Compromise

I write books very quickly. Most of them fly from my fingers into the keyboard and onto my screen.

But always, I have this zone in a book where it just isn’t happening for me. The first fifteen or sixteen chapters zing right onto the screen. Then I slow. Then my mind wanders. Then my mind wanders to a new hot guy and sassy girl and I suddenly am driven to tell their story so I abandon my other hot guy and sassy girl. This is why I have seven novels mostly completed but… not.

I’ve tried to understand why I do this and I think it’s partly because I’m flighty. But also, I think it is because I love my little worlds, my little stories, my bigger-than-life characters and if I power through that part it will mean I’ll have to say good-bye. And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to leave them.

But sometimes, this doesn’t happen. Sometimes, I can’t get the story down fast enough, all of it. This happened with Mystery Man . Hawk and Gwen never slowed, start to finish, my mind never wandered. Then again, Hawk’s the kind of guy who, if he has your attention, it doesn’t normally wander.

This also happened with my recently released The Golden Dynasty . Circe and Lahn’s story was so strong; it gripped me and never let me go.

There is a lot I’d like to blog about with this book. How I came up with the Korwahk language, for one. Some of the themes, for another. The chances I took with the brutality and violence, for a third.

But, my gal Penny, one of my fab readers, wrote to me to say that something my hero Lahn did in that book to his heroine Circe, she was surprised I could bring him back from that. So it hit me that the first thing I’d blog about in regards to The Golden Dynasty is compromise.

For those who haven’t read it, I will try to avoid spoilers. However, this book is in my Fantasyland Series where the heroines get transported to an alternate universe very much different from our own and have to cope with living in lands where fairytales come real. But, as with anything real, it isn’t always perfect.

Lahn is the king of a primitive nation protected by a savage horde of warriors. Their culture is vastly different from our own in some very frightening ways, even barbaric – including their treatment of women.

Of the many themes I touched on in this book, it was important to me to lead my hero and heroine through some significant compromises. At first, the reader may think that it will be Circe who will have to learn to live amongst this strange and alarming culture, learn their language and their ways and settle into life amongst them. Then something dramatic happens and Circe draws a line of what she will accept and what is unacceptable and Lahn, very tall, immensely strong, extraordinarily powerful and comfortable in the knowledge that, amongst his culture, he is absolutely in the right and his status means he is free to do as he will, has to learn that, for love, he is not.

Although I didn’t struggle writing this book, I struggled with the balance of compromise. How much could Lahn require of Circe to fit in his world? How much would Lahn give to Circe to make her comfortable in it? In any relationship, this balance is crucial, tip it one way or another, the whole thing crashes. And with a love like Lahn and Circe’s, that would be tragic.

Rest assured, they find their footing. I’m immensely proud of how I brought Lahn about. I have never cried so hard while writing a book and I’ve written many scenes where tears spring to my eyes. But Lahn’s love for his Circe beats them all. Case in point, after Circe tells Lahn that her father never recovered from the death of her mother and that her mother gave Circe her unusual-colored eyes, Lahn tells her:

“If you’re given the opportunity to look deep enough, you can see a person’s spirit in their eyes but usually, they are guarded, kept safe. Not you, my tigress, the night of your claiming, even in the moonlight, I could see your spirit shining from your eyes. You hold your spirit close to the surface for all to behold and it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. So if she gave you your eyes, my golden doe, I can see your father mourning your mother long after her death. If you share your spirit with someone, their hold on you will never fade away.”

Ah, my savage, romantic Lahn. A master of many things, most importantly, compromise.