The Black Dagger Brotherhood (16 page)

 

The line suddenly goes taut, and Wrath focuses on bringing in what turns out to be a freshwater trout. The fish is gleaming and slippery in the king's big hands, and he almost loses it while trying to get the hook out of its gaping mouth.

 

At this point the two of us wade over to the bank. Wrath gets out of the stream first and offers me his hand. I take it and he pulls me up. He picks up the backpack, opens it, and holds it out to me.

 

I reach in and take the thing. Its red-and-green skin is shiny in the moonlight, and when I bite into it, it cracks like hardwood. The juice drips down onto my palm as the two of us go through the woods together, our waders flapping against our legs.

 

He gives me a short, tight hug that lasts for two footfalls, and then the pair of us separate, but keep walking side by side toward the warm, welcoming home.

 

In this, the first book of the series, Wrath, unascended king of the vampires and the last purebred vampire on earth, reluctantly assumes responsibility for seeing a half-breed female through her transition. Beth Randall is unaware of her vampire heritage and fights both her own truth and her attraction to the dark stranger who comes after her.

 

Dark Lover
remains the book of which I'm most proud. In my opinion, the pacing is as good as I'll ever get it, and it was the place where I found my voice. Of course, writing the damn thing scared the ever-loving pants off me because it was a huge stretch for me as an author. Huge. I'd never tried multiple POVs and plots before or done a series or given world building a shot. I had no clue what I was doing when it came to . . . well, just about everything in the story: Even though DL was the fifth book I'd written for publication, it was such a departure from the ones that came before it, I might as well have been starting from scratch again.

And I hadn't been an expert before then by any stretch of the imagination.

My first four books were single-title contemporary romances. Published under the Jessica Bird name, they were very much a product of years of reading and loving Harlequin Presents and Silhouette Special Editions. Well, that and the fact that I was born a writer. It's just part of my makeup, something I have to do if I'm going to be happy—and sane. But that's another saga.

I loved writing the Jessica Bird books, but my contract wasn't renewed . . . which meant I didn't have a publisher anymore. I knew I had to change directions if I were going to still have a job, and I tried my hand in a couple of different subgenres. I pulled together a romantic-suspense proposal, but the material just wasn't strong enough. I thought about doing women's fiction and chick lit—except they weren't what I read, probably because the subject matter wasn't my bag. I also considered staying with contemporary romance and trying to find another publisher, although I knew the chance of someone else picking me up was unlikely.

It was in my darkest moment, when I had nothing particularly fresh and interesting in my brain save for an abiding realization that if I didn't reinvent myself I was toast . . . that Wrath showed up. Although I had always been a horror fan, it had never dawned on me to try my hand at paranormal romance. All of a sudden, though, I had over two thousand pounds of male vampire stuck in my head, and the Brothers wanted out like they were locked in a house that was on fire.

Okay. Right. Horror meets romance meets erotica meets fantasy meets hip hop. Throw in some leather and some
Miami Ink
shit, stir with a baseball bat and a tire iron, sprinkle on some baby powder, and serve over a hot bed of Holy-Mary-mother-of-God this-has-to-work-or-I'm-going-to-be-a-lawyer-for-the-rest-of-my-natural-life.

No problem.

Damn it
, I remember thinking,
why don't I drink? Or at least eat chocolate?

Which brings me to my first rule for writers: PR is mission critical for survival, and I'm not talking about public relations.

Persist
and
Reinvent.
If you're not selling, or if you're not getting a good response to your material from agents or publishers, try something else, whether it's a new voice or subgenre or even genre. Keep at it. Keep trying. Look for new avenues that interest you. Find a different path.

It was the only thing that saved me.

That didn't mean P&R was fun. As I sat down to tackle Wrath's proposal and sample chapters, I was at once singularly inspired and totally stalled. All I had was a tangle of visions in my head, a burning panic that no one would get the series, much less buy it, and the near conviction that I couldn't possibly pull off something as complicated and interconnected as the Brotherhood's world.

Nothing like trying to fly a plane when you can barely handle a bicycle.

Facing a whole lot of blank screen on my computer, I knew I had to tamp down my anxiety, and considering the fact that putting my skull in a vise wasn't a viable solution, I made an agreement with myself: I would write the story that was in my head exactly as I saw it, and I would do it for me and me alone. I wouldn't allow any you-can't-do-thats or that's-against-the-rules or better-play-it-safes to get in the way. Whatever I saw in my mind's eye was going on the page.

My rule number two?
Write. Out. Loud
.

Take your vision and execute it to the fullest extent of your capabilities. It is always easier to pull back than to push forward in revisions, and I think that the bolder you are in your first draft, the more likely you are to be honest with what's in your head.

So, yeah, that was the plan, and I felt pretty good about my resolution. Except right out of the box, I had a problem.

How was I going to work the plan?

With all that I was being shown, and the number of POVs and subplots, I was at a loss when it came to drafting the story. After doing the panic-and-pace thing for a little while, I ended up falling back on my legal training. In law school, you study by creating these voluminous outlines of the material presented in class. By the time you're done putting everything in order, you've actually learned the material—so it's the process, not necessarily the outcome, that is the big benefit.

Outlining extensively was, and continues to be, the single most important tool I use in my process.

Before the Brothers, I started with nothing more than a high-level summary of my story, the sole goal of which was to give my editor a clue as to where I was headed. Most of my thinking was done while I was drafting—which was totally inefficient and a little dangerous. For example, I'd take the hero and heroine into emotional places that didn't work, or get their motivations and conflicts muddled, or lose track of the book's momentum . . . or sometimes all of these at once. Sure, I'd figure my way out eventually, but I'd end up scrapping tons of pages and be too much of a burden on my editor during the revision process. Further, because of all the struggling, the choices I made were not the best ones because I was brain-dead from all the confusion and lack of clarity.

My all-important third rule is a corollary to number two and the overriding theme to everything I do as an author:

Own your own shit
(or
work
, if we're going to be a little more classy).

And it ain't called
shit
'cause it don't stink.

Do not rely on your editor or your agent or your critique partner to identify and solve your plot, character, pace, context, pagination, or any one of the thousands of problems you have to work through when you write a book. Educate yourself on craft by critiquing the books you read, both the good ones and the bad ones. Ask yourself, What works? What doesn't? Study the standard texts on writing, like Story by Robert McKee and
Writing the Breakout Novel
by Donald Maass and
The Writer's Journey
by Christopher Vogler. Talk to other writers about their books and how they wrote them.

Then, when you look at your own work, approach it like you're a drill sergeant facing off at a bunch of unruly, lazy slobs. For me, being nice to my tender little inner artist and soaking in the mother's milk of praise is a surefire way to get soggy and fatheaded. Discipline and a clear assessment of my strengths and weaknesses as a writer are the only things that work for me. Ego is not my friend and never has been.

Back to
Dark Lover
and the outlining. The images in my head were so clear and demanding that it took me only two weeks to draft the outline and the rules of the world (as well as the first sixty-nine pages of the book). Of course, I barely slept or took any breaks at all. I was totally caught up in this undeniable momentum and didn't have any interest in slowing it down.

I still don't.

And when I was finished getting everything I saw out of my head . . . the outline was forty-four pages long. I was stunned. Previously? I topped out at ten pages.

My big concern was that when my agent took the proposal to market, the editors wouldn't read the entire thing. When you've been published previously, generally you sell projects on spec with three sample chapters and an outline—but I felt like I was turning in . . . well, the whole book. Of course, that was also the good thing. I really knew where I was going and what each and every character arc was going to be. I'd done all my thinking and reordering along the way—and learned that changing around a paragraph or two in an outline is a hell of a lot easier than wiping out whole chapters and putting new ones in during drafting.