A Book Intended to be Read Twice

I am almost done writing The Wilderness Bride. This book is due out in January. I don’t have a release date yet. I don’t think I’ll have one until the middle of next month when I’m further along in the edits.

I have about four or five scenes left to go. This comes as a huge relief since I have a deadline of December 1st to get this book out to my editing team, which means I have to go through the first rounds of edits before I can send it to them. Next week, I’ll be knee-deep in edits. It’s a good thing I enjoy this book.

So anyway, I really do love this book. This is my 101st romance, and this is easily my Top 10 favorite stories I’ve written of all time. With a story like this, you don’t want things to end. It’s similar to Eye of the Beholder and His Redeeming Bride in tone and feel.

Up front, we know the backstory for our heroine. I looked for the optimal place to put the hero’s backstory in, and it came pretty much at the end. Now, I knew going into the story what his history was, so I was able to insert things into the dialogue that had are interpreted one way the first time you read it and will take on a different meaning if you read it again.

I really enjoy things like this. I don’t get to play with this kind of literary technique often, but it’s fun when I do. The story that comes to mind that I managed this strategy was in The Wedding Pact (a Regency), but that only occurred in one scene when the hero and killer were talking in a carriage. In this book, I was able to do it through a good portion of the story.

This technique makes me think of a couple of movies I’ve seen that I have watched differently a second time than I did the first time watching it. A movie had to be written. Someone had to add something toward the end that changed the way I perceived the movie upon a second time watching it.

Now, I don’t think it has to be the “twist” that does this. It could be. In the movie, The Sixth Sense, the twist was the factor that made you view the movie a completely different way when watching it a second time. For anyone who didn’t see it, it’s knowing Bruce Willis’ character is dead when you thought he was alive. (After finding that out, you can’t view the movie the same way when you watch it again.) I enjoy examining the differences from what “appears to be” to “what actually is” going on, and it’s why I will watch it again in the future. Stuff like that inspires my own writing. The Wilderness Bride, it’s not a twist. It’s just an added layer of information.

But that is what has made this story a lot of fun for me to write, and it’s why it’s one of the Top 10 favorites.