Story Inspiration: The Present

So I have a hero. I have a heroine. I have their backstory. What about the current day story?

I actually had part of that before I started thinking about Deck and his book. I was researching artifacts, trying to find something for Wicked Deception, and I stumbled across a missing treasure with an awesome history attached to it.

I planned to use one of the pieces from the treasure in Kyle's book, but as I was writing, it never fit. I ended up going with a brooch instead, but the Reverend Mother only knew that it was old and that Kyle found it. She didn't have the history. It comes into play in Deck's book. This brooch? It's from the lost treasure and now everyone knows it has surfaced.

Archer at the Paladin League has sent down a team to find and recover the Lost Treasure of Trujillo. Frankie, the heroine, is on this team. The fact that people have been hunting for the treasure for centuries created a bunch more of the plot.

Frankie being an archivist/researcher/historian contributed to the plot, too. Her job brought Deck into the equation and there was a story! I love it when a plan comes together.

Story Inspiration: The Past

Now that I had my hero and heroine, I started trying to parse out the rest of the information I needed. It didn't take long before I realized Deck and Frankie had a past.

This was something that came to me without my realizing it. Same thing with the fact that he ghosted her. One day, I just knew.

But what were the circumstances? Deck didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd disappear on the woman he was in love with and it was clear from the start he carried a torch for a woman from his past. Frankie.

I had to sit with this for a while. Longer than I expected.

Some of it came quickly. They'd known each other in college. They'd been best friends from the instant they met at freshman orientation.

This raised more questions. How'd they go from friends to lovers? And why did Deck cut out on her and not reply to her messages/emails/phone calls?

This was the question that kept tripping me up until Deck opened up enough to share that who is now--Mr. Responsible, officer in charge of a covert Special Forces team, rarely put a foot wrong--isn't who he was in college. In fact, he insists he was self-centered, irresponsible, and immature. Frankie tells me this isn't the truth because she wouldn't have been friends with someone like that. Deck insists this was exactly what he was like. I suspect they're both right.

Deck was simply different with Frankie from Day One.

Story Inspiration: Frankie Lewis

Last week, I mentioned that Deck wasn't supposed to be more than a secondary character, but he wanted his own story.

Francesca "Frankie" Lewis arrived with her name first. I think it's because I knew Deck was going to need a heroine and things were turning without me being consciously aware of it. Basically, one day, I thought, I wonder who Deck's heroine is? And I hear Frankie.

I knew immediately that she was redheaded/auburn-haired and that she worked for The Paladin League, but wasn't an archaeologist.

That stumped me for a while.

At first, I thought maybe she was some kind of art expert, but that never felt right. I found out why when the series expanded from three books to four and the new addition was the art expert. Cool, but that still left me wondering what Frankie did for the Paladin League.

My dilemma lasted until I was talking with a couple of friends--one whom happens to be a librarian--and she suggested archivist.

Bells rang. Well, figuratively at least. That's exactly what Frankie did. She was an archivist/researcher with a second masters degree in history. Just the person Archer would assign to Puerto Jardin to comb through private papers and ancient books to look for clues.

Now I needed a story.

Story Inspiration: Decker Nguyen

I was searching for a blog topic. I don't really like to talk about the stories I'm writing for a number of reasons, including inadvertent spoilers. After a long while rejecting topics and hoping for an epiphany, I asked my friends. Most of the ideas didn't work for me--for an example, I do not have a music playlist while I write--but I thought I could talk about one of the thoughts.

Inspiration for my latest characters and/or plot.

First, I will say that Deck was not meant to be anything except a secondary character. The Paladin League was going to be four stories and that was it. However, the team couldn't get the head of the arms dealing empire in four books and then there was Deck who became more and more intriguing with every appearance he made.

As I was writing Wicked Obsession, which is connected to my friend Trish McCallan's Future Under Fire, she asked for the name of Ryder's commanding officer. Um, yeah, I'd given that zero thought. So I hurried up and threw out a last name. Captain Nguyen.

I'm not sure if Deck had a first name in Finn's book although his role increased and he made multiple appearances in Wicked Intention. His screen time increased more dramatically by the time I was working on Griff's book and he had a major role in Wicked Salvation. Now I was getting information on Deck and becoming more intrigued. It wasn't until after I'd finished Salvation and was doing research for Wicked Deception that I realized the series wasn't done yet.

Before I finished Deception, I knew he'd ghosted the woman he'd been in love with. That he hadn't realized how he felt about her until it was too late to go back and grovel. It wasn't until I was ready to start writing his book that Deck shared some of his background.

Wicked Persuasion is available for preorder at Amazon.

What to Expect

As I was trying to figure out what to blog about, I received an email from a marketing firm. It was promoting a course they teach, but also offered a little bit of knowledge. One of the questions it said authors should think about is: What do you write?

Usually when I get these kinds of emails, I'm at sea trying to figure out answers, but this I know.

I love movies that have action and romance, but the action is a little bit over the top. Think movies like Speed or The Terminator.

My plan with my books is suspense that is a little bit larger than life. Like Misson: Impossible. I think of my stories as Adventure Romance. My tag line on my website is: Where Love Finds Adventure.

I spend months and months writing and I don't want to immerse myself in gritty realism day after day. I want Jack and Annie trying to save a bus full of passengers from a bomb. I want Sarah and Kyle trying to defeat a cyborg who's come to stop her from giving birth to the child that will lead the resistance.

That's my aim for the action/adventure/suspense part of my stories. When it comes to the romance, I like heroes and heroines who work together, even if they're reluctant partners.

A good example is Griff and Cat from Wicked Salvation. She wants nothing to do with a man she believes is a mercenary, but she needs his help--whether she likes it or not. As for Griff, he has a weakness for damsels in distress and feels compelled to help no matter how much trouble it causes for him.

My characters are not gushy, say a lot of sweet nothings kind of people. In Wicked Intention, Finn and Zo have lived together for two years and a big issue is that neither of them is sure of the other because neither of them have said I love you.

Trying to change my heroes and heroines to be different than who they are never works. If I try to force them to do something, they go on strike. I literally can't write forward until I delete what they refuse to do and rewrite it. I've stopped fighting it. Now I just figure out what they don't like and rewrite immediately.

Out of Sync

If you've read Wicked Intention, you know that the second to last chapter in the book introduces Griff's story. If you read the preview after Finn's story, you also know that the first chapter of Wicked Salvation is this scene from Finn's book, just told from Griff's Point of View.

I wish now that I'd never done this.

It's been exceedingly difficult to keep the two versions in sync.

First, as I revised Finn's story before it was released, things kept changing and I continually had to update the preview to match it. Second, as I wrote Griff's story, the first chapter was tweaked. And third, now that I'm doing revisions with my editor for Wicked Salvation, there have been more changes. This means I'm going to have to go back to Finn's book and fix it there, too.

It was easier when I teased Finn's story because it was the guys talking about Finn heading to Los Angeles because of a woman--who might or might not shoot him on sight.

Of course, there really was no other way to do Griff's story. It needed to start where it did and to hint at it, the opening needed to be at the end of Finn's book. So, yes. Here we are with syncing issues.

Once Griff's book is finished and for sale and I have Finn's book updated to match, everything should settle down and the syncing will stop, but it's reaching this point that's a pain.

Throwback Thursday: In the Darkest Night

At last, the book that garnered the Throwback Thursday request--In the Darkest Night! This is the fourth (and final written/published) story in my Light Warriors series. Released in 2010.

First, let me say that this is one of my most favorite covers ever! This couple is exactly right for Kel and Farran and it's beautiful! Love, love, love this cover!

I also love this book. It's one of my personal favorites that I've ever written. Sometimes authors talk about gift books, ones that write themselves. I've never had one of those, but Darkest Night came close. The last half of the book flowed out of me and made me excited to be a writer. :-) If only every story was like that!

I knew that Kel would be the hero in the fourth book from the time I was writing Edge of Dawn, but I had no clue who his heroine was. That's why I found it amusing when someone online thought it was obvious from EOD that Farran would be his heroine and hoping that she was wrong. She had better powers of observation than I did because it wasn't until well after I turned in EOD that I discovered who the heroine was in Darkest Night.

Kel Andrews is Logan's twin. We learned previously that something had happened to change him. In this book we discover what that was. Kel has PTSD and is struggling mightily. Mightily enough that the council has removed him from his duties as a troubleshooter. They're concerned he'll get himself killed. Kel's family is concerned about him, too. He's shut them all out as much as it's possible for him to do that.

Farran was injured at the end of EOD and disappeared. We catch up with her here and it's the return of Seth, the god-demon from Twilight's Shadow. Another magic user also makes an appearance and the battle between the two--both of whom seem interested in her--scare Farran enough to come out of hiding and go to Logan and Shona for help.

Only Logan and Shona aren't home. Kel's there instead and his choosing to help Farran will be the first step in his journey out of the darkness.

Farran is wounded, too. She was emotionally and physically abused by her father and her brothers are less than admirable. Because of her past, she's able to recognize that Kel is in his own hell.

There are so many scenes in this book that I love, that I can't pick a favorite. Maybe the scene where Kel finally reveals his deepest, darkest secret to Farran. Or the scene where Kel and Logan finally talk and reach a good place with each other. Or how about when Kel's sister, Tris, arrives at an inopportune moment? :-) heh!

I liked that Farran did not heal Kel and Kel did not heal Farran. Their falling in love only encouraged them to work on healing themselves. Kel needed therapy and refused to go, but when he realized he couldn't have the woman he loved if he didn't make changes, he does start therapy. There is no magic solution. He's still dealing with his PTSD in the epilogue, but he feels as if he's improved enough where he can commit to Farran. With the severity of their wounds, both Kel and Farran will probably spend the rest of their lives healing to some degree or another.

Darkest Night also deals with repairing relationships. Kel with his family, especially his twin, and Farran with her best friend.

The cabin where Kel and Farran hide out in Wisconsin is a cabin I'd go to with my parents when I was younger. I found pictures from the days where they were actually developed from film and printed out and had those on my coffee table while I wrote the book.

Before I wrap up here, let me talk a little about the Light Warriors series. I'd planned on writing more books, and if I ever get the rights back to the first four titles, maybe I actually will write them. Book 5 would have been Kel and Logan's sister's story. Tris is sick of her hugely overprotective big brothers and how they scare off men, so she goes looking for someone to have a fling with, someone not cowed by Kel and Logan. It's after she breaks things off with him that they're forced to work together.

All the heroines in the series are part of the Twilight Time prophecy. Ryne is the strongest troubleshooter ever born, Maia carries the seed of the demon (not that kind of seed!), Shona is the dragon mage, and Farran is the halfling. I can't remember what Tris's special power is without going back to my notes and this blog post is long enough anyway. :-)

Throwback Thursday: Edge of Dawn

Continuing Throwback Thursdays for the entire Light Warrior series. Next week, I'll get to the fourth and final published story, the one that had an actual request for me to talk about. In the Darkest Night, one of my personal favorites.

This week, though, is the third book in the Light Warriors series, Edge of Dawn. It was released in 2008 and I think enough years have passed that I can finally say in public that this cover is the least favorite of my covers. Um, yeah.

The story itself, well, I think of this as my medical book. About the time it was scheduled to be released, I had a health scare, and when I found out I didn't have cancer (thank you, God!), I cried in the parking lot of the clinic, I was so relieved.

Also while I was actually writing the book, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. He had a tumor the size of an orange on his kidney and had to have it removed. I remember writing at home when he called and asked me to drive him to urgent care. I remember being sent from urgent care to the hospital for tests. It was late enough at night that it was just my mom and I sitting, waiting to hear the results. I remember trying to write in my dad's hospital room while he recovered from surgery and not succeeding. I know some authors lose themselves in writing to forget about what's going on in their lives, but I couldn't do it.

His recovery took a while, and my mom had stopped driving years earlier, so I had to take them everywhere they needed to go. It was a tough stretch, but I still got this book in on time. Looking back on it all, I'm not sure how I did it. (FYI, my dad sees a kidney doctor once a year, but everything is still looking good!)

So anyway, Shona Blackwood is the heroine of the book and her hero is Logan Andrews. Shona is a Gineal who doesn't realize what she is--her parents were stripped of their powers and had their memories erased (In Twilight's Shadow covers the hows and whys)--but she is being pursued by darksiders. Logan Andrews is a troubleshooter sent to protect her, but he's not allowed to reveal the existence of the Gineal or magic.

Shona's lack of creativity (she's an artist) and how she feels about it was taken directly from how I felt during my period of burn out that I experienced while working on Twilight's Shadow. When I read comments about how her reaction didn't seem realistic, I just laughed. I'd been there, done that and it was completely realistic.

Logan is into restoring classic cars and has no interest in art. Shona has no interest in cars. But they make it work to be a couple, which I appreciated.

My favorite scene in this book is the epilogue where Shona and Creed meet for the first time.

Throwback Thursday: In Twilight's Shadow

In Twilight's Shadow is book 2 of my Light Warriors series. It was released in 2008 and I wrote it in 2007. This is the only deadline I needed to ask for an extension on and I was still late. While writing this book I was 1) severely burnt out from the deadlines I'd had on my previous four books and 2) the original plot wasn't working and I was too panicked about the deadline to cut everything and start over. Which I finally had to do anyway.

The heroine in Twilight's Shadow is Maia Frasier, the sister of the heroine in book one of the Light Warriors. Maia gave up her powers years earlier (the why is revealed in Midnight Hour) and she's stayed near her sister ever since. And has felt excluded because Maia is no longer considered one of the Gineal people.

Her hero is Creed Blackwood, the biggest badass troubleshooter the Gineal have. Creed...well, what can I say about Creed? He was an ass and did nothing to soften that. I liked him anyway, but it took me a while to warm up to him. It's a good thing he's so pretty. ;-)

This is the book where the prophecy/mythology of Twilight Time starts to be revealed. It's long forgotten by most of the Gineal people, but Creed has always had an interest in history. He knows that Ryne (heroine in Midnight Hour) is the strongest Gineal troubleshooter ever tested and that signals the onset of the prophecy. I can't remember how much of this is spelled out in the book itself, although I know some of it is. Again, I haven't reread this book in a long, long time. Because I had to fight for every word on this story, it doesn't make me feel all happy inside to revisit it. :-)

Twilight's Shadow is also the book where we learn about the existence of the god-demons. Maia was romantically involved with one years earlier, although she didn't know what he was at the time. The ancient Egyptians called him Set (or Seth). Seth makes another appearance later in the series.

The opening of the book where Creed is gored wasn't in the manuscript I turned in to my editor. She asked me to add an action scene since Midnight Hour opened with action.

There's also a scene where I mention the name of the heroine in the next book, although in this book it's used to explain some of why Creed can be such a jerk.

Throwback Thursday: In the Midnight Hour

I had a request to do a Throwback Thursday on In the Darkest Night (Book 4 in my Light Warriors series) and I felt like I needed to do the entire series because in my mind they're a set. Each story can be read by itself and make sense--that's something I strive for when I write--but there are references in later books that go back to earlier stories. They don't impact the current story directly, but they're there. Readers who are curious can go back and read the earlier books, but those who don't care, don't need to do this.

In the Midnight Hour is the first book in my Light Warriors series. The one-sentence blurb for the story is: When a troubleshooter for a society of magic users rescues a private investigator from a dark spell, she finds more than an ally as she faces down her former mentor. The troubleshooter is the heroine, Ryne Frasier. The PI she rescues is her hero, Deke Summers. She's intense and he's a smart ass...which he uses to hide his own intensity.

I wrote the proposal chapters for this story in 2004. This was before I wrote Through a Crimson Veil or Eternal Nights. My agent shopped it around, but before it sold, I was contracted for both TACV and EN. When the offer came for Midnight Hour, my turn time was 18 months. The editor had to pass because it was outside the interval she was buying for.

But she had another buying round when I was finished with TACV and working on EN and I could turn it in on the right schedule. Midnight Hour was sold! It's release date was in 2007 which was (OMG!) thirteen years ago. It doesn't seem that long.

As an aside, I find it interesting that I wrote my proposals in this order: Midnight Hour, Eternal Nights, Crimson Veil and they were contracted/due in the reverse order.

Ryne was a PITA about her name. She told me that it starts with an R and then left me scrolling through baby name sites online and paging through every baby name book I owned. Nothing was right and she refused any attempts I made to just pick one. I finally stumbled across Ryne in one book. It was the only book I had that put that name in the girl's section because Ryne is generally a boy name. No wonder I couldn't find it for so long!

Deke was largely an enigma to me at first. Until I found a picture of "him." I find pictures for all my heroes and heroines for sure and a lot of times the secondary characters as well. This is also frequently a PITA because the characters are very specific about finding the right image. Deke's doppelganger had this expression on his face that totally screamed "smart-ass" and yes, that's exactly what he was. He pushed Ryne's buttons just for fun. Despite his sometimes annoying qualities, he ended up being among my most favorite heroes. I have a thing for smart asses.

I finished writing Midnight Hour in 2006 and I haven't reread the book in years. Everything I'm talking about here is what's stuck with me from this book and these characters.

Ryne was my most solitary heroine ever. Also my most intense and my most kick-ass. Which all relates back to her childhood and her apprenticeship with another troubleshooter, one that should never have been allowed to teach a young troubleshooter. While Ryne maintains she was never sexually abused, there was abuse there. Since I don't use omniscient Point of View (POV), I was unable to directly address this because in her POV, that wasn't what happened.

This series had a mythology of the Gineal people at its core. Most of the society had forgotten about it, but one person didn't and he understood the time of prophecy was at hand. That person was Creed Blackwood, the hero of the second book in the series, In Twilight's Shadow.

It's Ryder's Turn

***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!! If you haven't read Wicked Obsession yet and don't like spoilers, stop here!***

Now let's put Ryder under the microscope. It took a little while for me to understand Langley, but Ryder was right up front from the moment I started thinking about Wicked Obsession. Front the start, he didn't think he was good enough for Langley.

The college thing was really a huge deal for him. I hope the fact that he thinks about it several times over the course of the book shows just how much this impacted his behavior. His father was determined that his three boys would have a better life than he'd had and that meant they all needed to go to college. His two older brothers both did this, but while Ryder tried, it wasn't his thing.

He finished his first year and then dropped out to join the army. When he'd go home to visit his parents, all he'd hear was how proud his dad was of his other sons. But Ryder wasn't around when his dad did a ton of bragging about him and how he was Special Forces. His father is as proud as can be, but has never told Ryder this, so yeah, he believes even his father doesn't think he's good enough.

And then he meets Langley who not only came from an affluent background, but graduated from college with honors (See Langley and perfectionism in an earlier post). She's also lived all over the world, speaks a dozen languages either fluently or mostly fluently and he's like, yeah, as soon as she figures out that I'm not good enough, she's out of here.

But Ryder doesn't see Langley as clearly as he should. She's not a princess like he believes for much of the book. His friends see this easily. Finn and Griff both try to get him to understand that his view of her is skewed. She's tough and smart, but Ryder is stuck on her being a delicate princess.

It's actually his image of her that's interfering with reality. He also hasn't asked her a lot of questions about the nitty gritty of how she was raised. Aside from the bodyguards who were necessary for her protection, Langley wasn't spoiled by her parents. As she says several times in the book, she has more in common with the children of ambassadors from other countries than any other group of people.

By the end of Wicked Obsession, Ryder finally understands that Langley isn't this princess he's been thinking she was, but a strong woman who will do whatever it takes. Like participate in a shootout with the bad guys.

Let's Talk About Langley (She Won't Mind)

***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!! If you haven't read Wicked Obsession yet and don't like spoilers, stop here!***

Now that Wicked Obsession has been out for oh, about 2.5 months, I wanted to talk a little bit about Langley.

There were two big influences in her life that shaped who she is today. The first, of course, was being the daughter of an ambassador and being cautioned about causing issues by making people feel uncomfortable or causing a scene or doing anything else that might reflect badly on her or her family or her country.

Because of how young she was when her parents began to tell her this, it's second nature to never show what she feels and to conceal anger or hurt with politeness. It's also a facet of her perfectionism and how detail oriented she is.

Just in case you've been wondering, she's working on this. People don't change overnight, but now that she's aware of how potentially destructive it can be to a relationship, she's stopping, taking a step back, and making new decisions. I wanted to highlight this more in the epilogue, but there was so many other things to address and space was limited, so I'm afraid this didn't get called out as much as I would have liked.

The second big event that changed her behavior was the attempted rape when she was 13. Because of that, she hates being weak or even perceived of as weak. You might have noticed throughout Wicked Obsession how she kept commenting on how she didn't want to be weak. It's why she wanted to have training to be able to defend herself. She's the one who convinced her father to get her some advanced self-defense training. It's why she never balked when Ryder added to her training. She never wanted to be in a situation where she was helpless.

You can also imagine that when Ryder grabbed her out of that shack in Puerto Jardin and she believed he was a mercenary, that she felt fear. That part of the reason why she whacked him in the head with the rock and escaped was that she was afraid of being assaulted before this (believed) mercenary ransomed her back to her father. It's a pretty big deal that she trusts Ryder absolutely when the story takes place. She doesn't trust easily.

I hope you found this a little bit interesting. In the future, I'll take a look at Ryder and talk about how I saw him and some of his issues.

Coming Summer 2018

A friend (Trish McCallan) and I are releasing related novellas this year! Each story will be complete and will stand alone, but our heroines are best friends and go through some trouble together. Luckily, their guys are determined to keep their women safe!

My story is the prequel to a series I have planned set in a brand-new world. It's romantic suspense and in the novella and the first three books, the heroes are US Army Special Forces.

Let me introduce you Wicked Obsession with a short blurb:

It was supposed to be a wedding: a bit of fun, some wine, the chance for Langley Canfield to forget a devastating breakup. Until the wedding turns into a kidnapping, and her brand new ex—Sergeant Ryder Pienkowski—races to the rescue.

Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.

Theme Songs

I used to pick theme songs for my stories. This wasn't something I'd ever planned to do, but one day (as I was driving home from work) Devo's Girl U Want started to play and the lyrics made it perfect for my first book, Ravyn's Flight. The book officially had a theme song.

Nothing popped out at me like that for The Power of Two, but I chose Corey Hart's Never Surrender because that was Cai's attitude.

I never was happy with the theme song for Through a Crimson Veil. The title kind of fit, but the rest of the Travis Tritt song really didn't work for Mika. But Eternal Nights did fit perfectly with INXS's Never Tear Us Apart and every time I hear it, I still think of Kendall and Wyatt.

Because it sometimes helped with the writing, I even tried to choose theme songs for my Works In Progress (WIP), but it's very time consuming to find the right song and as time became harder to come by, I've pretty much given it up. Part of me misses having a song come on the radio and getting all excited because it belonged to one of my books, but on the other hand, a lot of my characters ended up with theme music that I picked just because I was tired of looking for something. Those tunes evoke nothing in me.

I think what I've decided to do is to pick a theme song only if one jumps out as being perfect for the story. That means most of my stories won't have anything, but I think it's better than trying to force something to fit.

Titles Equal Torture (Or Please Help)

One of my least favorite things to do is come up with titles for my stories. I usually just refer to them by the characters' names, but that doesn't make for a catchy or interesting title. When my working title is accepted, I'm elated. Like Phoenix Burning--that was what I called it from the start.

I wasn't so lucky with the second story I turned in to Nocturne Cravings. I've been tasked with coming up with 3-5 suggestions for a new title. By Friday. I've spent days brainstorming keywords, but I don't have anything awesome. So let me tell you a little bit about the book and if you have any thoughts on a sexy, catchy title, please let me know.

Heroine is Chloe Donovan and she's a wizard.
Hero is a demon named Marax.

She's looking for her sister in a nightclub and he's looking for Chloe's sister, too, because she turned his nephew's skin green.

Chloe normally reins in her impulses and walks the straight and narrow.
Marax is a demon earl and he tends to be conservative...for a demon. But with the heat flaring between them, they both act out of character.

The story is erotic paranormal romance so lots of heat and steam and the title should be sexy.

So begging here--any title ideas? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

January Release

I mentioned that I sold two more stories to Harlequin's Nocturne Cravings line. These are novella length erotic romance stories. Well, I have a release date for the first one--January 2014.

No one has asked me to come up with a new title yet, so I'm assuming that it will be released as Phoenix Burning. This story has a hero who is a vampire enforcer for the Los Angeles clan lord and a heroine who's experiencing a lot of change in her life. And yes, I'm being deliberately vague until I see what the cover copy looks like.

I spent Tuesday night doing the Art Fact Sheet for Phoenix. It was actually kind of difficult since I work from pictures when I write and the form is filled with drop downs for hair color, hair style, hair length, etc.

There were also questions about the theme of the story, the theme for the characters inside the story, and other things that I hadn't really thought about. I think that was a good exercise--to think about those things--and I might try thinking about this earlier.

Some of the pull downs were very difficult, though, because they're geared for all of Harlequin, not only Nocturnes and so questions like the hero's age tripped me up. He's like 600 years old, but since they were asking for the cover, I went with what his age appears to be. Also, vampire enforcer wasn't an option on the drop down list.

Now I wait. I'm always excited to see the covers and you know I'll share here as soon as I can.

The Muse and Her Sense Of Humor

The day after Thanksgiving, I finished a proposal and sent it off to my agent. This meant I had two and a half days to work on something else and there is this trilogy idea that's next in line. All I needed was some kind of over-arcing story for the series.

Um, yeah. Unfortunately, this is an idea I've had for more than two years, but I still haven't managed to figure out the series arc. Of course, that's because it's never been first in line. Now that it is, I should figure everything out and be able to get some work in. That's not exactly what happened. My poor writing buddies were subjected to many think out loud emails. They offered feedback, helped me brainstorm, but nothing really gelled.
It was extremely frustrating.

Then this morning as I was driving into work, pieces started falling into place. The first chip to fall was on hero and heroine number one. I wondered if they'd known each other previously, and if so, what was their relationship. Somehow getting the answer to the first of the two questions seemed to help me drop the entire series arc into place. I don't know why knowing this one thing made the difference, but it did and I wasn't going to question it too closely. I'm going with the assumption that my subconscious was working on it and when I thought about some of the characters, it brought the solution into my head.

And yes, I am excited to have the potential answer. I have to mull some more before I know for sure it's the right arc. But it was frustrating as well. Couldn't my subconscious have shaken out the information while I was home from work for the long weekend? That would have given me two days to fill in blanks and turn things over. I think I heard my muse laughing as I drove down the highway.

End of the World

Yesterday while I was at work, my iPod shuffled to REM's The End of the World As We Know It and suddenly a story I thought was off the To Write list zoomed back on the radar. I'm pretty sure I mentioned the post-apocalypse romance I was researching a while back. Yeah, that one returned.

It was pretty unexpected although I had been picking up interesting bits and pieces that would help with the story over the last week or so, but it was a more distant thing. Certainly nothing like having the heroine show up and start talking. Again.

I have another story I'm supposed to be working on during my lunch at work, but this one is whispering oh, so temptingly in the recesses of my brain.

Among the interesting things about this return is that the heroine is telling the story in first person. I've had this happen before and the story has morphed into third person, but I'm getting the sense with this one that it might not make the shift. We'll see. I'm not a fan of reading first person and the idea of writing it, spending months on end trying to reduce the number of times the word I is used is overwhelming.

The other thing that was interesting was that my heroine looks completely different than I thought she did. Although, in all honesty, I did have a sense I'd picked out the wrong picture the last time around. I just didn't realize how wrong I was, though.

And just so y'all know, I did work on the story I'm supposed to be writing at lunch on Wednesday and I'll keep working on it when I can. But wow, I wish I could write more than one thing at a time.

Going With the Flow

One of the best pieces of advice I received on writing was that the process will change, and instead of fighting to do it the same way every time, I should go with how the story wants to be written.

This has turned out to be so true. Right after I sold, the process changed dramatically from book to book. Now, the changes aren't as drastic, but they still happen. Whenever I'd start to get all stressed because this isn't the way I do it, I'd remember the advice and stop fighting.

It continues today. Right now, I'm working on a trilogy idea set in the Blood Feud World and the information is coming in oddly. Maybe it's because the first two couples have been around for more than a year, but my thoughts are caught up on the third couple. Particularly, the hero, although I am getting stuff on the heroine now, too. I wasn't getting anything on her even a few days ago, so this is welcome.

The most recent information has been stuff that happens after the third book ends. At first I was wondering why. It wasn't after the book couple stuff, which I've gotten before even it usually came when the entire book was written and finished. This was stuff with the hero and his family. Including hours spent listening in on a conversation between the hero and his father.

I finally got the why of it over the weekend. The relationship stuff that I'm seeing after the book is all unresolved during the story. That means that all these issues I'm seeing him deal with after he's had his Happy Ending are going to be in play as his book unfolds.

Maybe I could have gotten this information in other ways, and maybe with another book, I would. But this is the process I'm dealing with for this book, and when I'm writing it, I'll have to consider how these family things will impact the hero's actions in his story. It would be so much easier to see it first hand, but no one ever said writing was easy.

Story Time

I posted the cover for Crave the Night on Tuesday and this got me thinking about sharing my characters from Enemy Embrace with y'all.

The heroine is Nicole Ruiz. She's a psi tracker--an elite vampire hunter--and she's got a personal crusade. She wants to find the vampire who killed her family when she was ten and avenge their deaths. The vampire in question was out of Los Angeles for a long time, but he's come back at last.

Her hero is Daktan, he's a demon and an executioner (like Andras from Demon Kissed). Dak's been assigned by his king (no less) to take out the same vampire Nicole wants dead. It's a favor the demon king is granting to the vampire clan lord in LA. If you read Blood Feud, you know that the demons and vampires are trying to forge an alliance and this is viewed as one of the bridges. Plus, it doesn't hurt to have a vampire clan lord owe a favor or two, right?

The vampire they both want dead is a rogue. In this world, any vampire who is not affiliated with a clan lord is considered a rogue, but the title itself doesn't connote they're evil. Of course, this particular vampire is, but well, you know.

The clan lords are the original vampires, the origin vampires, and one of them was killed during the war with the demons. All his blood line became "rogue" instantly, but many chose to form affiliations with other clans. There are a large number, though, who didn't. They remain untethered to a clan lord, but there are power plays and issues going on that I hope to address in future stories.

This turned out to be a very complex world, and with stories all being short in length, it means I can only focus on small segments at a time. It's actually kind of an interesting way to reveal society and the issues going on. Blood Feud introduced the demon/vampire divide and that they're trying to form an alliance. Demon Kissed focused on the demon world and the fact that there are human demon slayers out there. Shadow's Caress introduced human vampire hunters and psi trackers. In this case, I use "introduce" to mean when I reveal its existence to the readers. There is a whole bunch more yet to come.

Enemy Embrace will reveal a little bit more of the world. Because Nicole is a psi tracker, I'll show a little more of that. I'm also bringing in another group of humans that have a stake in the magical world beyond demons, vampires, rogues, hunters, and slayers. They won't have a direct role in the story--there isn't space for them--but the wizards are coming. :-) I have a story with a wizard human on the back burner, but he won't be in EE.