I love my first book. It’s my baby. It’s funny and romantic and the characters have been with me a long time.
I thought up the basic premise for “Air of Darkness” and the Elemental Mages series back in college. That was about 15 years ago. I didn’t actively write the thing until about five years ago and finished it three years ago.
It’s been through a lot of revisions since then. It’s a very different book than the one I started with. And that’s a good thing. It’s a much better, deeper book than what I started out with, as good as I thought it was at the time.
I think the thing I love most about “Air of Darkness” is the heroine. A lot of people ask me if there’s any of me in Alayna. Not really. Alayna is aspirational. I would like to react like she does. I would like to be able to carry the burdens she does with the kind of toughness she displays. I’m not as strong or as fearless as Alayna is, but I wish I was.
At the same time, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with her problems.
But….
I also love my second book. Don’t ask me which one I love more. That’s like asking me to pick between my children. I love them both for different reasons.
I wrote “Inside the Fire,” the second book in the Elemental Mages series, in the wake of some pretty hefty trauma and it was very cathartic. I handed a lot of my own pain and experience to the heroine in that book. Then, I gave her a heap more. And I feel like it’s good and it’s real and it’s raw. Jen handles what happens to her in a very different way than I did and it was so interesting to write her story.
It was incredibly freeing to be able to write that way. There are also a lot of really fun characters in that book. Theron will always be a hero close to my heart.
“Air of Darkness” is slated for release this fall.
“Inside the Fire” will be released in early 2019.
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