First Drafts & Bad Boys

“You said you were going to blog more,” I just reminded myself. So, since I was falling asleep staring at my Word document, I figured I might as well be productive and knock a post out.

Since our last visit, I’ve finished the first draft of what I will call WOWI for now and it’s as horrifying as I expected. It’s all bones and disjointed paragraphs and chapters. I have so much left to fill in for the chapters to flow, the dialogue to be right and the romance to feel right though; it’s not as overwhelming as I’m making it seem. Honestly, the first draft (for me) is the hardest thing to get down. After that, I just keep writing (and unfortunately deleting) until it’s ready to go but I’m so far from the end, I can’t even see the finish line.

But I’m going to tell you guys something: I like a challenge and this book is just that for me.

My favorite thing to write are stories about strangers who meet and develop a friendship and then a relationship. Out of all of my books, KULTI is the most ‘my’ style. UNDER LOCKE, which was my second release but my third finished product after LINGUS and RCM, on the other hand was not. That kind of book isn’t what I typically enjoyed writing, but I told myself I was going to try my best and write something that was a little more dramatic and more mainstream-y. It took me about forty rewrites to get it to the point I wanted and it was hard, guys. I’m not exaggerating how many times it was rewritten. In another post, I’ll tell you more about it.

WOWI on the other hand, JFC. If you’re reading this then you deserve a little bit of a teaser (our secret!). This book is about two characters who already know each other; the heroine has worked for the hero for a couple of years but their friendship (if you can call it that)/work relationship leaves a lot to be desired. There’s also another big plot device that I’m not going to share YET, but it’s something I’m not sure I know how to write (even though I love reading it), but I’m damn well going to try my best to make it work and make sense and give you all the feels.

But it is driving me nuts trying to figure out how to piece everything together since this territory of alread-having-sort-of-a-history is new territory for me. It makes the dynamics trickier but screw it.

WOWI isn’t UNDER LOCKE and it isn’t KULTI either; I think it’ll be somewhere in between. Which probably makes me an idiot because I know bad boy alpha males are what sell books but… I can’t do it. Honestly. I can’t. I don’t want to write another Dex for this story even though it would be really, really easy to do.

I wanted to write a cranky, oversized Canadian and that’s what I’m doing.

And here’s the thing about bad boy alphas that drives me nuts–what makes a bad boy, you know? Is a billionaire who grew up in a wealthy household really a bad boy just because he sleeps with a different woman every night? I don’t think so. A firefighter who grew up in a loving family? Not really. Don’t get me wrong, I love billionaires and firefighters, but how bad can they really be? The thing I loved about Dex was that he was the kind of character who, if he said “I’m going to beat the shit out of you” I would probably believe he would/could do it without a doubt. Everything about his back story would have to make sense that he’s a person capable of doing what he says he will. Example–my favorite movie hero as of late: John Wick. He was an ex-hitman, therefore in my head, that’s a bad mother-effer right there. When he says he’s going to kill you, he’s going to kill you (I already have an idea for that kind of character in the future but just not yet.)

I digress–I’m busting my butt on WOWI. I sprained my elbow and I’m rocking a sling right now, which makes typing (and everything in general) harder but fingers crossed this thing heals sooner than later.

Just as a quick reading rec, check out Lindsay Buroker’s The Emperor’s Edge novels. They’re fantasy/steampunk and simply amazing if you’re into that genre. There’s a certain blond assassin that has worked his way up to the top of my book boyfriend list. 😉

Until next time.

xo

Mariana