by Дж. Р. Уорд
Wrath: Good.
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.
Wrath: You want your apple?
J.R.: Oh. I’d love it.
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.
J.R.: (as we come out of the forest and sec the glowing lights of Rehv’s rustic safe house) Wrath?
Wrath: Hm?
J.R.: Thank you.
Wrath: Its your apple.
J.R.: I’m not talking about the apple.
Wrath: (after a moment) I know. I know, cholla.
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.
Dark Lover
The People:
Wrath, heir to the throne of the vampires
Beth Randall, newspaper reporter
Darius, son of Marklon, son of Horusman
Tohrment, son of Hharm
Wellasandra, blooded daughter of Relix, mated of the Black Dagger warrior Tohrment
Rhage, son of Tohrture
Zsadist, son of Ahgony
Phury, son of Ahgony
The Scribe Virgin
Marissa, blooded daughter of Wallen
Havers, blooded son of Wallen
Fritz (Perlmutter), butler extraordinaire
Mr. X(avier), Fore-lesser
Billy Riddle, son of Senator William Riddle
Cherry Pie, a.k.a. Mary Mulcahy
Butch O’Neal, detective in the Caldwell Police Department, Homicide Division
José de la Cruz, detective in CPD’s Homicide Division
Dick, Beth’s editor at the Caldwell Courier Journal
Doug, the attending at the hospital
Unnamed blond male, Billy Riddle’s partner in the attempted rape of Beth
Loser (unnamed youth whom Mr. X takes out with Billy)
Abby, bartender at McGrider’s Bar
Boo, the black cat
Places of Interest (all in Caldwell, NY, unless otherwise specified):
Screamer’s on Trade Street
Offices of the Caldwell Courier Journal (CCJ) on Trade Street
Beth’s apartment—1B, 1188 Redd Avenue
Caldwell Police Department on Trade (six blocks from Caldwell Courier Journal)
Darius’s House—816 Wallace Avenue
Caldwell Martial Arts Academy (across from Dunkin’ Donuts)
Mr. X’s farm, off Route 22
Havers’s clinic—undisclosed location
McGrider’s Bar on Trade Street
ZeroSum (corner of Trade and Tenth streets)
Summary:
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.
Opening line: Darius looked around the club, taking in the teeming, half-naked bodies on the dance floor.
Last line: “Please, if you would,” the butler said, “no throwing the linens. Peaches, anyone?”
Published: September 2005
Page length: 393
Word count: 118,833
First draft written: September-November 2004
Craft comments:
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.
&n
bsp; 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.
Fortunately, the proposal for the series was bought (by the most spectacular editor I’ve ever worked with), and I knew I was going to get a shot to write at least three books. Man, I was excited, but I was also terrified, because I wasn’t sure whether I could carry it off. Of course, I told myself my gorgeous, heavyweight outline was my savior. Figured that as long as I had that, I was all set. Ready to pound away on the keyboard.
Riiiiiiiiight.
The execution turned out to be far trickier than I could have imagined, for a variety of reasons.
For me, one of the big challenges of Dark Lover was learning how to handle multiple plotlines and multiple POVs (points of view). The way I see it, there are three major plotlines in the book: Wrath and Beth’s; Mr. X and Billy Riddle’s; and Butch’s. In each of them, different aspects of the world are introduced, giving the reader an insight into the vampire race, its secret war with the Lessening Society, and its under-the-radar existence with humans. Which is a lot. And to complicate things even further, these plots were presented to the reader in the voices of no fewer than eight people.
Lot to handle. Lot to keep up with.
Lot to advance from chapter to chapter.
Rule number four for me as a writer? Plotlines are like sharks: They either keep moving or they die.
With so much going on, pacing was going to be critical: To be successful, I had to make sure that everything kept progressing, and here was my new reality as a writer—while I was trying to make sure I showed Wrath and Beth inching closer both emotionally and physically, I had to keep tabs on Butch and José de la Cruz’s homicide investigation, which simultaneously brought Butch into the Brotherhood picture and kept the reader up on Mr. X’s nasty deeds. Meanwhile, the other Brothers had to be introduced, I had to give an overview of the war, and then there was rolling out the welcome mat to the Scribe Virgin and the nontemporal world.
And I had to do all this without losing cohesion between the scenes, and keeping the emotions realistic and vivid without sinking into melodrama.
As a further example, Butch was going to be in the Brotherhood, and his road in was through Beth’s connection with Wrath. Butch was also going to end up with Marissa. Fine. Dandy. Rock on. The thing was, though, how did I interweave his scenes with the ones of Beth and Wrath’s romance along with all the stuff with Mr. X and the Lessening Society…without having the book come out choppy and incomprehensible?
Also, the plots had to “peak,” in an emotional sense, in the right sequence. Beth and Wrath had to have the most dynamic ending—and going by the pictures in my head they certainly did. But Butch’s situation and that of Mr. X and Billy Riddle had to be resolved…but only in a way that didn’t drain the drama from Beth and Wrath.
Brain. Cramp.
The cure? Rule number five, which is a corollary to rule three (Own Your Own Work): Sweat. Equity.
After I finished the first draft, I went through that book over and over and over and over again. And then I’d take a week off and come at it one more time. I spent hours and hours repositioning the breaks and the chapters and trimming things and sharpening the dialogue and making sure that I showed, not told.
And even when I read through the galleys, which is the last stage of production, I still wanted to change things. The book has its strengths and weaknesses, just like they all do, but I learned a ton writing Dark Lover. And I needed those lessons for what was coming in the series like you read about.
Enough on craft, let’s talk about the King and Beth…
Wrath was the first of the Brothers to turn up in my head, and he was the one who showed me the world of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The thing I like best about him is summed up in the beginning of Dark Lover:
With a face that was both aristocratic and brutal, he looked like the king he was by birthright and the soldier he’d become by destiny.
—DARK LOVER, p. 3
I love that combination—a blueblood who’s also a fighter—and I believe Wrath is the perfect leader for the vampires: strong, brutal when necessary, possessing both logic and passion. He just needed to wake up to the fact that he could lead.
And Beth was the one who helped him get there.
Beth was and is Wrath’s perfect match. She’s strong-minded, warm, and willing to stand up to him. Their dynamic is shown to perfection in what i
s one of my favorite scenes between them. The two of them are talking about his take on what happened when his parents were slaughtered in front of him. He condemns himself for not saving them, but he was a physically weak pretrans, so realistically there was nothing he could do. Beth loses it and hammers him for being too hard on himself—which is something he needed to hear, even if he clearly wasn’t receptive to what she was saying. The thing I love is that she wasn’t dissuaded from speaking her mind even with him looming over her. And Wrath, even though he doesn’t agree with her, becomes still more attracted to her. When she’s finished being frustrated with him, there’s an awkward stretch:
Ah, hell. Now she’d done it. The guy opens up to her and she throws his shame back at him. Way to encourage intimacy.
“Wrath, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
He cut her off. Both his voice and his face were like stone.
“No one has ever spoken to me as you just did.”
Shit.
“I’m really sorry. I just can’t understand why—”
Wrath dragged her into his arms and hugged her hard, talking in that other language again. When he pulled back, he ended the monologue with something like leelan.
“Is that vampire talk for bitch?”
—DARK LOVER, p. 248
The thing is, Wrath is all about strength, and the fact that Beth can stick up for herself and what she believes puts them on equal footing. The gift of his respect is as significant as the gift of his love, and she’s worthy of both.
Another of my favorite scenes in the book is when Beth comes up from Wrath’s underground bedroom at Darius’s, fresh from her transition. She’s wondering how he’ll be with her in front of his Brothers and is prepared to play it cool as she comes into the dining room where the warriors are. Turns out Wrath’s just fine with PDA (public displays of affection), and he embraces her in front of a stunned Brotherhood, who had never seen him with a female before. After he explains her significance in the Old Language, he leaves to get her the two things she’s craving, chocolate and bacon, and the Brothers greet her in a special way: