Villains, love, & faeries (as muttered by Melissa)

I'm not the sort of person to obsess. I don't fall in love with fictional people. I don't fall in love with places. *counts* Three of those things are a lie.

Okay, so I think I ended up a writer because it's really just another way to research, lie, and play make-believe. As a child, I was the kid who read by flashlight so I could stay longer with a character or in a place, could explain random tidbits, and had a book in my purse just in case there was a bit of free time in my day.  As a teen, I was still those things, but I had accepted my preference for villains, too.

I played the "what-if" game . . . a hobby I still have, except over the last 14 years, I write it down not just think it. What if there was poison in the salt shaker? What if the car breaks down here? What if you wake up in a new city with an unfamiliar purse and a stranger? It's great as a writer, and it's a little less great as a mother. What if my daughter falls from that cliff into the North Atlantic? What if my son tries that BMX trick and breaks both legs?  I'm working on the anxiety in the mom part.

But writing . . . helps.

So, the research & "what if" part of writing are the things I do because my brain just works that way. Falling in love is the hard part.  In 2007, I fell in love with a character called Irial in my debut series. He's not a good guy. In that, he's drawn from real life. My taste in villains wasn't just in books. My first "boyfriend" (in high school) was the son of a hitman.  My second had just gotten out of juvie. I had a type in books and life--breaks rules, impulsive, passionate.

Irial was not the good guy in the story, but he was still--in the way--of Real People--sometimes a good guy.  I studied narrative theory in grad school, and the part of that I couldn't resist is basically "who tells the story defines the story." Were the guys & girls I fell for good if someone different told the story? Boyfriend A's murdering father loved his family. Was he good in their story?

So in my Wicked Lovely series, I was still pondering the same things I pondered in real life.

In Leslie's story (Ink Exchange), Keenan is the bad guy. Of course, he's still a bit of a "bad guy" in Wicked Lovely. He stole Ash's humanity. He gets to share his side in Fragile Eternity...where he is a good guy with a curse.

I thought that by the end of the series I had settled it. 

But . . . a decade later, I was still pondering Irial, a "bad guy" who would die for love in the first 5 books, who loved his friend's kids in the way of honorary uncles, who still loved Niall centuries after their separation, who loved his court enough to cope with willingly giving himself to pain. I wrote a few short stories. . . including one I shelved because it was setting up a prequel.

I released that short story ("Love Hurts") in a collection (Dark Court Tales) in the summer. It was Irial coping with being in love in the 1800s.

I started writing that prequel (Cold Iron Heart) in 2018, set it aside bc of a stroke I needed to heal from, and picked it back up in 2019.

It's up for pre-order now on Amazon & B&N.   (More spots to come!)

Of course, the other thing that made me fall in love with writing the story was my time in New Orleans.  Between 2015 and 2018, I was in New Orleans over a dozen times. A week here. A conference there. Spring, fall, winter. A trip to the bayou, where a gator swam (floated?) by the house, and becoming a member of a krewe during carnival season . . . and one slightly ill-planned excursion where I stayed in a house with holes in the wall, and a door so dry-rotted it made no sense to close it.  I walked, danced with strangers in the street, and learned to recognize local bands that busked, and ultimately was there so often that I was recognized as a "local" in various shops, by various folks who begged, by a shop owner who invited me to a party that was "totally nude or a costume."  I could give walking tours with the history, and I made friends with historians to fill in my gaps.

So . . . I have both a historical  (Cold Iron Heart) and a contemporary psychological thriller (Pretty Broken Things) book coming out in 2020, and both are set in the city I fell for. Maybe the falling in love part of writing isn't as hard as it felt. I fell for Irial, and I fell for New Orleans, so I put them together.

When I've tried to write without that love, that need to be with a character, that urge to research, that obsession with knowing a place or person . . . it's about as appealing as dental surgery. So, to the writers reading this & trying to find your way in, my advice is to let yourself fall in love with a place, person, or idea.

And to the readers like me, I hope you are falling in love, too.  Next month, I'll talk a bit about love. . . but for now, here's a blink of the bayou where I realized that if I stayed still, I was sure I could hear someone singing.

And the absurdly posh house where I stayed . . . right before I stayed in one with holes in the walls & a balcony that swayed & was only partly attached . . . so when I walked to my room, I had to wonder if I was going to plummet to the lovely, overgrown courtyard below me.  Both had their charms, although it might seem impossible to believe. The house in this picture was decadently beautiful, but the one that was a shade away from being condemned meant I met the most interesting people, and shared a drink with them in a courtyard under the moonlight.