Monday, June 16, 2014

Getting to Know the Characters

I make no secret of the fact that I never had an urge to write a vampire novel prior to To Touch the Sun. I liked reading the genre, I just never had a character or story in mind.



That all changed with TTTS. There was a huge amount of evolution that went on with that novel. I decided to take on the project in the hopes of attracting an agent but I still didn't have a character or story. Just a two word idea: vampire chef. I played with plot, narrative, perspective. Eventually I came up with characters I really love and a plot that suits them. I'm sure that's why the series that grew from it is so close to my heart: Because it came about as such a surprise.


Once I had the novel (and the agent thing fell through) I became desperate to find a publisher. Again, more so than any novel I've written, I wanted this published. It took years to find a publisher, and I'm happy with Dagda, but those were frustrating years.


Looking back on it, however, I'm kind of glad for the wait because it offered me the chance to write the next three novels in the series and enabled me to know my characters better. Now, when I talk of TTTS, I can also talk of the series which lends excitement to talking about TTTS. I understand Narain, for example, in a different way then I did right after finishing TTTS. I understand the friendship between him and Dom or the love between him and Cassie in a much more complete way.


Actually, it can sometimes be frustrating to have the next three novels written. There are some surprises in the next two novels that I have to be careful not to reveal when talking about TTTS. But there's an arc to some characters that I'm extremely excited about and would love to discuss.


Hopefully it won't be too long before the next books are published. but I'd like some saturation for TTTS before that happens.


To Touch the Sun is available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon.