When I was writing Unleashed, I had no idea the hero’s younger brother, Brian, would start speaking to me. (Holy unlikely romance novel hero, Batman!) He’s loud, inked, pierced, foul-mouthed, and basically doesn’t give much of a damn about anything. In Unleashed he’s only really onstage for one scene. He was cleaned up a bit during final edits and another of his scenes was deleted altogether, so my vision of him is probably a lot harsher than the readers of that story know.
After I finished the book, and attempted to work on other things, he kept barging in on my thoughts. I kept trying to shove him out. I tried to tell him he would be too hard to redeem. Then I realized something about Brian: when he sees something he wants, he’s unstoppable. It occurred to me that I mentioned he’d gotten something he really wanted at the end of Unleashed, and it opened up all kinds of possibilities for him to prove himself.
It was easy to see what kind of heroine a guy like him needed: a sheltered virgin princess. That’s what he calls her, anyway. Candace is someone who can bring out the softer side in him, and almost from the first moment she gets her hands on him, he’s a mess. He keeps up appearances, but inside, he’s in turmoil. It fascinated me to watch how differently he interacted with her. With his friends and family, he’s an impossible smartass. With her, he’s gentler. She grounds him. He muses late in the story that she’s the eye to his hurricane. I love that.
I guess it’s true the bad boys fall the hardest. There were scenes in which he made me cry, and he always made me melt. I can only hope I’ve transferred this couple to the page as vividly as they exist in my thoughts, but then that’s true of all the characters I write.
So, as usual, Brian got what he wanted, as last week I typed The End on his story, all 88,000 words of it. I wrote most of it in two frantic pushes: one in late April and another in July. I hadn’t planned on it being so long, but that’s okay. I’m almost done with the polishing process, and I’m really excited about it.
Wish me luck in finding him a home. I hate the phrase “It’s the book of my heart!”, because they should ALL be from the heart, or else what are you doing this for? But this one just might be a little closer than others.
