The Black Dagger Brotherhood_An Insider's Guide

by J. R. Ward

  Butch let his head fall loose on his shoulders and he wept openly . . . though not out of happiness, as they must have assumed.

  He wept at the hollowness he felt.

  Because however wonderful this all was, it seemed empty to him.

  Without his mate to share his life with, he was but a screen for events and circumstance to pass through. He was not even empty, for he was no vessel to hold even the thinnest of air.

  He lived, though was not truly alive.

  —LOVER REVEALED, p. 446

  Without Marissa he is less than zero, and that is true for all the Brothers. Once they bond they are completed, and severing that relationship leads to a breakdown that is irreparable (I’m thinking of Tohr now). Fortunately for Butch, Marissa and he work everything out and are reunited at the end.

  Speaking of unions . . . let’s talk about sex. Butch made me blush. A lot.

  Maybe it was because, of all the Brothers, he tended to talk the most when he was making love. Or maybe it was the way he handled Marissa and her virginity. Or maybe it was just that, quite frankly, I think he’s monster hot. Whatever the reason, of all the series so far, I think his book is the hottest of the bunch.

  So it makes sense I’d cover the whole sex thing when discussing him.

  I get asked in interviews every now and again how I feel about writing “hot” books, and whether I do it to meet the market demands for more and more erotic content. Certainly, over the past five years or so, romance novels have been getting more and more sexual, and the erotic market has grown substantially. Back when I started writing the Brothers, a lot of the now-popular e-pubs were starting to gain momentum, and soon thereafter a number of New York houses developed hotter lines as well. The marketplace was in transition—which was lucky for me.

  From the get-go, I knew the Brothers were going to be more sexually explicit than my previous contemporary romances. And I was aware that the series was going to take readers in directions that my other books hadn’t (i.e., Rhage’s sex addiction, Z’s sexual dysfunctions, V’s predilections). That being said, I didn’t specifically target the erotic market. The Brothers are just very sexual, and the scenes I see of them with their females are hot. In keeping with rule eight (yes, it’s the Rice Krispies again), I write what I see in my head. Do I sometimes think, OMG, I can’t believe I just typed that? Yes! But the thing is, the sex scenes always advance an emotional imperative, and that’s why, however graphic they become, I don’t feel they are gratuitous.

  Take, for example, Rhage being chained down to his bed . . . or when Z services Bella in her needing . . . or Butch and Marissa in the back of the Escalade when she finally feeds from him. All of these scenes are highly erotic, but the dynamic within the relationships changes afterward, either for the worse or the better. I think maybe that’s one difference between romance and strict erotica. With romance, sex affects the emotional bonds of the characters and propels those connections forward. With strict erotica, the sexual act or sexual exploration itself is the focus.

  Do I think the market will stay as hot as it is? It wouldn’t surprise me if it did. Predicting is a dangerous sport, but there seems to be a sustained appetite for books with heat in them. I’m quite certain that subgenres will continue to rise and fall in relative popularity, and that some new ones will come along that we can’t begin to guess at. But I think the overall trend of sexuality will probably remain where it is.

  And speaking of sexuality . . . now a word on Butch and V.

  Where to start.

  The first inclination I had that there was going to be a sexual component to their relationship was in Dark Lover, when the two of them spent the day together in Darius’s guest room. There was something so intimate about the pair of them lying in those beds, drunk, talking. And then they moved into the Pit with each other and became inseparable. To be honest, I was clear from the beginning what V felt toward Butch, and I was also aware that Butch was clueless about it—but I sat on the dynamic, keeping it to myself. I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Or how readers would feel about it.

  I do that sometimes. I have whole plotlines that happen in the world that I don’t put in the books, and I leave them out for a variety of reasons. Most of the time it has to do with story-focus and book-length issues. For instance, the short story in this compendium about Z and Bella and Nalla has been in my mind for about eighteen months now, but there was nowhere I could put it in any of the books.

  Sometimes, though, I leave plotlines out because I’m not sure how to deal with them. As I wrote the first three books, there were all these scenes between Butch and V, both on the page and in my head, and they fascinated me. The whole time, I was like . . . Okay, when’s Butch going to tweak to what’s doing with his roommate, and what’s his reaction going to be to the way V feels about him?

  As I kept banging away at the keyboard, the question in my mind was, Do I bring the dynamic out on the page? And if so, when? Eventually I decided to make the leap. The way I saw it, I had already tiptoed into some tricky waters over the course of the first three books, and it went okay—but more important, the story deserved that kind of honesty.

  Lover Revealed was the logical choice for it in terms of timing.

  When Butch was abducted at the beginning of his book, the single-minded focus with which V approached the rescue is reminiscent of the way Z went after Bella in Lover Awakened. The thing was, though, the obsession could have been explained by him and the cop being best friends. I knew I had to make it clear that things were beyond friends on V’s side, and the scene where he comes to see Butch to heal him in quarantine, and catches Butch and Marissa together, was when I exposed the feelings to the reader in V’s POV:

  Butch shifted and rolled Marissa over, making a move to mount her. As he did, the hospital johnny broke open, the ties ripping free and revealing his strong back and powerful lower body. The tattoo at the base of his spine flexed as he pushed his hips through her skirts, trying to find home. And as he worked what was no doubt a rock-hard erection against her, her long, elegant hands snaked around and bit into his bare ass. As she scored him with her nails, Butch’s head lifted, no doubt to let out a moan.

  Jesus, V could just hear the sound. . . . Yeah . . . he could hear it. And from out of nowhere an odd yearning feeling flickered through him. Shit. What exactly in this scenario did he want?

  —LOVER REVEALED, p. 103

  It was pretty clear what (or who) he wanted by the description—and it wasn’t Marissa. I have to admit I was a little trepidatious. I’d previously hinted at V’s “unconventional interests,” but I had always led with the BDSM stuff, not the fact that he’d also been with males. And here he was, a primary hero in the series . . . who’s attracted to another primary hero.

  Butch is not bisexual. He’s never been into men. He is, if I were pushed to define him, a V-sexual, as it were. There’s something about his relationship with Vishous that crosses the line on both sides, and to the cop’s credit, he doesn’t bolt or get freaked out. He’s with Marissa, and he’s committed to her, and the V thing hasn’t made anyone uncomfortable because boundaries are respected.

  I have to say, I think the scene of Butch’s induction into the Brotherhood, when V bites him, is off-the-chain erotic:

  Without thinking, Butch tilted his chin up, aware that he was offering himself, aware that he . . . oh, fuck. He stopped his thoughts, completely weirded out by the vibe that had sprung up from God only knew where.

  In slow motion Vishous’s dark head dropped down, and there was a silken brush as his goatee moved against Butch’s throat. With delicious precision, V’s fangs pressed against the vein that ran up from Butch’s heart, then slowly, inexorably, punched through skin. Their chests merged.

  Butch closed his eyes and absorbed the feel of it all, the warmth of their bodies so close, the way V’s hair felt soft on his jaw, the slide of a powerful male arm as it slipped around his waist. On their own accord, Butch’s hands left the pegs
and came to rest on V’s hips, squeezing that hard flesh, bringing them together from head to foot. A tremor went through one of them. Or maybe . . . shit, it was like they both shuddered.

  And then it was done. Over with. Never to happen again.

  —LOVER REVEALED, p. 443

  As I’ve said, I wasn’t sure how readers were going to take the whole V/Butch thing, and after the book came out I was surprised. Overwhelmingly, folks wanted more of the two of them! The fact that the readership was so incredibly supportive is a testament to their open-mindedness and I’m very grateful for it. I’m also thankful for trailblazers such as Suzanne Brockmann, who, with her Jules Cassidy character, paved the way so that males like Blay can get their happily-ever-afters, too, and Brothers like V are accepted for just who they are.

  And now a couple of random thoughts about Lover Revealed . . .

  Butch didn’t just make me blush; I had my first case of writer’s block with him.

  It wasn’t because he was getting naked all the time, though.

  With each succeeding title the books were getting longer, and I was becoming concerned. If the trend kept going? I’d be turning in tomes. The issue appeared to be that the world had started developing its own plot—something that was particularly true with Butch’s story—so the events weren’t just about the heroes and heroines anymore.

  For me as the author, the fact that I have the freedom to explore the ins and outs of the Omega and the Scribe Virgin and the war with the Lessening Society is part of what I like about the series. Bigger, however, is not necessarily better. During the revision process, my editor and I always check the pacing just to make sure there’s no fat on the page. It’s rewarding when we don’t find any—but also daunting when you see those little numbers in the upper corners getting higher and higher.

  Anyway, when I started drafting Lover Revealed, I decided I was going to be “smart,” given the complexity of all the plotting. I decided that I was going to consolidate a bunch of the up-front scenes to save page space.

  Right.

  Sure, this made sense practically, but the Brothers didn’t like it at all. As I tried to retrofit the beginning scenes, cramming them in together, the voices in my head dried up. It was the eeriest thing. Everything went dead quiet, and I confronted what I’ve always feared the most: Because I have no clue where my ideas come from or how I do what I do or why certain things happen in the world, I’m always afraid the Brothers will pack up their leathers and their daggers and leave me with nothing.

  Four days. The dead zone lasted for four days. And because I can be dense, it wasn’t immediately clear to me what the problem was. Finally, after I was going half-psychotic from the silence, it dawned on me . . . Huh, you don’t suppose I’m trying to jockey these scenes around too much just to save on page count?

  As soon as I stopped worrying about length, everything flowed again and the Brothers came back. Takeaway? Good old rule number eight trumps just about every other concern I might have. Every story demands different things, whether it’s pacing or description or dialogue . . . or page count. The best thing you can do is remain true to what you see. I’m not saying you should be inflexible during revisions. Not at all. But be brutally honest in that first draft—then you can worry about editing things out later.

  On another subject . . . a lot of people ask me what the deal with Butch’s father is. Specifically, they want to know if he’ll play a role later in the series. The answer is, I don’t know. I can see a pathway where there could be some very interesting family ties, but it’s a wait and see situation. I am quite sure of one thing, though: Butch’s father had to be a half-breed. The male had to either have gone through the transition, but been able to endure sunlight as Beth can, or the change didn’t hit him and he functioned in the world as an aggressive human.

  The other question that I often get about Butch’s background has to do with the rest of his family and whether he ever reunites with them. That answer I do know, and it’s no. He’s said his good-bye to his mother, and his brothers and sisters have been shutting him out for years. The one person from his old life he does miss is José de la Cruz—although something tells me the two of them aren’t done yet.

  Finally, of all the books, male readers tend to like Butch’s best, and that doesn’t really surprise me. It’s got a lot of good fight scenes, and the world building is more extensive than in some of the other stories, where the romance might take up more space. And some of the guys have commented that they love the idea that there is a great force inside of them, one that rocks the world and puts them in a position of power, and with the Omega’s tinkering, Butch certainly has that.

  Plus, they think Marissa is hot.

  So that’s my take on Butch. Now . . . for V.

  *sigh*

  Vishous, Son of the Bloodletter

  “Vishous, could you stop grinning like that?

  You’re beginning to freak me out.”

  —LOVER UNBOUND, p. 443

  Personal Qs (answered by V):

  *At this point, the answer is scribbled out and below is written:

  Actually, it was ten minutes ago, when I beat the ever-living shit out of Rhage for macking my interview, thank you very much. What a freak. Here’s my real answers-oh, and BTW, Dakota Fanning isn’t in Flicka-and I know it because I looked the DVD up NOT because I saw the damn movie.

  My Interview with Vishous:

  Out on the compound’s lawn, Butch and I pack up the duffel and take Edna back to the mansion, where we spend about fifteen minutes weeding through the rose garden picking up the rockets. After we find all four and detach their parachutes, we go into the library and Butch gives me a hug. He smells good.

  I head off, crossing the foyer and going into the dining room, which has been cleaned up. On the other side of the flap door into the kitchen, Fritz, butler extraordinaire, is polishing silver with two other doggen. I chat with them and end up trying to fend off offers of food and drink. I fail. As I go down into the basement, I have a mug of coffee and a homemade raisin scone wrapped in a damask napkin. The scone is delicious and the coffee is just the way I like it: superhot with a little sugar.

  At the bottom of the basement stairs I look left and right. The cellar is huge, with great stretches of open space broken up by storage rooms and HVAC piping. I have no idea where V could be, and I listen, hoping for direction. At first all I hear is the sound of the ancient coal furnace that is up ahead, but then I catch a beat.

  It’s not rap. It’s a rhythmic, metal-on-metal clanging.

  I follow the sound all the way down to the far end of the basement. It takes me a good five minutes of walking to get to where V is, and along the way I finish the scone and the coffee. As I go, I try to think what the hell I’m going to ask him. He and I don’t really mix all that well, so I figure this is going to be short and not-so-sweet.

  As I come around the last corner I stop. V is seated on a stout wooden stool wearing heavy leather chaps and a muscle shirt. In front of him is an anvil on which is a deep red dagger blade that he’s holding with a pair of calipers. He has a blunt hammer with a special grip in his glowing hand and is pounding the tip of the weapon. Between his lips is a hand-rolled, and my nose registers the woody smell of Turkish tobacco, the sharp acid of hot metal and dark spices.

  The ovenlike room is about twenty by twenty and has whitewashed concrete walls like the rest of the basement. Black candles are lit all around, and next to the anvil is an ancient brass pot full of sparkling sand. Behind V is a sturdy oak table on which are a variety of daggers in various stages of creation, some just the blades, others with handles.

  V turns and thrusts the still-red metal slice into the sand, and I’m struck by how strong he is. His shoulders are roped with muscle, and so are his forearms.

  As he waits, he releases a stream of smoke from his lips and taps the hand-rolled on the edge of a black ashtray.

  I am uneasy around him. I always have been. It makes me sa
d.

  I stare at him as he takes the blade from the sand and wipes it with a thick cloth. The metal stretch is irregular in shape and consistency, clearly in the process of being birthed. He examines it, tilting it around, and as he frowns the tattoos on his temple move closer to his eye. Putting the hammer down, he brings his glowing hand back to the blade and clasps it. Light flares, pulling sharp shadows out of the softer candlelight, and a hissing sound sizzles into the air.