Guest Post by Nicole Zoltack

Better late than never! Today I've the pleasure of welcoming Nicole Zoltack to my blog! Since it's Friday night here now, I've had one glass of wine too many and there's a pizza burning in the oven, I'll turn this over to Nicole:

When I sit down to write, I either have a plot idea or a main character that just won't shut up. I then sit down at the computer and just type. I am definitely a pantser!

I write like I read for the most part, and as such, if I think to far ahead of where I am in the story - specifically if I think about and figure out the ending - I never finish the story. I get bored with it.

And when you're writing the last book in a trilogy, you can be sure I was thinking about the ending long before I actually reached it! Needless to say, Champion of Valor, the last book in my fantasy romance Kingdom of Arnhem series, was by far the hardest to write.

The first book - Woman of Honor - practically wrote itself. I knew the main character first - a young girl who asks her king if she can train to become a knight.

Knight of Glory I knew I wanted to expand the fantasy world so it was more plot oriented.

But Champion of Valor had to tie up many of the loose odds and ends and there was a war to resolve, and oh yeah, Lucifer was trying to bring about the Apocalypse before its time. To say that I got stuck several times while writing it would be an understatement!

But writing Champion of Valor as I did forced me to more closely examine my writing process. By realizing that I write as a reader has helped me become a better writer. I always strove to write stories I would love to read, but now I know that I need to fall in love with the hero, root for the heroine, feel their pain and anguish, struggle with them through their hardships as I write the story, and hopefully the reader will feel the exact same way when reading them.

What about you? What kind of a writer are you? Is your writing style anything like mine?

Be sure to leave a comment to be entered to win some signed post cards and magnets. Each comment during the Champion of Valor Blog Tour gives you an entry for the grand prize: a copy of the entire Kingdom of Arnhem trilogy - Woman of Honor, Knight of Glory, and Champion of Valor.

Have a great weekend, all!