Joey W. Hill's Blog: Author Joey W. Hill, page 7

How Do I Celebrate A Book Release?

How do I celebrate when one of my books releases? I put on a slinky dress, round up my posse, and go out on the town to an exclusive club for dinner and dancing. The paparazzi takes all sorts of pictures of us, because we are enviably glamorous. We then take off to a private dungeon club where we have all sorts of kinky fun until dawn. At which point we pour ourselves into a limo and our chauffeur, the enigmatic and sexy Kurt Brawn, puts us safely to bed.

Isn’t that how all authors do it? Yeah. The same way Rick Castle of TV’s Castle, Temperance Brennan of Bones and Tim McGee of NCIS manage to be mega-bestselling authors (seemingly without effort) while succeeding at being an international playboy, a top-rated forensic scientist and a dedicated NCIS agent, respectively. All of whom fight crime practically 24/7. Oh, and they look REALLY good and put together while doing it.

Seriously, this is a question I’ve been asked quite a bit over the years. You want to guess the number one way I celebrate finishing a book? Brace yourselves – it’s dirty.

VERY dirty. Because it usually hasn’t been cleaned in over a month, as I’ve been on a marathon of final edit rounds, which involves coordination with critique partners, fact checks, consultation with experts, and countless detailed readings of the final manuscript. Yep, you called it. The number one way I celebrate a new release is cleaning my house. It’s a way to clean my mind and re-set before moving on to the next project. Sometimes I also celebrate with a shower, because I’ve had deadlines where there was no time for personal hygiene during the last several days of completing the book. Even the dogs wouldn’t sleep with me. Sexy, right? Lol

However, I should clarify the above. This cleansing ritual is more of a celebration of the COMPLETION of the book than of the actual release day. With my self-published works, the finish date and release dates are closer together than when I go through a third-party publisher, but even with self-published titles, I’ve usually turned the book over to my husband for preparation about a month ahead of time. Well, okay, optimally a month ahead of time. I’m a terrible perfectionist, so will come up with plenty of “oh, I just noticed this, can we change it?” requests that make him want to snarl like a bear. I’m getting better at meeting that month ahead of time deadline, though. Really. Ahem.

Back to my point and turning away from my husband’s dubious frowny look. By the time a book release date happens, I’m well launched into writing the next book, so most of my celebrating on release day has to do with promotional efforts – social media notices, FB release parties, et cetera, so the real “celebration” (aka house cleaning) happened a little bit before that. It doesn’t make me any less excited to see it go LIVE, though. That’s ALWAYS a thrill. It just means I’m usually doing my fist pump and happy dance as a quick pause during the normal writing day.

Do I do anything else to celebrate book completion? Well, yeah, I admit, I do. First comes the house cleaning, before the CDC condemns the structure and/or my animals prove to me it needs cleaning by tearing things up and adding to it. Yes, they will do that. Even dogs and cats have their threshold for filth. It seems to correlate to the dust bunnies being bigger than them and made up of just as much biological material. However, after the house is shiny and clean (or shiny and clean by my standards, not June Cleaver’s), I do have other ways I celebrate.

I will usually take 24-48 hours “off” from anything writing related. If JD Robb has a new In Death book out in paperback, I often reward myself with that title, or another “escape” book I have waiting as my personal stroke for all my hard work. This time I had two of them – The Will by Kristen Ashley and Breaking Free by Cherise Sinclair, both fabulous reads. I'll be posting a review of them soon.

If I had to paint a picture of my most favorite way to celebrate the completion of the book, it would look like this. A full, uninterrupted afternoon of reading on my back screen porch. I’m surrounded by my dogs and cats, and I have a Hershey bar (plain chocolate, the thin standard kind, not the block bar), a Cherry Coke Zero and a cup of original Wheat Thins at my elbow. This lazy afternoon would be punctuated by frequent visits from my husband (if he’s sucked into the gaming world) or his continuous company (if he’s not) to smile at me, talk and laugh, and hand out kisses. Lots of kisses.

If I manage to score a nap with him curled around me, that’s pure heaven. Quiet celebrations are the best kind! It may not be ultra glamorous, but it’s the best way I know to close the book and send my characters on their way toward their happily-ever-after.

* * * * *

So I’m sure you guessed my idea for today’s post was spurred by the fact I had a release this week. Worth the Wait came out Tuesday. You can check out the excerpt, buy links and blurb here - http://storywitch.com/book-nod-wtw. Oh, and if you haven’t heard, Cherise Sinclair has a new one out as well – Protecting His Own, the continuation of Beth and Nolan’s story from Breaking Free, Book 3 of the Masters of Shadowlands I mentioned above. I can’t wait to read it! (Actually, I already stole time for a few chapters when I should have been working – wink.) Happy reading to all, whatever your current book pleasure.

How Do I Make My Characters Authentic?

One of my readers wanted to know how I make characters from different ethnic and geologic backgrounds so authentic, particularly those in the Vampire Queen series. Her specific question was: “I am currently reading the Vampire Queen Series and one thing that I found refreshing about the main characters is that they come from different ethnic and geologic backgrounds. Reading about Jacob being an Irishman or Dev being an Aussie, you really capture the essence of these different cultures. How do you go about making them authentic?”

Well, I admit I never have done much research on the Irish side of things, because Jacob and Gideon Green were born and raised in the States. Their “Irishness” is more in the blood than in an awareness of heritage. Any authentic quality is therefore due to my exposure to Irish-Americans growing up and into adulthood. My childhood best friend’s mother had Irish-born parents, for example. Jacob and Gideon’s unrelenting morality and practicality, their stubbornness and a bit of a hot temper (Gideon has a bigger dose of that than Jacob), probably came from exposure to her and people like her (grin).

However, for my Australian and Scottish heroes (Dev of Vampire’s Claim and Niall of Taken by a Vampire), things were a bit different. Dev and Lady Danny’s story was set entirely in 1950s Western Australia. Though Taken by a Vampire happens in current times, Evan, the vampire who took Niall as his servant, met him in eighteenth century Scotland. Evan himself was Jewish, which presented its own challenges.

I’m going to use these two books as specific examples of how I create authentic characters, since I employ the same process whenever research is needed on a character’s personality or background, or for the setting of the book.

VAMPIRE'S CLAIM - With Vampire's Claim being set in 1950s Western Australia, history as much as culture and language was essential to doing the story right and presenting Dev accurately. Usually I pursue a mix of strategies to make the story and characters feel authentic. I seek out “book” sources to help me with history and culture, but I like to have someone with a direct connection to who my characters are to guide me toward what those best sources are. In the case of Vampire’s Claim, I had the invaluable help of the wonderful author Denise Rossetti, who lives in Australia. She not only gave me firsthand guidance on language, geography, history and mannerisms for Dev, but pointed me toward many great research resources, books and online, to bring the story to life.

I don’t want merely encyclopedic summaries. I’ll read memoirs, popular fiction from or about a time period, as well as travel logs and magazines. I’ll also watch recommended movies, documentaries or TV shows to internalize the “voice” of the time period and people inhabiting it. For instance, here’s a list of my sources for researching Vampire’s Claim and Devlin’s character:

Fiction: A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute; Death of a Swagman by Arthur Upfield

Memoirs/Autobiography: Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan; The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway; Daisy Bates in the Desert by Julia Blackburn

Travel Guides: In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson; National Geographic Traveler Australia

DVDs: The Australian Outback is a beautiful video of scenes from the Outback, combined with an appropriate music score. Dev felt a deep kinship with the Outback, and watching this visual praise of those landscapes helped me articulate that through his character. Rabbit-Proof Fence is about three Aboriginal girls traveling in the Outback together. Dev has Aboriginal blood, so this gave me more insight into how their culture might have influenced his character.

Alas, the movie Australia with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman came out after Vampire’s Claim, but you can bet I would have watched it for research, since it featured an Australian cast and focused on the events in the country around WWII. Though in a way I’m glad it did come out after I wrote the book, because Hugh Jackman reminded me SO much of my character Devlin, I would have felt like I’d copied him, lol.

Online: Countless visits to Wikipedia, cross checking with all sorts of Bing searches on details of Australian history, language, geography, etc. Also countless emails with Denise, and she kindly reviewed the full manuscript to help me with the Australian colloquialisms and dialect. I overdid it because I was so enchanted with all those lovely turns of phrase – smile.

TAKEN BY A VAMPIRE - Because the book takes place in contemporary times, the history and exposure to Scotland happened more in the way of flashbacks. As such, I had less research to do on that side of things than I did in Vampire’s Claim. I did plenty of Internet research similar to what I noted above for Australia, read Neil Oliver’s A History of Scotland and watched his ten-part BBC documentary series. That pretty much covered that. However, to make Niall and Evan’s characters more authentic required the help of people who understood Scottish dialect/mannerisms and the Jewish faith, respectively.

Over the years, readers have become an invaluable resource for me. Ebooks have given me the gift of an international readership, which means I had readers who could offer me firsthand guidance on Niall’s use of language. All in all, four readers kept me on track with both Niall’s language/mannerisms and Evan’s religion. My Jewish readers helped me believably reconcile Evan’s faith with being a vampire, and they and my Scottish sources assisted me with the playful verbal fencing he and Niall did in Hebrew and Scots tongue in scenes like this:

* * * * *

Niall gave Alanna a sidelong glance and a half smile, then returned his attention to the road.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was an arse.”

She shook her head, denying the need for the apology, but it made something loosen in her chest, especially when he reached out, touched her knee. Glancing behind her, she saw Evan still writing. “Don’t be fooled,” Niall advised. “He doesn’t miss anything.”

“No, I don’t,” Evan said, not looking up. “You acting like an ass is such a common occurrence, I didn’t figure it required any comment on my part.”

Niall shifted gears, making the Rover jump and rev with a brief spurt of gas. Alanna saw Evan lift his pencil a mere second before it happened, preventing a jagged slash across his paper, then he calmly went back to scribbling. “I think you just underscored my point,” he said.

“Numpty.” Niall snorted.

“Best you can do?” Evan returned. “Noshech kariot.”

“That part’s mostly your fault, isn’t it? Och, weel, you wur brocht up mair refainit than me then.”

Seeing Alanna’s blank look, Niall grinned. “Numpty is the Scots term for idiot. He called me a pillow biter in Hebrew. I think you can figure out the rest.”

She wasn’t sure she could.

* * * * *

The excellent side benefit of research is it enhances the characters as well as the story. There have been many times I’ve added additional scenes or picked up ideas for how the story/characters could go in a better direction, based on what I found out during my research.

For instance, learning about the soldiers who worked the grueling Kokoda Track to prevent Japanese invasion of Australia provided an important insight into Devlin’s character for Danny, since Dev was one of those WWII veterans. It also led to a very emotional scene between him and her. Here’s a snippet:

Danny knew Dev probably didn’t realize it, but she knew about the Kokoda Track, knew about the 39th battalion, the men who were sent back into the thick of it again and again. Who’d endured battles where eight hundred men went in and as few as thirty would come out. It seemed no matter how hard Dev endeavored to die, to end his own misery, Fate wanted him to live. During his startling burst of rage, she’d heard his words, felt the futile hopelessness in him, the deepest, darkest well of his soul screaming out at the heavens, and it had torn her own heart to pieces.

That scene would never have been in there if I hadn’t stumbled upon the Kokoda Track during my research. It made Dev’s character more authentic, yes, but it also pushed his and Danny’s relationship and the story further forward as a result.

As a closing note, I’ll mention this mix of research mediums works for contemporary book characters as well. For instance, in the upcoming Worth the Wait my hero Desmond Hayes is a Type I diabetic. I researched the facts related to this condition, but I also frequented blogs by people who live with it day to day, watched YouTube videos along the same lines, and talked to a friend who has a teenager with Type I. Those first hand accounts made the way Des coped with this condition more realistic and better-integrated into the overall storyline. How he lives with it also gives the reader a better grasp of his character.

When I have a character who requires additional research to make him or her more realistic, I usually compile a list of questions as I write the books. Once I finish the second draft (sometimes the third), I run the relevant parts past any expert who can handle me inflicting myself upon them (lol). As such, you’ll often note quite a few acknowledgements at the front of my books, thanking these experts for their invaluable help. There will always be things I miss, but I try very hard to get all the details right. Whenever I slip, it’s always my oversight, not those who have been so patient and wonderful as to help me try to get it right!

Note: A special thanks to Tessciela for her great question.

If you’d like to read more about any of the books discussed above, here’s the link to excerpts/blurbs for the Vampire Queen Series - storywitch.com/series-vqs

And here’s the link to Worth the Wait – releasing in one more week, May 31! - storywitch.com/book-nod-wtw

15 Years of Going Where I Said I'd Never Go

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be releasing Worth the Wait, the 9th book of the Nature of Desire series. Since it’s been close to 15 years since I started this series, I’m waxing a little reminiscent in this post and wanted to share some thoughts about it you may not realize, even if you already love it and have read every one! (Thank you for that, by the way.)

RANDOM FACT ONE: Worth the Wait will be the FIRST Male Dominant/female submissive book in the series. I was surprised by that one myself. I thought, “No, wait, that can’t be right,” but when I went back and looked, there it was. Here’s what we have:

Book 1 - Holding the Cards – Domme/beta sub

Book 2 - Natural Law – Domme/alpha sub - Mac Nighthorse, boy howdy, serious alpha!

Books 3 & 4 – Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul - Dom/Domme - yep, Marguerite and Tyler were both Dominants

Book 5 – Mistress of Redemption - Domme/bad guy sub - paranormal trip to hell with a bad guy as the “hero”

Book 6 – Rough Canvas - Male Dom/male sub - my first M/m book; definitely not my last

Book 7 – Branded Sanctuary - Vanilla female/male sub

Book 8 – Divine Solace - Domme/male sub/female sub - a threesome with F/f/m, not M/f/M, another first for me

Book 9 – Worth the Wait - Dom/female sub

What makes me so fond of the Nature of Desire series--beyond the fact I love all the characters in it—is this series not only launched my career, it has reminded me over and over again why I write, and what I want to write. Every book took me in a direction I didn’t expect to go, and quite often opposite from where the trends told me popular books were going. But readers don’t seem to care about trends and marketing. I’m a reader and I know I don’t! (lol) I want a good story and characters that matter and, as a writer, that’s what I craved to write. The Nature of Desire series proved to me readers will go into new territory if the story is worthwhile.

RANDOM FACT TWO: I never thought I’d write a story where the heroine was the dominant. When I wrote the first book, Holding the Cards, I was a traditional romance reader and writer. Whether BDSM or not, heroes were always alpha dominant. Female Dominants and male subs? No way I could get excited about that. Even in the young and growing erotic romance genre, there wasn’t a lot of interest in books with that set up. Yet when I tried to write Holding the Cards that way, with Josh as the Dominant, it fought me every page. Creative constipation of epic proportions, lol.

In writing, sometimes you knock yourself loose from a snag by randomly changing something for a few pages that you’ll later delete. So, on a complete whim and in frustration, I tried flipping the roles, making Lauren the Dominant and Josh the submissive. Whaddyaknow, all of a sudden I was rushing along whitewater rapids, the ideas were coming so fast. And I was LOVING it. So what was the big lesson for me? A love story is a love story is a love story. I also discovered male subs could be strong, heroic and sexy. And a woman exploring her sexual power could still be vulnerable and empathetic.

Natural Law, Book 2, was where I hit my groove. I coined the term “palace guard” sub, meaning a protective alpha male who nevertheless craved submission in the bedroom. Romance readers decided, after reading Mac Nighthorse, that they agreed with me. A male sub could be sexy. Who’d a thunk it? (lol).

RANDOM FACT THREE: The idea for Natural Law started in a book that wasn’t part of the series. While Natural Law is the book that gained traction for the overall series, the idea for it came from a book that’s not included in the series. If Wishes Were Horses was an erotic, non-BDSM book (even though there were of course a couple scenes with handcuffs!) about a female sheriff and the local Wiccan priest who runs an erotica boutique. At the end of the book, my heroine Sarah mentions she borrowed a state trooper outfit from a close friend of hers. Since it’s such a tight fit, the conversation goes kind of like this:

Justin lifted his head at last and gave her a thorough perusal. “You pulled in some pretty heavy favors for this. Remind me to give your friend generous gift certificates.”

“You better. You just tore the hell out of her uniform.” Sarah gazed ruefully down at the frayed shirt and trousers. “And I helped.”

“Good Lord, she must be a pixie.”

“Weighs a hundred pounds sopping wet, and is meaner than any trooper three times her size, so it better be a really good gift certificate, if you value your lover’s skin.”

“I do, very much.” He placed his lips on it and she closed her eyes, hummed a sigh. “Very well, then,” he said. “A lifetime supply of hopping penises.”

[Which on their first encounter, was the type of cheesy novelty item Sarah expected him to have in his erotica boutique!]

Violet of Natural Law was the friend Sarah mentioned. The story wasn’t a gleam in my eye at that point, but when I got around to writing Natural Law, she sprang into my head from that one reference as if she’d been waiting in the wings all along.

RANDOM FACT FOUR: All of the books were firsts for me in some way. As I noted above, Rough Canvas was my first Male/male. Divine Solace is a menage a trois story, with Mistress Lyda, Gen and Lyda’s sub Noah, but it was the first time I’d put a strong Female/female relationship at the center of the story, and it was the first time I’d done a threesome with two women and one man. Then there was Branded Sanctuary, where my hero was a dedicated male submissive and my heroine was a vanilla girl. Sexually adventurous but not oriented as a Domme. I think part of me was drawn to write this story because I’ve had so many readers contact me over the years to tell me they’re in relationships where one of them is submissive-oriented but the husband is not a Dom. This story explored how a vanilla/sub pairing could work.

Marguerite and Tyler’s story (Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul) was another first because they were both Dominants. This was also where I learned there’s no “one way only” when it comes to Dominant and submissive orientations; they’re as unique as the people involved. Marguerite does switch with Tyler, but she remains a Domme with others, so there’s no “oh I only thought I was a Domme until I met the right Master” trope that makes so many of us cringe. I’ve met people in the lifestyle, both men and women, who have a undeniable orientation as a Dominant, but there’s a specific person for whom they desire to switch. Even if they can’t explain why that one person brings that out in them! It reminds me of the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves quote: “Because God loves wondrous variety.”

RANDOM FACT FIVE: The books did not start as a series. It wasn’t a series until Books 3 & 4, Ice Queen/Mirror of My Soul. I’d written Holding the Cards and Natural Law as standalones, and then my very savvy publisher realized all four books were exploring different aspects of Dominance and submission, and suggested we make them a series. Hence, the Nature of Desire series didn’t happen until those books. However, I believe by giving it that underlying theme of exploring all the different “natures of desire”, it gave me a lot of freedom to continue doing just that.

RANDOM FACT SIX: The seed for Marguerite and Tyler’s story was planted over 30 years ago. To close, I want to give you a cool story about how Marguerite and Tyler’s story came about. It was a news clipping I picked up when I was a teenage aspiring writer. I collected all sorts of snippets from the newspaper, magazines, writing down conversations, any source I thought would contribute to a story. I’d found a tiny little police report in the paper that simply stated a woman had jumped off a building with her two children. There seemed like there should be so much more to that story. I kept the clipping in a folder, but it was when I started thinking about Marguerite’s story, decades later, that it came back to me. What if one of those kids had survived? What would she be like? Why would the mother have jumped with them? The answers I imagined helped launch Marguerite and Tyler’s story.

Hope I haven’t bored you too much with my trip down memory lane, but it seemed time for some anniversary reflection. Thanks to so many of you for reading the books and taking those journeys with me, and I hope many others will discover these books and enjoy where they lead the imagination.

NEXT WEEK: Reader question – how do I go about making characters authentic, particularly those from different ethnic/geographic backgrounds?

Link to Nature of Desire series for blurbs, free excerpts and buy links.

Ten of My Favorite Book Quotes

Most of us authors are also readers and, though I don’t have as much time to read as I like these days, I’m sneaking back into it when I take a mental health day from the workaholism. Anyhow, for this week’s post, I picked out ten of my favorite book quotes to share with you. As I did so, I realized several things. One, my taste in quotes runs a bit to the meditative and potentially dark side. Two, a lot of them have to do with love. Go figure, right? Angsty erotic romance author?

However, then there’s the third thing I noticed. Apparently for me there really is only ONE genre of book: A Good Story. If you tell me a book is good, and if I know we like similar themes/writing styles, I’m interested, regardless of the genre classification. Granted, it’s going to be harder for you to get me interested in sci-fi or a western, but Frank Herbert’s White Plague and LaVyrle Spencer’s The Gamble proved it can be done. And I’ve also found myself enjoying the occasional sci-fi romance – Charlotte Boyett-Compo’s Bloodwind and Michelle Polaris’s Bound Odyssey spring to mind. So anyway, here are some of my favorite quotes from an amalgamation of genres. These are favorites because of how they integrated with the story, not because they made good sound bytes. Have any you’d like to share? I always like to add to my TBR list…

"Thou art my husband and I am thy wife—helpmeet, with no rule but love between us.” She touched his sleeve, lightly, like a schoolteacher’s admonishment. “I will repeat that last part to thee every morning.” Flowers from the Storm, Laura Kinsale

“She doesn’t live her life in the beauty shop, doing someone’s hair, or in her house, vacuuming the carpet. She lives her life between her ears. There’s a world inside her skull…six billion of us walking the planet, six billion smaller worlds on the bigger one.” Fear Nothing, Dean Koontz

“But memory is not just the pictures that you keep in your mind’s eye. It is also things you know without ever seeing them. So while I cannot tell you what [my mother] looked like, I do know how she felt… I lay for hours, wrapped inside the deepest comfort, reliving a memory that perhaps I never had of a time when I was loved for, rather than despite, what I am.” In the Company of the Courtesan, Sarah Dunant

“For Berry, you just be there, Whit. Be the one person in the wide green world she doesn’t have to explain it to, because you were there and saw it all for yourself. Hand her a clean cloth if she cries or bleeds, and some warm thing for the pain that doubles her over. The time to hold her will come.” Passage, Lois McMaster Bujold, Sharing Knife series

“When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.” Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

“And that’s exactly the good thing about the Injun life—you don’t have to stop and think about whether you’re happy—which in my opinion is a highly overrated condition invented by white folks. You don’t have to think about it any more than a bear cub or a coyote or a damn bird has think about it. You got a roof over your head? You warm? You got enough food to eat? You got a good man? Friends? Something to do to keep you busy? Hell, you tell me. What more does a person need? ...You know when you’ll find out if you been happy here? You’ll find out after you leave. When you really got some time to think it over.” 1000 White Women, Jim Fergus

“The impending separation from love, more than the ending of life, had kept all that faith alive. It was the hope of having a little more time to love that had made her mother hold crosses and look to the face of statues, and cast words up into the air. And why had those words focused heavenwards? Well, it made sense, didn’t it? Even when there were no more options for the body, the heart’s wishes find a way out and, as with all warmth, love rises.” Lover Eternal, JR Ward

“When it was done, and you went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and something that had been getting close in the dark was suddenly gone. It could not stay. It had been banished. It knew how to come back, I was sure of that, but it could not stay, and I could really go to sleep. My heart cracked with gratitude. I think it was the first gratitude I’ve ever really known. I lay there beside you and the tears rolled down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. I loved you then and I love you now, and I have loved you every second in between. I don’t care if you understand me. Understanding is vastly overrated, but nobody every gets enough safety. I’ve never forgotten how safe I felt with that thing gone out of the darkness.” Lisey’s Story, Stephen King

“Unearned knowledge rules its wielder, to the cost of both.” White Gold Wielder, Stephen Donaldson, the Thomas Covenant Chronicles

And to finish up, this one, which is more a passage than a quote, but I still want to use it as my tenth one…

“Keir, I wish you’d stop behaving like something out of Jane Austen.”

”Why?”

“Because it makes me feel like something out of Jane Austen.”

“And that’s bad?”

“Yes.”

“Because you’ve spent your whole life trying not to feel helpless.”

“Yes,” she replies, lifting her chin. “I have.”

He is silent for a moment and regards her tired, wet face, framed by hair hanging in sodden rat tails. He shoves the case back into the car and she feels the Land Rover sink as he sits beside her. “And just supposing, I’ve spent my whole life wanting to be a hero?”

She puts her head on one side like a bird, as if listening more intently. “Have you?”

“Aye. Some.”

Star Gazing, Linda Gillard

Which Character is Most Like Me?

Since it sheds a little more light on my answer, I wanted to provide the complete question a wonderful reader posed for my blog topic this week. Raggs asked: Is there one of your characters who contains more of "yourself" than others? Is that character more autobiographical in terms of their reactions, etc?

The answer is yes. As many readers may know, my very first erotic romance, Make Her Dreams Come True unlocked my own submissive orientation. The story I’d intended to be a spicy romance set in the mall took a sharp turn into the world of BDSM, at a time when I had no access to resources about the topic beyond my own fascination with Dominance and submission. The psychology I explored in that book drew me both personally and professionally. As such, the psychology of D/s, versus the mechanics of BDSM, has driven my work ever since. Though integrating the mechanics is LOTS of fun (lol).

While Daniel and Meg’s journey allowed me to start my own submissive exploration, Meg’s character was autobiographical on other levels. I wrote Make Her Dreams Come True in my late 20s, when I was carrying around a dump truck load of dysfunction from my teens and early 20s. Though many specific details of Meg’s situation did not mirror mine, her insecurities, poor self-esteem, loneliness, disconnection and depression were closely aligned with my own struggles in those areas. So in essence, I wrote Make Her Dreams Come True as personal therapy! In hindsight, it's a miracle the angst-ridden thing resonated enough with readers to start my erotic romance career. But it was the 90s, when Dr. Phil was all the rage (wink).

Seriously, though, I do love Meg and Daniel's story. And the great thing about writing over the years is your books become like a photo album or diary. You see your own growth, not only as an author, but as a human being. Now when I re-read Meg and Daniel’s story, my feelings toward this lovely character are similar to what an adult feels toward a teenager. We can understand what they’re feeling, but unlike them, we have the perspective to know what they’re feeling are growing pains. An amazing world awaits beyond those hurdles, where our confidence and experience can take us on new explorations of love and the nature of happiness. We can have relationships more complex and rich than we’d ever dreamed they could be.

I thank Meg and Daniel for helping me take the next step in both my personal and professional life.

Note: Many thanks also to Raggs for this week’s topic!

* * * * *

Worth the Wait is Coming May 31! Free Chapter One Excerpt Here

“You touch what you want to touch, love. When I want you to keep your hands to yourself, that’s what my rope is for.” --Desmond Hayes, Worth the Wait

How Do You Choose Your Character Names?

It varies from book to book. Often the name just pops in my head, with no real reason for it. That happens most often for my contemporary books, like the Knights of the Board Room and Nature of Desire series. Sometimes I hear a name on a TV show, or stumble on a historic figure I like, and I use their name. I do collect interesting first names in an MS Notes file, so if a name doesn’t appear in my mind, I’ll browse that list and see what grabs me. Paranormal names are usually the ones where I want the meaning of the name to have some significance, so I’ll go to a baby name website and browse names and their meaning until I see one that strikes me as just perfect. For example:

Daegan Rei, hero of Vampire Mistress – means Black Ghost

Anwyn Inara Naima, the heroine from that book, means beautiful, heaven-sent (or ray of sun) and tranquil, respectively.

I have no respect for consistency of origins. Anwyn is Welsh and the other two parts of her name are Arabic (grin), but in all fairness, Anwyn left behind her past and put together the name she best liked for herself.

Choosing the name for a character is very much like a Ouija board—I have to feel the right “pull” toward it when I create the character. And I can’t change it if it gets lodged in my head. This proved problematic when I wrote Vampire Instinct. The muse insisted my hero’s name was Malachi. The problem was there were already two secondary characters in the series whose names were Malachi. One was a minor character, the other was more significant. To try and change my muse’s mind, I even ran a contest, asking my readers’ help to choose my Vampire Instinct hero’s name.

I received a bunch of wonderful names, many of which went on my name list to be used for future books, but my muse was not swayed. I had the red-faced situation of having to say to my readers: “Hey, these were all great, but I’m sticking with my original idea.” In order to avoid confusion, I just included a casual comment in the book to the effect of “Hey, is this the Malachi who’s on the Council?” to clarify that they weren’t the same person. Yes, lame, but you don't argue with the muse. You just don't.

But that situation did tip me off to a problem I have. Sometimes I will use the same names and not realize I’ve used them before. It’s almost always a major character/minor character problem. For instance:

Celeste is the main heroine of Soul Rest. A different Celeste is Thomas’s sister, and Thomas is one of the two main heroes in my m/m book, Rough Canvas. I had him nickname his sister Les to avoid some of the confusion.

But speaking of Thomas, he’s REALLY my problem child. Apparently I have a thing about the name Thomas, because I’ve been “pulled” toward it no less than three times for three different characters:

Thomas: Main hero of Rough Canvas

Thomas: Lady Lyssa’s former servant in the Vampire Queen series (secondary character, but a major one)

Thomas: Hero of Choice of Masters, one of my earlier single titles.

So, moral of this story. Do a series bible, keep a master list of ALL character names, and check them whenever you choose new ones. Do I do this? Of course not (pfft). But I am more careful than I used to be about this issue.

I hope this somewhat answers the question of how I choose names. There's no real rhyme or reason to it ultimately, It's just what "feels" right, with a few cautionary checks to be sure that I haven't "felt" right about it too often (lol).

Note: My thanks to Julia for this post topic!

Next week's topic: Which of my characters is most like me...a scary thought for sure!

How Do You Know You Have the Talent to Write a Book?

For this week’s post, I want to provide the question that inspired it up front, because it explains my answer a little better. Thank you, Sandra, for this question: I’ve always wondered how and when writers really knew they had the talent to write a book. Was it an instant inspiration at some point in your life? Or something you always felt in your bones, so to speak? Is a talent for writing an innate gift?

I’m willing to bet money that if you asked Nora Roberts, John Grisham, Raymond Feist, Marion Zimmer Bradley--name your author—“How did YOU know you had the talent to write a book?”, they’d all answer the same way a much smaller fish like myself does here and now: “Well, I’m still waiting to figure that out.” That’s because the drive to write is what makes us write, not talent. Talent is the holy grail we’re always seeking to reach through practice, practice, and more practice, and it doesn’t ever stop. Every story, published or not, is yet another practice ground.

You do build confidence in your craft as you go along, but even when I have a reader tell me that one of my books is fabulous (thank you!), my own self-analysis is I am a “decent” or “adequate” writer. The moments when I read through a draft and think, “Wow, that’s exactly where I wanted to go with that”, I feel a gratitude to the muse for letting me tap into that rich vein of creative gold. Not: “Wow, I am so awesome for coming up with that.” Lol…

It isn’t false modesty. When I pick up a book by another author and am blown away by the story and how he/she told it, I am immediately crushed into a sense of smallness, even while I’m thrilled to have the chance to be a grateful reader. A writer worth anything never stops striving to be better, because we know we CAN be better. We need only read a brilliant author’s work to be sure of it.

Now at a certain point after you’ve practiced, practiced, practiced, you decide “Hey, I’m going to try and get published” and you start learning all you can about the publishing business. Before the popularity of self-publishing, the query/rejection process from publishing houses was a great way for an author to determine if they’d worked on their craft enough to merit having a book published, or if they were improving/moving closer to that goal. Because getting published by a reputable house with a skilled editing team was (and still is) HARD.

Yes, some of that is politics, timing, trends, and other less than fair reasons. But the important service that house often provides with their rejection slips is a heads up to the author that they may not yet be ready. The craft is weak and needs more work. Rejection is also a way to test an author’s determination and mettle. A writer who gets their first rejection notice or critical feedback and decides “well, obviously I’m not meant to be a writer”, is correct, but not for the reasons he/she may think.

Being a writer is extremely hard work emotionally (and sometimes physically, as those hours at the computer get longer and longer and the body ages, lol). It requires tremendous perseverance, and the ability to say over and over again: How can I make this story better?

That’s why I always tell aspiring writers – if you don’t have a love for writing (aka inspiration to do it) that can overcome any discouragement or rejection, the publishing business is not for you. You have to love writing MORE than being published to stick with it.

That stubbornness is likewise a training ground for the business itself. Because once you are published, things do not get much more fair or easier. Each step up the ladder is more politics, timing and trends, though the craft issue becomes less of a factor, because if you’ve made it past that threshold, you’re already an author who seeks to make every book better than the last. Until you get under so much deadline/production pressure the formula mentality kicks in and kills an awesome writer’s voice and spark. But that’s a topic for a different time, classified under "An author's greatest fear." Ack!

So I guess ultimately the question behind the question is: “What inspires a person to be a writer?” We might all identify triggers that made us start writing, but it’s very hard to explain WHY we stuck with it when so many others chose different paths. I just can’t imagine not telling the stories in my head. It’s a compulsion that can’t be denied. It may one day go away, and then I’ll turn my hand to gardening and reading all those wonderful books I don’t have time to read now. But until then, I’ll keep writing!

Reminder of the Week: Part IV, the final segment of Naughty Wishes, is out. You can read all of Geoff, Chris and Sam’s story at once now! Buy links are under the blurb here.

Hanging Out With My Characters

You know when you were little and you had imaginary friends? It was expected as you grew up that you’d let them slowly fade into the ether and become an adult. But one of the awesome things about being a writer is I can hang out with my characters anytime I want, and come up with a multitude of excuses for visiting with them that pass as sanity. When you read a great book, you don’t want to let the characters go, do you? I know I don’t. You revisit them in your head, imagine their lives after “the end”, and think about their stories for days afterward. Even revisit for a re-read from time to time. Writers are no different when it comes to our own characters.

Some years ago, I wrote a short vignette revisiting two of my characters, Mac and Violet of Natural Law. The vignette was about a baby shower other heroines in the Nature of Desire series were throwing for Violet. The vignette didn’t leave Mac out. At the end of the shower, he comes home and he and Violet have some quality steamy time together.

I didn’t do this in a vacuum. When I first started writing romance, I often included scenes that didn’t specifically fit the craft mandate “every scene should advance the story toward XX goal”. But to my way of thinking, a love story is as much about the wonder of falling in love as the challenges the protagonists face, so if you don’t take the time for those lovely pauses where the hero and heroine go ride horses on the beach, or she visits him on the parking deck during a lunch break to share a sandwich, or they stop at a roadside store to peruse the quirky antiques…well, you can’t really enjoy that sometimes exciting, sometimes quiet, slide into love.

At some point, my desire to include those scenes in the books expanded into a desire to write free vignettes like “The Baby Shower.” I wasn’t fleshing out a full length novel plot; instead, I was giving myself and readers a glimpse into my characters’ lives after the happily-ever-after...and having pure fun with it. Often the readers helped with ideas for these vignettes. For instance, the readers gave me suggestions for Violet’s gifts, like a baby rattle that looked like a tiny flogger and a pajama set that said “I like spankings.”

Here’s a snippet from the vignette:

When she opened Sarah and Justin’s gift, Violet found a little wooden rack of police issue revolvers. Smaller than the real thing, and made of molded plastic, like toys. The rack bore the badge number Violet wore, the other side showing Mac’s detective shield.

“They’re containers,” Chloe realized, crouching by the table. “Oh, how cool. This one holds baby oil, this one lotion, this one”—she lifted it, squinted at the end— “freaking cool. This one has a sifter at the end. It’s for baby powder.” She pointed to the labels on the rack. “And look, it says ‘to protect, serve and freshen.’”

“You’re insane.” Violet looped an arm around Sarah and squeezed. “Now I’m sure you picked this one out.”

“Well, Justin knew it should be a gift that reflected both of us. His creativity and my special handcuff-you-if-I-don’t-get-my-way charm.” Sarah smiled. “Seriously, we found it in this catalog of police-related gifts, and thought it would be perfect. Though we worried it might feel strange to point even a toy gun at your child.”

"I don’t know about that. When she’s going through the terrible twos, it might relieve some frustration.” Violet laughed. “Stop that tantrum now, or I’ll powder you.”

So Mac and Violet started it, and since then I’ve written over a good dozen free novellas and short stories like that. But I didn’t stop there. Bloggers are fond of the “character interview”, where the characters answer indepth questions, instead of the boring old author. I have no argument with that – my characters are far more interesting than I am! This was another way of revisiting them, so I started occasionally “bringing” characters to bookclub chats so the readers could ask them questions. I also started posting any character interviews I’ve done at blog sites in the same place I put the vignettes. These have become more elaborate over the years. Recently I did one for Riverina Romantics that was a charity “Newlywed Game”, featuring the Knights of the Board Room. It was pretty much as long as a novella when we finished!

The reason I’m telling you all this is one of my readers suggested the following blog topic for today: “I love all the [Knights of the Board Room] couples, but I'm a bit obsessed with Ben & Marcie [from Hostile Takeover]! Any tidbits, trash talking or anything you wanna add about any or all the characters would be a dream come true!”

I figured there might be quite a few of you who didn’t know about these opportunities to revisit the characters. Here are a couple favorite clips from those character interviews:

From the intro of an interview one of the fan forum administrators, Sandy, did with Ben:

Though Ben’s wearing aviator-style sunglasses that accent the strong line of his jaw and the feathers of dark hair over his brow, giving him a black Irish bad-boy look, he tilts his head so his emerald green eyes flash over the edge of the rims. As a result, Sandy can see him studying her intently, everything from the curves of her body to the way she walks, touching on the Blackberry she’s carrying with her questions.

“Lucas,” he explains, tapping his ear piece before he removes it and sets it to the side. “He told me to go gentle with you. But you don’t look a woman who wants the gentle type, do you, darling?”

Sandy pushes her sunglasses back so her bangs don’t obstruct her view of this hot emerald-eyed specimen of pure male. Ben reminds her of a panther studying his prey from afar. This would probably intimidate most women, but not Sandy. She welcomes the intense appraisal, as it makes her heart race and her mind begins to play. She knows that Ben is a man that holds knowledge of many things. But right now she only cares about the animal she senses below the surface.

Here’s a question that was posed to Derek Stormwind of Something About Witches:

Can you describe in three words how Ruby makes you feel? If Ruby was asked the same question what would you think she would say?

…the only words you can use for a question like that are the universal ones a man feels when he’s loved by a woman like Ruby. She makes me feel balanced. Everything in my world steadies, knowing I’m connected to her. Happy’s another good word. It’s a powerful one, because most people think of themselves as content or doin’ all right if things are going well, but this sense in your heart that you just can’t think of a way for things to be better—that’s happiness.

“Not sure if I could answer the question for Ruby, but she seems happy and balanced around me as well…when she’s not fussing at me the way she can do. But even during that, there’s a sparkle to her eyes, a little smile on her lips, like it’s all part of it. I think the third word that works for both of us is home. We’re home for each other. Home isn’t always easy or quiet, but it’s your sure place in the world.”

I’ll stop there for now, because hopefully this has given you a flavor of whether or not you’d enjoy any of these. No promotion or marketing strings involved in this. I love writing these, and it has always seemed like a great way to thank my readers for their support. You’ll find them under the Forum menu at the JWH Connection fan forum, access information here.

The vignettes are available in all the popular download formats, so you can put those on your readers. Oh, another tip - when you get out to the forum, be sure and check out the Albums as well. There are literally hundreds of beautiful erotic photos that have been posted out there, many of them inspired by my work and/or specific characters. You can also find free banners/character graphics under the Forum main menu. So everyone can indulge your revisits and imaginations to the fullest! Enjoy!

Next week’s topic will be about how a writer knows if she has talent…like talent has anything to do with getting published (snort). Lol…yep, I plan to have fun with that one…

Note: My thanks to Betty for this week’s topic!

How Do I Build My Paranormal Worlds?

I am not a world builder. I’m in awe of the masters at this, like Lois McMaster Bujold or Anne Bishop. I’ll never have their talent, because my passion for writing is driven 100% by my characters. I have a limited amount of patience for crafting elaborate societies or political and magical systems. I do my best, but I let my characters do a lot of the work!

What do I mean by that? Some years ago, when the first of my girlfriends had a child, I remember her saying: “It’s fascinating to see how she’s becoming a person in her own right, and she’s barely started to walk. She has traits of both her parents, but as she grows and learns, she weaves those traits into who she’s becoming as she interacts with her environment and accumulates experiences.”

That’s a perfect description of not only how my characters develop, but how THEY create the world in which they’re living. Wouldn’t it be so cool if we could all do that?

My paranormal worlds, which are mostly based in our contemporary world, start with my characters. Let me give you an example of how this works. When I wrote the opening chapter to Vampire Queen’s Servant, I knew that Lyssa was a 1000 year old vampire queen who’d recently lost her human servant, and that she was sitting in a limo outside a spa, debating on whether she could risk getting her scheduled midnight manicure. Yep, that’s it. That’s all I had in terms of knowing what shaped her paranormal world.

So, let’s stick with the example of my friend’s toddler. As I wrote the first chapter, my “baby” took her first steps and started to interact with her environment, shaping it according to conflict and emotional needs. I learned that Lyssa wanted a new human servant, but had reasons of her own for not wanting to commit to that. She’s the last of vampire royalty, so that necessitated thinking about the current political structure. If they don’t have royalty, there had to be another governing body, so that became the Vampire Council. What was her relationship with them? Wary, because she has secrets that the Council and perhaps the vampire world wouldn’t tolerate. What kind of secrets would the Council not tolerate? In short, what type of laws had been institutionalized by vampires and what events (Territory Wars, transgressions by vampires/human servants) had shaped those, fueling my vampire queen’s need to keep her secrets? And therefore her vital need to have someone she could completely trust?

I knew up front the answer to that last question would be her human servant, and so that bond had to be defined in a way that made sense. Human servants, once blood bound, are the unequivocal property of the vampire, to be used for a variety of things, not the least of which is sexual pleasure and carnal political games with other vampires. These games make the edgiest BDSM play look like the Dumbo ride at Disneyworld. Enter Jacob, the former vampire hunter and Renaissance player waiting inside the spa. He’s trained for nine months with her former servant to spring this surprise “audition” on her tonight. In the initial dialogue between them, we start shaping the relationship between vampire and human servant, the core Dom/sub culture that guides this entire series:

* * * * *

“Why do you want to become a human servant?” she asked. “Are you running from death? Or are you one of those idealistic idiots who believe vampires are misunderstood creatures, issuing pretentious threats while we cling to the shadows and whine out our angst over our lost mortality?”

The description made Jacob smile. Too late, he realized he should have curbed the urge. He’d been warned her moods changed as quickly as the snap of a whip.

In a blink, the room closed in on him with a suffocating energy. Making the chamber much warmer than the gas log fire, the power raised the hairs on his neck.

“Do you realize, mortal, I could rip you apart limb by limb? Tear out your entrails and take your blood while you watch, choking on your last breath? Don’t play games with me, and do not speak false, or those words will be your last.”

When Jacob raised his gaze, he saw her eyes had taken on a reddish cast as she spoke, a hint of fang pushing over the right side of her full lip. The humanity had disappeared from her expression.

A wise man would have taken his hands off her foot. Put about a hundred feet between him and the threat he knew she was capable of executing. But Jacob knew that would be it. Game over. The last nine months of his life a waste. Most importantly, he would fail her, something he’d sworn to a dying man he would not do.

“I know you can destroy me,” he said quietly, staring down at that shapely foot. “My reasons for wanting to be your servant are complicated and personal, my lady. My tongue isn’t clever enough to explain them as you wish me to do. But I can prove myself to you, if you’ll give me the opportunity.”

It took Herculean effort to manage the words in an even tone, to raise his attention back to her face and hold that preternatural gaze without flinching, though his muscles tensed in an involuntary readiness he knew would be futile if she chose to strike. “I suspect if you truly intended to tear my limbs off, you wouldn’t take the time to threaten me.”

“Perhaps I feed on fear.”

“There are other, more satisfying meals I can offer you.” Daring or just plain stupid he didn’t know, but going with his gut, Jacob bent and placed his lips against the top of her foot.

* * * * *

By the time I reached the end of the first chapter, I had a sense of all of the following:

1) The political structure of the vampire world

2) The inferior status of human servants, and the conflict that caused, since vampires were so reliant on them.

3) Some of Lyssa’s past history with her former servant, which included a husband she’d had who’d died (that was unexpected to me, lol).

4) The full nature of her secrets. While I didn’t reveal them in that chapter, it was there the ideas for them were planted and developed in my own head, based on how her personality and Jacob’s developed during those first few pages.

Every challenge Jacob and Lyssa face from the human and vampire worlds is a chance to deepen and intensify their relationship, and these obstacles offer more opportunities to flesh out their world with additional props, political, magical and cultural systems that mesh with their love story.

Let me mention this is not the typical or recommended way to build a world. But it is not done in a vacuum, either. Like anyone else, I snort when I watch a crime show and they come up with a sudden solution to solve a problem: “Oh, I have a contact with the FBI who magically provided that vital piece of data to solve the case.” When my characters hit a wall, I either fall back on the foundation they’ve already built to come up with a solution, or see it as an opportunity to flesh out their world even further with new and interesting variables.

However, since my stories ARE relationship-driven, when it comes to action/magic plot, I won’t claim I’ve NEVER resorted to “uh, yeah, forgot to mention before, he has the power to conjure that, so bam, there it is”. But if I do resort to that, it’s only so I can get back to the best part of the story in my mind, the emotional bond or steamy eroticism between my love interests (grin).

Note: Special Thanks to Ghosthunter for suggesting today’s topic!

Want to read the entire first chapter of Vampire Queen’s Servant? You can find it by clicking HERE.

WHY DO YOU LET YOUR CHARACTERS SERIES-HOP?

Short answer: Because they will not take no for an answer. They refuse to stay in their own worlds. An author has NO control. In Taken by a Vampire (Vampire Queen series) Evan and his two servants, Niall and Alanna, drop in on Chloe and Brendan’s wedding, the main characters from Branded Sanctuary (Nature of Desire series). My merangel from Mermaid’s Ransom (Daughters of Arianne series) and her half Dark Spawn boyfriend showed up at a vampire Christmas party (“You’re All Invited”, a free novella vignette). Hell, two of my earliest characters from a short story, a carpenter and a homeless woman who met during a fender bender (“Home Is Where the Heart Is”), later show up with truck and magical shotgun in the middle of the Nevada desert, when one of my angel heroes and mermaid heroines are under attack (A Mermaid’s Kiss).

On top of that, contemporary characters give a whole new meaning to seven degrees of separation, because somehow they always know one another, whether they’re from my non-series single titles, or from my Nature of Desire and Knights of the Board Room series. Matt Kensington and his wife Savannah (KBR) are good friends with Dale, a retired Navy SEAL from the single-title Unrestrained. Tyler Winterman (NOD) directs Peter (KBR) toward the submissive of his dreams, Dana. Etc. etc. etc.

Sometimes character guest appearances occur, in a sense, even before their book is written and perhaps even spawn the idea for their own series. In one of my earliest single title books, If Wishes Were Horses, Justin has a fountain statue of a mermaid and an angel intertwined in front of his erotica shop, For Her. That was a foreshadowing of the hero and heroine of A Mermaid’s Kiss, the first book in the Daughters of Arianne series.

Now seriously, as to why these series hops occur, I personally love what happens when these different cultures cross paths. For instance, one of my favorite scenes in this regard comes from that free vignette mentioned above, “You’re All Invited”. Let me give you a snippet of it. This is when Alexis, the visiting merangel from Mermaid’s Ransom, gives Kane, the young son of Lyssa, our vampire queen, a special gift:

* * * * *

As they assembled in the spacious indoor pool area, the indoor exotic plants lit with Christmas lights gave a dim glow to the room, a flicker of diamonds across the water. Lyssa knelt at Kane’s side. “Do you remember a few weeks ago, when we were decorating the tree and you said you wanted to meet an angel?”

Her son nodded, his blue eyes lighting up with anticipation. Lyssa put a hand on his shoulder and pointed toward the pool. “Then watch very closely.”

Across the pool from all of them, Alexis presented her back to Dante. He slid the zipper down on her dress, untied her sash, holding the cloth in place an extra moment to dip his head, kiss her throat, murmur to her before he let it whisper off her naked body. While nudity was not an issue for vampires or angels, there was a pristine beauty to her, to the moment, that made it more like unveiling a breathtaking creation than a sexual experience.

As she stepped gracefully into the water, golden patterns began to appear on her skin, an intricate tattoo scrolling over the flesh of her upper arms and back, her breasts and abdomen. They gleamed, reflecting the Christmas lights.

Her body shifted, shimmered. Kane drew in a breath—actually most of the adults did as well— as her wings emerged from her back. The feathers were a pale gold color, ruffling a little from the transition. As the wings arched over her shoulders, she extended them fully.

She was still moving into the water, had reached the bottom of the steps. When she made a lithe, twisting movement, it was obvious she was no longer being supported by her legs. A moment later, there were gasps as her tail, the red and gold scales gleaming, undulated in a graceful arc.

“She’s a merangel,” Lyssa said to her son, though of course in this echoing room, every vampire and servant heard her. “Half mermaid and half angel. She can soar in the sky or swim in the deepest part of the ocean.”

Kane was mesmerized, but again, Jacob couldn’t say the adults were much different. Alexis used the propulsion of her tail and the extension of her wings to lift her body out of the water, drops sluicing off her skin and scales in a glittering display. Kane clung to Jacob’s hand and Lyssa’s skirt.

As amazing a display as it was, it was Gideon who caught Jacob’s eye. Christmas held a lot of not-so-pleasant memories for Gideon. He’d spent plenty of them in places far from the Christmas spirit. As his brother watched the merangel swim, Jacob saw quiet pain war with amazement on his face. Perhaps how wonderful this moment was contrasted too sharply with the desolate past.

But his vampire master, Daegan, stood at his back, hand on his shoulder, body pressed up against Gideon’s, while Anwyn, his vampire mistress, stood in front. Her hands were clasped over Gideon’s on her waist, her head back against his shoulder. As Jacob watched, she turned her lips to his throat. Comforting him, reminding him he was here with them now, belonging to them. Daegan’s head bent, lips nuzzling the other side of Gideon’s neck while Anwyn reached up to caress their servant’s jaw, linking them.

* * * * *

Why do certain characters cross the lines and others want to stay in their own worlds? There are a variety of factors that can influence that. Perhaps a conflict occurs in a story where I think “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if Derek Stormwind, the sorcerer from Something About Witches, had to help one of my Vampire Queen series characters resolve this problem?” Or someone gets a tragic end in one story and I want to give him/her a happily-ever-after in another. Marguerite’s brother in Ice Queen, who dies tragically, becomes the angel hero of A Witch’s Beauty and helps save the world, for instance.

I really don’t remember the first time my characters series-hopped, but I hope they keep doing it. Guest appearances not only give me more resources to expand and enhance a series, but it’s just fun to imagine a reader going “Hey! I know him from the so-n-so series! That’s so cool!” Yeah, don’t believe all the crap we spout about marketing and promotion. For most of us it’s still about the fun, the cheering, fist-pump-in-the-theater moment when Han Solo shows up unexpectedly to help Luke save the day and destroy the Deathstar (grin).

Next week we’ll talk about how I do world-building, particularly between my magical and real worlds! If you have feedback or questions about this week’s topic, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Note: Special Thanks to Jaycee for suggesting today’s topic!

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