Some sentences arrive fully formed.
Most are rewritten.
But sometimes, if you’re lucky, you write something that doesn’t need to be revised. Not because it’s perfect (I mean, what ever is?) But because it’s just…true. It might not be the most eloquent sentence in the book, but it’s the one on which the whole story hinges.
It’s the gut punch. The face slap. The gasp. The “oh no!”
This line in Vanilla is the “oh no!”
As in, oh no, how will they come back from this? Oh no, how will they get their HEA? Oh, no, I can’t believe he did that!
What happens after the “oh no!”
It can be different for every book. An “oh no” moment in a horror novel isn’t going to have the same purpose as one in a romance novel, for example. In Vanilla, that punch-in-the-face moment led to the black moment. The conflict that seems insurmountable. It sums up the book’s entire premise — what happens when a dominant woman falls for a guy who is adamantly not submissive?
Why did I choose to write about characters who seem to be such polar opposites?
I can’t claim to be an expert on BDSM. I can’t even claim to be an expert on writing novels, although I’ve certainly managed to do that a lot, and with great success. So I can’t tell you that I wrote Vanilla because I’m some kind of relationship or D/S expert — all I can say is that I write about people and feelings and, in particular (no matter the genre) how people feel about themselves and each other.
When I first began thinking about Vanilla, I knew I wanted to write a submissive MMC. I could have forced that — but as the chapters unwound, I discovered that the conflict between Elise and Niall felt most natural when it grew out of what seems to be, on the surface, totally opposite desires. The more I wrote, the more I also discovered that at least some of the conflict grew from Niall and how he viewed himself. (Spoiler alert, the book is written solely in Elise’s first person POV; we never get inside Niall’s head.) Niall’s perception of himself and his masculinity directly affect how he behaves. He does not want to be submissive. Therefore, in his mind, he is not, and will never be.
Why does he stay with Elise, though, when he knows from the start that she’s into being the dominant partner?
Why does Elise fall for Niall when he makes it pretty clear that he’s not ever going to be interested in a relationship with power exchange, at least not in the direction she prefers.
What can I say? The heart what it wants. You don’t fall in love with a person’s desire, you fall in love with that person. And for me, the roles of dominant and submissive do not have to be etched in stone. I wasn’t writing about people in a 24-7 D/s commitment. I was writing about a woman whose desire manifests itself in strength and discipline; a woman who wants more than anything else, a partner who looks at her and actually sees her. Knows her. All the rest? Just icing.
Back to the gasp, the “oh no!” the end of the story before we’re ready to leave it behind
Sometimes love takes you by the hand and leads you to run through fields of flowers while butterflies weave you a dress out of rainbows. Other times, love takes you by the throat and chokes you until all you see is the bright, sharp trail of shooting stars right before everything turns to black. The problem is, you can never tell in advance which way the story ends, not until you’re too far into it and you have no choice but to keep turning the pages.
I don’t write books with people who make the best choices first. I like messy conflict. I like gray areas. I like people who don’t think they’re doing the wrong thing. I like people who know they are, but do it anyway.
I like realistic fiction and books that make you cry.
Writing Vanilla made me cry. Parts of it broke my heart. Rewriting it…? Oh, yeah. Broke it all over again. There were moments I had to step away from the desk and get some fresh air. But if my heart doesn’t hurt, how can I expect the readers to feel anything?
If you read Vanilla when it first came out, thank you. I hope you give the revised version a try. (And if you buy it directly from my store, you can even get a bonus story!)
If you didn’t read it, I hope you like stories with messy people making bad choices, with some kinky stuff along the way.
If you read it and you hated it, remember, please tell everyone you despise to rush right out and buy a copy. You’ll ruin their day, and I’ll never tell your secret.
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