The Given & The Taken – How It Came to Be

Aislinn Kerry, author of awesome vampire stories Blood & Roses and Smoke, is at least partly to blame for The Given & The Taken, which is book #1 in the Tooth & Claw series.  The two of us spend a great deal of time yakking via IM while we’re both writing (or, on occasion, procrastinating). One topic that has come up more than once is the idea of predestined mates.  In short, it bugs us both. Of course it’s something that can be done well, but it also has the potential to be incredibly squicky, and we’ve both read a few too many examples of it meeting that potential.

Around the beginning of 2011, we’d been having another one of our conversations about predestined mates, and a plot bunny started gnawing on my brainstem. I had also been, for some time, pondering the idea of writing something paranormal. I like vampires and werewolves as much as the next person, but just hadn’t settled on the right story.  Plot bunny, meet genre.

And this, my friends, is how L. A. Witt’s brain works:

What if a pair of predestined mates were so incompatible, there was just no way they would work out?  Such as…say…she’s a woman, and he’s gay. Enter Levi, a wolf who’s been paired with Selena, who is pretty much the only one in the pack who understands why it’s just not going to happen.  So, with her blessing, he finds a male mate, Ian, who happens to be human. The pack is less than thrilled (which, of course, makes me happy…always love stirring things up for the people in my head). They’re going to grudgingly let Levi bond with his chosen mate, but they aren’t going to make it easy for them.

In fact, you know what, Levi? We’re going to let you two bond, but then you’re going away for a year, and if Ian can find you after that year is up? Well, Mazeltov. If not, you get your sorry butt back here to the pack and bond with Selena like we told you to in the first place.

Awesome. Now I’ve got a monkey wrench thrown into the whole predestined mate thing, but I’d really like to bring in some vampires.  The story just feels like it needs some bloodsuckers.  Ooh, I’ve got it! Ian doesn’t do so well with this “year apart” stuff, and in a moment of weakness, not only cheats on Levi but does so with a vampire. And winds up converted to a vampire.

Levi’s pissed, of course. And Ian feels like an ass, because…well, he kind of was an ass. Oh, and Darius the vampire isn’t going to just fade into the shadows. He had a nibble of Ian and would like some more, thank you very much, even if a certain werewolf tries to get in his way.

At this point, I thought I saw the story laid out in front of me like a clear, straight stretch of Midwestern blacktop. Well, minus the cornfields and gas stations, anyway. Point being, the setup was there, the characters were in place, and it was go time. But every time I tried to flesh out the details, it all fell flat. Yeah, that Nebraska interstate was laid out in front of me, but my car was broken down on the side of the road with  nary a tow truck in sight. (Pardon the travel puns and Midwest analogies…I just drove to Nebraska, so guess where my brain is.)

So what the hell is the problem? Come on, characters. Let’s get it together here. Pissed off werewolf, prodigal boyfriend, antagonistic vamp—wait. Wait just a second.

Darius doesn’t want to be a villain.

Okay, let’s try this again, this time with Darius in a protagonist’s chair.  Much better.

Oh, and Selena? Selena doesn’t want to be a barely-there secondary character. Nuh-uh, author lady. I didn’t let my predestined mate wander off with a man so I could sit at home and knit. I’m not even coming along for the ride. Bitch, I’m driving!

And…there we go. I put together a nice shiny outline (ah, Excel, how I love thee), and started writing. The boys (and Selena) turned out to be an opinionated bunch, though, so I pretty much ditched the outline and followed them.

The end result?

The Given & The Taken, which is now available from Samhain. Keep an eye on my blog, Twitter feed, and website for updates about the sequel, The Healing & The Dying, as well as additional books in the Tooth & Claw series.

Don’t forget to to go to L A’s blog tomorrow for a new post in the Cock and Bull tour

“ a well-researched, evenhanded portrayal of clashing cultures in ninth-century England and Norway, and will please readers who enjoy history at least as much as romance.”

And a blurb too:

Viking raiders destroyed Wilda’s home. She witnessed the murder of her mother and would have been killed herself if it weren’t for the Viking boy Einar, who saved her from his ruthless brother. The blood and murder left Wilda cold and shorn of feeling.

Eight years later, the heathens return for Wilda. As a captive in the Viking village, she finds protection and silent comfort in the man who once gallantly saved her.

Einar has been cursed to silence by his brother. With the dark net of his brother’s power cast over their village, silence is a small price to pay for his family’s safety. But Einar is immediately drawn to Wilda, and the need to protect her from his brother awakens his Viking courage. Can Einar break his brother’s curse in time to save the village and the woman he loves?

ANNND – spoiling you today aren’t I? And the sequel to Ten Ruby Trick will be coming soon too! Woohoo!

Eight years later, the heathens return for Wilda. As a captive in the Viking village, she finds protection and silent comfort in the man who once gallantly saved her.

Einar has been cursed to silence by his brother. With the dark net of his brother’s power cast over their village, silence is a small price to pay for his family’s safety. But Einar is immediately drawn to Wilda, and the need to protect her from his brother awakens his Viking courage. Can Einar break his brother’s curse in time to save the village and the woman he loves?

The Viking’s Sacrifice is now available from Carina Press

But in many ways, especially in how you use your worldbuilding/research they are very similar. Worldbuilding serves much the same purpose in fantasy as research does in historical – it gives the reader a sense of place and/or time. It lets them, for that short while, inhabit somewhere different.

The trick is, not to drown your story in it. Because your reader almost certainly is reading mainly for the story. Not a treatise on how beer was made in 844.

Now when I decided to write this historical, I decided to approach the research in much the same way I do worldbuilding. In fantasy, the little worldbuilding I do up front is all to do with culture. This culture values this, so these things are likely. Details come as I write. Researching Vikings, before I started writing what I looked for was attitude and laws. So, Saxons for example didn’t automatically leave everything to the first born son (that came in with the Normans). Instead they often willed their lands etc to who they wanted to have it. Because of this, and because a widow with a lot of land was obviously a big draw, a law was introduced that no widow can be made to marry for a year after her husband’s death.

This little nugget, combined with my Viking hero’s absolute belief in seidr, that is magic, and Bad Guy’s attempt to take over the fjord (hey, coups are universal!) started off my plot. Everything else, all the little details of how they lived, what they ate etc came later, much later. I researched them only when it was relevant to the plot/depth – that is, if I had my heroine making dinner, it helped to know what it would be! Being the type of writer I am, the more I knew upfront, the more likely I would dump it in the novel to no effect. Your mileage may vary, depending on what sort of writer you are.

That’s my method of making sure research/wordlbuilding doesn’t overwhelm the story – only ‘discover’ it as and when I need it. If I end up a little light at the end of the first draft, it’s easy to go and add extra detail. I find it harder to cut.

Now, if you’re more of a planner, this probably won’t work! You’ll want to know all the details up front. This is fine and dandy, if that’s how you need it to be. If not, then the ‘as you go’ technique can really help not drown your story in details. If you know all your stuff before hand, that’s a different thing. Just try to make it relevant to what is actually occurring and what the reader really needs to know. That almost certainly does not include a three page description of anything. Really. Layer it in, subtly.

Please.

What, you wanted a serious picture?

Oh, alright. Note I am only wearing a dress because it was a wedding and I was forced.

Lost items found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Reasonable rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or Other Entertainment. Harry Dresden is the best and technically the ‘only’ at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal capabilities, they come to him for answers. For the ‘everyday’ world is actually full of strange and magical things – and most of them don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a – well, whatever.

Take your standard noir detective with a sarcastic frame of mind and a weakness for helping damsels in distress, add in wizardry, vampires, werewolves, talking skulls, pizza loving fairies and all things paranormal and this is what you get. A quirky, fast paced and thrilling ride through a Chicago you never thought possible. Trying only to pay the rent, when the police are stumped on a case Harry helps out, while also trying to find a missing husband. Things soon get complicated when it becomes obvious there’s black magic afoot – and the council of wizards suspect Harry. Already under the Doom of Damocles, a form of wizardly probation for past transgressions, Harry has to risk execution to discover who the Shadowman is – and why he’s killing people.

This is a superb debut – and only the first of many. Great characters, a mystery that twists and turns like a corkscrew and above all, Harry, a wizard with a world weary sense of humour, who takes life on the chin.

Urban fantasy / magic realism in London. We’re dropped into a body in present day London. Eventually we come to realise that it is the body of Matthew Swift, sorcerer, deceased. Or he was, until now. Bless, he then finds out all his friends are dead, killed by the same thing that killed him – a shadow known as Hunger. Quickly found by a bunch of ‘concerned citizens’ he begins to track who he suspects had him killed, and the author begins to reveal just how Matthew came back – and what he is now. Come be we, come be free.

While not a totally original concept the voice and style of this piece is beautiful – if difficult to read in large chinks at a time. London is both faithfully described and an entirely new and otherwordly place, if only you know its secrets. Unfortunately the lavish description sometimes slows the pace to a crawl. The author likes to keep things from teh reader too – which seems odd as it’s written in First Person – so the narrator is Matthew Swift. And he doesn’t tell us what he knows. Indeed, it was several pages before I knew the narrator was male, and dozens before I knew his name. And Matthew knows what he is, at least partially, but the reader is kept in the dark. Tricky to pull off in first person without annoying the reader, and only partially successful here, for me at least. Every time he revealed something I asked myself ‘Couldn’t you have told me earlier rather than making a big mystery about it?’

Still, an engaging book, stylishly written.

Ramus and Nomi are Voyagers, a select Guild that seeks to explore the untamed wilds of Noreela and reveal them to them the past and rest of civilisation. They obtain some documents in a strange language, papers that seem to suggest that there may be something at the top of the Great Divide, a mind-bogglingly high cliff that runs across the southern plains. But whether it is true remains to be seen – no one has ever climbed the Divide and returned. As Voyagers, the promise of exploring uncharted territory is too much. With a small group of mercenaries, the set out to discover what lies at the top – something that might re-write history.

This book, for me, was split into three very distinct thirds. In the first we are introduced to our leads – Ramus and Nomi. The world-building here is rather heavy- handed in places. Do I need to know how too cook every meal they eat? The habits of every plant and animal? An exaggeration – but not by much. Of course, many readers love these things, so bear in mind this niggle is just my personal preference. Then again it’s maybe a little on the light side in others (what haunts the shadowy nights, exactly?). The pace is slow as they start out on their adventure. The characters are well-drawn if a little on the bland side, though they become stronger as we get to know them. But there is a simmering tension between the two that drew me on.

And a third of the way into the book something delightful happens – the tension explodes, in a way that while surprising ( and for me fantastic – I love a good twist), is also fitting – the seeds having been sown with skill earlier. The middle third of the book rolls along at a much better pace, the author relying less on the outlandish nature of the planet and more on his characters, which become more interesting ( if not exactly likeable) as we carry on.

Sadly for me, this improvement that had me dying to see the end falters when they reach their goal and find what they are looking for. While it’s a pretty epic pre-climax, the ending itself has little to no resolution. Some things that played a large part in the proceedings and should, really have become clear were just…left. And while I like an ambiguous ending at times, some concrete outcome to chew on is preferable. There’s little here, which left me feeling rather deflated and as though the author wasn’t sure how he could end it satisfactorily and so just stopped.

All in all, this a good adventure book ( great for those who love exploration tales, or who need to know every detail of the planet), solidly written, sadly let down by an ending that just didn’t quite deliver it for me.

By JK Coi

No matter what you write, whether it’s a manuscript or a grocery list, editing will eventually be a part of it. (Yes, I’ve had to scratch out the word “cookies” from my grocery list too many times, although I can’t quite bring myself to add “carrots” in its place)

It’s a fact of life for authors that writing = re-writing. But I tell myself that editing shouldn’t be looked at with fear or as a chore, but the opportunity to catch mistakes (because, let’s face it, they’re ALWAYS there) and to make my work even better.

Even before I send a book to my editor, I’ve done my own round of edits, hopefully to make her job easier (or at least this is what I tell myself. The swearing and cursing that comes through the internet lines after she opens the file tell a different story).

I tackle edits in three waves. The first wave occurs during the writing process of the first draft. As much as I’d like to tell you I simply sit down and start clacking away at the keyboard, that the magic of my own mind takes me away and I don’t look back until it’s all done…that’s not the way it goes. I’m editing as I go. Not extensively, but enough to tweak and fine-tune my words. It helps in the long run to make sure my next pass isn’t quite so extensive.

The second wave is my way of looking at content and depth. This is where I will strengthen the emotional conflicts and hopefully weed out inconsistencies of plot. (Note that these inconsistencies invariably drive me CRAZY. I can spend HOURS looking up lore and fairytales about goblins and ghouls and as many other scary creatures as I can, and researching the cities and towns I have dropped my characters into—you’d think I would have learned by now to write about a place that I’ve actually been to!) However, this reminds me: I do a lot of my research when the book is already done. There are usually tons of placeholders in my manuscript with square brackets around them that look something like this: [DETAILS OF SUPER-COOL VAMPIRE POWERS] or [CASSIEL IS THE ANGEL OF SOLITUDE AND TEARS—WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN?]. Anyway, if I spent all my time with these niggly little details BEFORE I started writing the book, it would never get finished!

Anyway, once I’ve lost a week of sleep and finally combed through the manuscript for this second wave, I will send the book to my critique partners. Tip: Biting fingernails, inhaling chocolate, and staring at the empty email inbox for hours waiting for a response is not a good use of your time. The thing I try to remember when my critique partners and beta readers get a hold of my book is that their comments will mostly be suggestions based on their own style and personal preferences. So the third wave starts once I’ve looked over all the suggestions that were made and decide what I’m going to do with them, but honestly, I hardly ever make all the changes that are suggested. It isn’t that I don’t trust their judgement or respect their opinion, but I also have to keep my own vision for the book. I find if I let too many people tell me to change this and change that, my voice gets muffled and the writing loses its strength.

Finally, after three passes or “waves” of editing, I hopefully have a worthy manuscript to send to my editor…and the editing begins again!

For the readers, how much does bad editing bother you when you’re reading a book? Can you overlook some spelling and grammar errors when the story is compelling, or do you want to grind your teeth at every instance of their when it should have been there?

For the other writers out there, how many passes does it take before you consider your book good to go? Do you have a tried and true process?

FALLING HARD

After a life filled with tragedy, rocker Gabriel Gunn thinks he’s finally getting the better of his personal demons. Then he’s attacked after a concert—and rescued by a warrior goddess brandishing a sword and white wings. As hard as it is to believe in an angelic bodyguard, Gabriel must face an even more impossible truth: he carries the devil’s soul within him.
Amelia has been watching over Gabriel for years, using her angelic powers to prevent Lucifer’s return. Now she must also protect him from warring angel factions with their own agendas. Amelia would do anything to avert another angelic war, even sacrifice her own emotions to avoid temptation. Yet with Gabriel she feels things she no longer wants to deny, and pleasure she never imagined.
But the closer Gabriel and Amelia get, the stronger Lucifer becomes. Will Amelia be forced to kill the man she’s come to love to stop the war she’s always feared?

J.K. Coi is a multi-published, award winning author of contemporary and paranormal romance and urban fantasy. She makes her home in Ontario, Canada, with her husband and son and a feisty black cat who is the uncontested head of the household. While she spends her days immersed in the litigious world of insurance law, she is very happy to spend her nights writing dark and sexy characters who leap off the page and into readers’ hearts.
Website: www.jkcoi.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/jkcoi