The Black Dagger Brotherhood (31 page)

 

There's a long silence that's companionable, and after a while I let myself fall back in the grass and stare at the sky. The blue positively glows, and the white of the cotton-puff clouds is brilliant and a little blinding. The pair together remind me of fresh laundry for some reason, maybe because it's all so sparkling clean and the sun is warm on me and everything smells so good. . . .

Yes, I think to myself,
these are the colors I remember
. . . the ones from childhood, their vividness enhanced by the wonder and the excitement of just taking them in.

 

The other questions I might have asked him drift out of my mind and into the fair skies above. When I hear a rustle of grass beside me, I realize he, too, has lain down. Together we stretch out on the grass, hands behind our heads, legs crossed at the ankles.

Eventually we return to the mansion and the bedroom we'd been in, and we talk about nothing special. I know that Phury's giving me a chance to reorientate and I appreciate his thoughtfulness.

When it's finally time for me to leave, he and I go down the hall to the study. I say good-bye to Wrath and Beth, and Phury stays there to have a meeting with the king and queen. As I put the grand staircase to use, I hear the voices of the doggen once again coming from the dining room. They're setting up for Last Meal, laying out the place settings for the Brothers and the
shellans.

Fritz comes forward, opens the vestibule's door, and leads me back out to the Mercedes. Before I get into the sedan, I glance up at the mansion's dour gray facade. Lights glow in almost every single window, evidence that in spite of the grim, bulwark-like exterior, there is great life and joy inside.

I slide into the backseat of the car, and as Fritz shuts the door I see that there's a small black leather pouch on the place where I should be sitting. After the butler gets behind the wheel, I ask him what it is, and he says that it's a present for me. When I start to thank him, he shakes his head and tells me it is not from him.

As the partition rises between me and Fritz, I take the satchel, pick apart the tie at the top, and spill its contents out into my palm.

It's a small black-bladed dagger, still warm from the forge. The workmanship is breathtaking. . . . Every detail, from the hilt to the razor-sharp tip, is perfectly wrought, and the miniature weapon gleams. It took its maker a long time to create it . . . and he cared about the outcome, cared greatly.

I curl my palm around the gift just as the Mercedes eases forward and we descend from the mountain, heading back for the “real world.”

 

Phury finds love and conquers both his addictions and his race's restrictive social and spiritual constructs.

 

I love Phury. He was a dream to write, he truly was. And as I said, boy, did I need the break.

On that note, some thoughts about my daily working patterns.

My writing schedule is pretty much set in stone. I write seven days a week, no excuses, no compromises: sick days, holidays, travel days—my butt is in the chair. I've kept this up for about ten years now, and I think I've missed three days in that decade—due to extremely extenuating circumstances. I've gotten up at four-thirty in the morning in Manhattan in hotel rooms to write. Sat down after root canals. Stayed inside when it's sunny. My point is—writing is a priority, and I make it clear to everyone around me that writing time is nonnegotiable. It's not that I'm a superhero. I'm just very disciplined, for one thing, and for another, I need to write. If I don't, it's like not exercising. I just get antsy to do it.

Were all these days stellar examples of drafting at its finest? Absolutely not. I can write crap just like everyone else does sometimes. But I keep after it and rework it and just hammer away until the words feel right. Often, it's slow going, and tedious. When I'm laying down a first draft, I can do only about six to ten pages a day. When I revise those pages, the first trip through is usually no more than ten pages a day. Then it's fifteen. Then it's twenty. After my editor reads the manuscript, I'll go through it again and again, doing no more than twenty-five pages a day. If I'm hitting copy edits, maybe I'll do forty. For galleys? It's hard for me to do more than fifty or seventy-five.

The thing is, I don't write fast, I write long—which means I just put the hours in.

My normal day starts when I get to the computer upstairs around eight. I write for two hours. Take a break to make more coffee (during which I sometimes check e-mail downstairs), then go back up for another two hours. After that I run and come back and spend the rest of the day editing and dealing with business-related stuff. This all changes, however, if I'm under deadline—which means nothing except a run takes me away from the computer.

I do not have Internet access on either computer I write on, and I strongly urge folks, if they can afford the luxury, to draw that line and keep Web and e-mail distraction far, far, far away from their writing machines. See, for me, the writing uses a very specific part of my brain. If I stop working to deal with other issues, it can be a struggle to get back to the zone I was in before I put on my business head.

No one goes up into my working space except my dog (who's always welcome) and my husband (who's usually welcome). I don't describe it anywhere, and there are no pictures of it. I will say that it is extremely uncluttered and has a tremendous amount of light. I think part of the reason I'm so territorial about the physical space is that keeping the real world out helps me to focus on what's in my head. I'm also by nature, as I said, rather private, and the writing is very personal to me—so I'm quite protective of it.

In addition to my agent and my editor (and all the spectacular folks at my publisher's who are incredible), I work with a lot of absolutely amazing people. My personal assistant makes sure everything runs smoothly and keeps me in line by being thoroughly unimpressed by any of the J. R. Ward stuff and liking me for me (well, most of the time it's about our friendship—sometimes I drive her insane and she stays only because she loves my dog). My research assistant is a walking, talking Brotherhood encyclopedia who can find obscure pieces of knowledge and know-how with amazing alacrity—he's also endlessly patient with me and one of the kindest people I've ever met. I also have a six-foot-ten-inch consigliere with a metal fetish—because everyone who writes about vampires needs one of those—and a woman who, even when six months pregnant, is willing to hump bags around hotel lobbies and go to conferences and make sure the trains run on time (we call her the APA).

My critique partner, Jessica Andersen (who writes fabulous paranormals), and I met like eight years ago, and we've been through a lot of ups and downs (the downs are what we call roadkill periods). She writes plot-driven stories and I'm into character sketches, so we don't have a thing in common when it comes to material—which is one of the reasons I think we work so well together. I call her my CP, but because I don't really share my content much, she's more like a brain trust. I run a lot of business as well as writing issues by her, and she never fails to give me good advice.

My two assistants run the J. R. Ward message boards and the BDB Yahoo! Group and work with a tremendous team of volunteer moderators, most of whom have been with the Brothers from the very beginning. Our mods are amazing, and I'm so grateful for what they do just because they like the books.

Everything's a team effort. And I couldn't get the time and space to write like I do without the help of these folks.

Usually my days end around nine at night, when my husband and I get to spend a little time together before we pass out and get up and do it all over again. The truth is, I'm actually kind of boring. I'm mostly in my head all of the time—writing consumes my life, and the solitary existence nourishes me as nothing else could or has: I'm happiest at the computer by myself with my dog at my feet and it's been that way since day one.