next chapter. But even that Adventure plot morphed across the genre boundaries, into romance and suspense.

I think the stories wander across those lines because, I guess as a male Author, you can’t really have beautiful women in a story without falling in love with them a little bit.

Well one of the secrets to my stories is they are all based in a bit of truth; some by history, some by actual events. The majority of my Characters are real people, composites mostly, stylized certainly, but all based on people I know; especially the female characters. I’m not permitted to say who they are, but let’s suffice it to say, I’m a pretty lucky guy and there are parts of the books that are not fiction.