I realized that it's been a week since In the Darkest Night came out (yea! go buy your copy!) and I hadn't done a post about where the idea for this book came from.
I've talked before about how different books are born in different ways. Darkest Night was all Kel, the hero. When I was writing Edge of Dawn, the first scene I saw for that book (which isn't in the book at all, but that's another story) was Logan (EOD's hero) with his brother. Logan was worried about Kel standing off by himself at a family barbeque and brought a can of pop over to him. Kel was suspicious and taciturn. Hmm.
Boom! Right then and there I knew something bad had happened to Kel and I knew he had a story. I didn't know much more than that, but as EOD progressed and Kel had more scenes with Logan and Logan thought or talked about Kel, I learned more. There was a lot I still didn't know, like who had captured him and why he'd closed himself off from his family. And his heroine? I had no clue who she was either.
And then I reached the end of EOD and I learned who is heroine was and I was like, no, really? Farran? Call me dense, but I hadn't seen that match up coming.
So what did I know going into Darkest Night besides who the hero and heroine were? Not all that much. I knew Seth was going to return because the Gineal are most definitely not done with him yet. But I couldn't figure out why he cared about Kel or Farran when he had bigger issues to deal with like being pursued by Horus and reclaiming the power he'd lost. I also knew that Farran had a scar on her face from the end of EOD and that it was significant in some way.
You can see there was a lot I didn't know. This is pretty typical. :-) But I put together a synopsis and figured out the framework of the story, then it was a matter of writing it, of getting to know my hero and heroine through their thoughts and actions.
The theme song for this book is Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls and it's because one line in that song fits Kel and Farran completely. "I don't want the world to see me." This ended up being a driving force for me as I wrote the book. It helped form the beginning of the story and it stayed a theme pretty much to the end.
I love all my books and all my heroes and heroines, but In the Darkest Night ended up being a little bit extra special to me. I hope you love it as much as I do.
