The Triangle
Page 28
I needed something more. I needed something like Junco. Or Rook & Ronin. Or The Company. A story that would inspire me. A story I could fall in love with. A story where I could give no fucks about how many copies I sold because this was about ME again.
And that’s not what my story started out to be.
AND – this was the first time in like two and a half years that I didn’t have a pre-order up with a deadline.
I seriously wrote EIGHT BOOKS from January to June. Eight. Angels Fall, Flesh Into Fire, Passion Rising, Total Exposure, Pleasure of Panic, The Boyfriend Experience, Play Dirty, and The Sexpert.
I published over half a million words in seven months. And not ghostwritten words, bitches. All my words (and Johnathan’s too).
I needed time to THINK ABOUT SHIT, ya know?
So I stopped writing and that’s why I was coming up with new ideas every day. Did I want to write this book instead? Or that one? Or hey, how about these six ideas over here? We just wrote a pretty funny rom com, should I write another one of those?
But I didn’t want to do that either. The Sexpert series (Which, from this point on, will be called The Tall, Dark, and Handsome series) is a world. A world I love, I’m excited about, and I’m looking forward to more books in that world. (In fact we started Pierced, the next TDH book, two days ago and we’re already on chapter three. Fuckin Pierce and Myrtle are gonna kill you.)
And all my other worlds have been wrapped up with pretty bows. There were no messy dangling threads for me to grasp onto and insert one of these ideas into.
I also knew I did NOT want to write another standalone. I’ve been writing standalone series for a couple years and you know what? I need more right now. I mean… when you get three books to tell the story about the same characters it’s so much more amazing. But readers love the standalone, I guess. I dunno.
I kept thinking back to the Rook & Ronin series and The Company. And Junco. And how I loved, loved, loved writing the “long story”.
And I had just come off The Misters, and The Turning Series, and Jordan’s Game. And sometimes when I get to the end of a book I know it’s “over”. Like… it is. It’s over. But I wish I could skip the marriage and the baby and just say, you know what? This ride isn’t over yet, bitches. Give me a fuckin’ minute, OK? I’m not done with these people. And besides, no bitch gets off that easy anyway. Time for a reality check.
And so once I decided this was not going to be a standalone series I felt a whole lot better about things. I wrote the prologue and chapter one. But I wasn’t getting excited yet because I had written like five chapter ones in the past three weeks and all of them got put on hold for another idea.
But fuck it. I started it and I had Christine’s name, but no names for Danny and Alec. And Johnathan and I were on the phone one morning and he said something like, “Tell me about your book. What are you writing?”
So I took a deep breath and said… listen to this… Which was a big deal because once I told someone about an idea it became real, ya know? And I was still a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to get to chapter two.
But I told him about Christine. And I said, “I don’t know where it goes from there, I don’t have names for these two guys, I just know it’s something like 321 meets the Company. And there’s a kid, but she’s grown up now. And there’s a James/Ark, but he’s kind of a bad guy. But there’s a James/JD too, because all the bitches loved JD.” And then I said, “You wanna read it?”
Which… one year ago, would never have happened.
EVER.
No one read my words until the book was done and then only RJ, my editor, got to have opinions about it that I would give fucks about. Like, I literally remember this phone convo Johnathan and I had last summer and it was an hour-long conversation of me having a meltdown because he was gonna get to read my words before I was done.
Poor Johnathan, lol. He was a champ on that phone call. He really was. It was a bunch of “It’s OK. It’ll be fine. We’ll get through this.”
It wasn’t that easy but you know, by this time Johnathan and I had written five books already. And a script for The Company TV show. We were getting better at this collaboration thing and I respect his opinion.
So I asked him if he wanted to read it.
And he said, “Fuck yeah. It sounds amazing. Like this sounds like something I’d love to write.” (Or something to that effect, because I have a terrible memory when it comes to conversations.)
So then I said, “You want in on this?” lol
And he said, “Yeah. Let’s do it.” (He really said – man, I got a shit ton of work right now and it’s cray. And this is insane to even consider but, yeah. Let’s do it.)
So I send him the blurb, the prologue, and chapter one.
Like an hour later I go outside to feed my donkeys. I’d told him that I think the one guy is into something illegal. Like all of them are obviously outlaws, but this one guy, he’s doing something. Not Italian mob. Not mob at all. Something… classier. If there’s such a thing in the criminal world. So I’m outside scooping beet pulp into a bucket for my donkeys and it hits me.
Diamonds.
And I swear to God, my phone dings and I get a text from Johnathan. Like in that same instant. It’s a business text about something business-y. But I reply back, I got it. Diamonds. And he says, Blood Diamonds? Can I be South African?
lol
So I said fuck yeah.
And that was it. I was writing again.
WE. We were writing again.
And over the course of the next six weeks The Triangle came to life. And holy fuck, man. I love it.
I know what romance IS.
I get it.
I know what you have to have in the story to make people feel “satisfied”. I know what the dude can and cannot do. I know the rules. I do.
But no one write romance the way I write romance because I have a very particular view of what’s romantic in a book and it’s not always the standard “two people fall in love and live happily ever after” kind of romance.
I mean, I can write that. The Sexpert is definitely that. But the whole point of The Sexpert is to make you laugh and I wasn’t in the mood to make you laugh. I wanted to make you feel some shit. I wanted to confuse the fuck out of you, and twist your brain, and make you throw your damn Kindle at the wall.
And if I have to write nothing but rom coms for the rest of my career, well, I’m gonna go do something else, OK? I am. I love the TDH series and I’m having a bunch of fun writing about Pierce and Myrtle. But I can’t do it every single book. I’ll die.
I am just Julie’s dark, twisted mind. That’s all I can say.
If people don’t like that, it’s all good. But I am not a formula writer. And when I write a story like Junco, or The Triangle it comes from somewhere else. Somewhere deep inside. There is no formula for The Company. Or Rook & Ronin. Or 321.
And there is no formula for The Triangle either. We’re building a new world here and we’re gonna do it right. So if that means we have dangling threads at the end, so be it.
This is the shape of our writing.
You’ll also notice we do not have book two up for pre-order. We only get 90 days on an Amazon pre-order and the second book won’t release until January. We’re not releasing in December because I have another book I’m working on for December called The Dirty Ones (about the twisted world of erotica writers, ironically enough). And Pierced, book two of the TDH series, is slotted to release October 30th. So it’s four months between books one and two.
I hate making you guys wait but again… this is Junco. This is Rook & Ronin. This is The Company. And these things take time. Writing the “long story” requires a lot of daydreaming. It requires time to get inside your characters and figure them out. And four months isn’t that long anyway.
So January, unicorn bitches. January. Follow us on the websites below or on our socials to get the first look at the rest of the story. And if y
ou’d like to try another one of our books, give Sin With Me a go or if you’re looking for another MFM book like The Triangle while you wait, try Taking Turns (Which is FREE right now) or 321.
J.H. 9-20-18
CLICK TO GET TAKING TURNS
(FREE Right now)
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Find Julie & Johnathan at their website www.HussMcClain.com
All their books are listed HERE
Julie’s books can be found HERE
Chat with Johnathan
On Facebook
On Twitter
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Johnathan McClain’s career as a writer and actor spans 25 years and covers the worlds of theatre, film, and television. At the age of 21, Johnathan moved to Chicago where he wrote and began performing his critically acclaimed one-man show, Like It Is. The Chicago Reader proclaimed, “If we’re ever to return to a day when theatre matters, we’ll need a few hundred more artists with McClain’s vision and courage.” On the heels of its critical and commercial success, the show subsequently moved to New York where Johnathan was compared favorably to solo performance visionaries such as Eric Bogosian, John Leguizamo, and Anna Deavere Smith.
Johnathan lived for many years in New York, and his work there includes appearing Off-Broadway in the original cast of Jonathan Tolins’ The Last Sunday In June at The Century Center, as well as at Lincoln Center Theatre and with the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab. Around the country, he has been seen on stage at South Coast Repertory, The American Conservatory Theatre, Florida Stage, Paper Mill Playhouse, and the National Jewish Theatre. Los Angeles stage credits are numerous and include the LA Weekly Award nominated world premiere of Cold/Tender at The Theatre @ Boston Court and the LA Times’ Critic’s Choice production of The Glass Menagerie at The Colony Theatre for which Johnathan received a Garland Award for his portrayal of Jim O’Connor.
On television, he appeared in a notable turn as Megan Draper’s LA agent, Alan Silver, on the final season of AMC’s critically acclaimed drama Mad Men, and as the lead of the TV Land comedy series, Retired at 35, starring alongside Hollywood icons George Segal and Jessica Walter. He has also had Series Regular roles on The Bad Girl’s Guide starring Jenny McCarthy and Jessica Simpson’s sitcom pilot for ABC. His additional television work includes recurring roles on the CBS drama SEAL TEAM and Fox’s long-running 24, as well as appearances on Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS: Los Angeles, Trial and Error, The Exorcist, Major Crimes, The Glades, Scoundrels, Medium, CSI, Law & Order: SVU, Without a Trace, CSI: Miami, and Happy Family with John Larroquette and Christine Baranski, amongst others. On film, he appeared in the Academy Award nominated Far from Heaven and several independent features.
As an audiobook narrator, he has recorded almost 100 titles. Favorites include the Audie Award winning Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff and The Last Days of Night, by Academy Winning Screenwriter Graham Moore (who is also Johnathan’s close friend and occasional collaborator). As well as multiple titles by his dear friend and writing partner, JA Huss, with whom he is hard at work making the world a little more romantic.
He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Laura.
JA Huss never wanted to be a writer and she still dreams of that elusive career as an astronaut. She originally went to school to become an equine veterinarian but soon figured out they keep horrible hours and decided to go to grad school instead. That Ph.D wasn’t all it was cracked up to be (and she really sucked at the whole scientist thing), so she dropped out and got a M.S. in forensic toxicology just to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible.
After graduation she got a job with the state of Colorado as their one and only hog farm inspector and spent her days wandering the Eastern Plains shooting the shit with farmers.
After a few years of that, she got bored. And since she was a homeschool mom and actually does love science, she decided to write science textbooks and make online classes for other homeschool moms.
She wrote more than two hundred of those workbooks and was the number one publisher at the online homeschool store many times, but eventually she covered every science topic she could think of and ran out of shit to say.
So in 2012 she decided to write fiction instead. That year she released her first three books and started a career that would make her a New York Times bestseller and land her on the USA Today Bestseller’s List eighteen times in the next three years.
Her books have sold millions of copies all over the world, the audio version of her semi-autobiographical book, Eighteen, was nominated for a Voice Arts Award and an Audie Award in 2016 and 2017 respectively, her audiobook, Mr. Perfect, was nominated for a Voice Arts Award in 2017, and her audiobook, Taking Turns, was nominated for an Audie Award in 2018.
Johnathan McClain is her first (and only) writing partner and even though they are worlds apart in just about every way imaginable, it works.
She lives on a ranch in Central Colorado with her family.