Hello Luvlies!

To end off this month with a bang, our 'secret post' is an guest blog post by the fabulous Megan Tayte herself!

Enjoy, and keep an eye out for our next featured author!

Luvlie Readings guest post

Creating Cara: ‘So, your sister’s dead and my legs are mangled…’

When I cast my mind back (not too far, mind!) to my teenage years, two major themes jump out at me:

Love: Does he like me? Do I like him? Should I call him? Will he call me?
Friendship: Do you think he likes me? Do you think I like him? Should I call him? Will he call me?

So although I always intended my young-adult series The Ceruleans to be fundamentally a romance, I knew that friendship mattered too. The seventeen-year-old protagonist, Scarlett – who is lost and grieving and coming to live in a strange village – needs a love interest, sure. But she needs a friend a whole lot more.

Enter Cara Cavendish. Trendy. Confident. Vampire-fiction-obsessed. Entrepreneurial. Creative. Quirky. Blunt.

Oh, and disabled.

That’s the last in the list, because it doesn’t remotely define Cara. She’s not ashamed of her scarred legs and her awkward, ungainly walk. She’s defined by a million other things that make her unforgettable. She’s not a disabled person; she’s just a person. And she’s a brilliant friend to Scarlett, not because she’s sweet and accommodating – because she’s anything but: she’s bolshie, she’s pushy, she’s challenging.

Thanks to Cara bulldozering her into a friendship, Scarlett comes out of her shell. She quits being a wallflower; she shakes off her posh boarding-school background; she tries new, crazy things and sees the world from a fresh perspective (‘See that guy? Yep, the homeless one. Yes, the one with the big beard and the scars. Hot, isn’t he?’).

I loved writing Cara. I loved writing lines like these for her:

‘So, your sister’s dead and my legs are mangled.’

‘In my next life, I’m coming back as a hamster.’

‘Really? Wow, I must’ve missed that. But if you will insist on talking while I’m watching The Originals…’

‘Never look a gift horse in the arse.’

Everyone should have a Cara Cavendish in their life, I think. Someone to inspire you, to tell it like it is, to make you laugh, to make you go get ’em.

And every author needs a Cara, a character who’s so real she haunts you and demands (loudly!) to be written. But Cara has such presence that she’s outlived The Ceruleans, which I’ve finished writing now. There I am, shopping or cooking or building a Lego tower with my kids, and she walks into my mind, pointing out that my outfit’s a disgrace to fashion or pondering the plot direction in The Vampire Diaries.

So as far as I can see, there’s only one way out: give Cara her own book. But then, of course, I’ll need to write a friend for leading lady Cara. Because what love story’s complete without friendship?

-Megan Tayte