August 2011, I was home sick, and I noticed something posted on the wall of a new Facebook friend, Allison Cassatta. Seemed she was looking for submissions for a paranormal romance anthology, and the deadline was just a couple of days away. Now, under normal circumstances, I would have looked at it and shrugged, and moved on. But it was pretty early in the morning, my wife was at work, my kids were at school and I had hours. And I started thinking. We had so many pieces of our story that would meet the submission requirements. What did we have to lose? So I read through the pirate story we had done so far, picked a piece of it that would fit as a good stand-alone story, and got to work editing it. In just a couple of hours, I had something that I really really liked. I didn’t even ask Patricia, I just submitted it that afternoon. (I thought she might actually try to talk me out of it!) She did about beat me virtually that night, but I think she was okay with it actually.
The day after the submission deadline passed, I got the word. The story had been accepted!!!! I about fell over. And ever since then, it’s been just a whirlwind. To have fans in a RP group is one thing (and I love every single one of Rudy and Trish’s fans and the fans of our RP group). But to have an author, a published author, look at your work and say … yeah I want my name associated with that … THAT is an amazing feeling, I don’t care how big or small the publishing company is. The anthology is #3 on XOXO’s best seller list. #3!!!!! WTF???!!!!! *dies*
Ok, so if you made it this far, you might be thinking “ok, ok, so what’s the story ABOUT already?!” This story is a love story, of course, but there is a big conflict. You see at this stage of their story, Trish has been keeping something from Rudy. That something is that she is betrothed to one of her own kind, a merman named Aaron. (Yes, ironic, Patricia had the name for her antagonist picked out long before we ever met. She often asked me if I wanted it changed and I said NO!!! I thought it was great.) Ok, I can’t stand this guy. He’s controlling, abusive, arrogant … all that crap.
Just before the story starts, Trish had sent Rudy to the neighboring “big island” for supplies, intending to summon Aaron and tell him she could not and would not marry him. Aaron won’t accept that answer. And what happens when Rudy arrives back much sooner than Trish thought is what the story is about. It’s tense, powerful, action-packed, and the end is … well, I let you judge the end for yourself … if, no when you go get the book.
The other eleven stories in Evernight: Romance in a World of Darkness are just as poignant and powerful. The stories of twelve couples from different worlds trying to make it to their Happily Ever After, if there is such a thing, overcoming their differences, others’ jealousy, people out to destroy them … I feel like you will connect with these characters. If you connect with them half as much as Patricia and I have connected with Rudy and Trish, you will fall in love with them completely.
We absolutely want to do more with Rudy and Trish! Whether it becomes more short stories, or maybe a full-blown novel, we want to continue to bring these characters to life. Writing with Patricia has been an absolute joy from day number one, and I couldn’t imagine doing this story without her.
With my next blog post, I’m going to turn things over to Patricia for her to tell her story from her perspective. Later in the blog, you’ll find a little PG13 excerpt from “Tears of the Mermaid”, which is Rudy and Trish’s story. I hope you enjoy it, but if you do … you will want to find out how it ends, and most likely how it started *wink*.
(Oh, and one more side note … I haven’t read them all yet, but I’ve now read several of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series and love them!)
The first review of our short story was done by Talk Supe (talksupe.blogspot.com), and they put this picture of Philip and Syreena from Pirates of the Caribbean 4 in their article. We wrote the story before the movie of course. But their story was my favorite part of that movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment