Thursday, August 26, 2010

Story Behind the Story - Bound to Him

Stats – Received contract offer 9/26/08. Sent in book 2/18/09. Published 4/28/09.

No, it didn’t take me 5 months to write it. I’m not that slow. *g* I had other stuff on the writing plate that needed to get done before I could get to Oliver and Vincent’s sequel. I checked my notes and from what I can tell, it took me less than 2 months to write the book. In Ava-land, that’s really fast for a 30k book.

Little known fact – The original idea for the title was Bound by Love. Before I sent the blurb to my editor, I checked around and found another book with that same title on Samhain’s Coming Soon page. So I changed the title to Bound to Him. BTW, Bound by Love (by T.A. Chase) was a very good book – I quite enjoyed it, to the point where I wasn’t miffed that I had to change my title.

Extremely little known factBound to Him was the first book I contracted before I wrote it. A few days after Bound by Deception released, I sent my editor two blurbs for future book ideas. One was Bound to Him, the other was Convincing Arthur. We decided to do Bound to Him next, and within a week, I got word that the publisher wanted to contract it. I never even sent in a formal submission or a synopsis or anything. I was super surprised and super geeked that Loose Id liked BBD so much they wanted the sequel based off the blurb alone.

How did I get the idea for the book? – I knew when I was writing Bound by Deception that Oliver and Vincent would need a sequel. I couldn’t leave them without Vincent telling Oliver he loved him. So the idea for the book came from the need to get Vincent to say those three all important words to Oliver. Vincent’s stubborn and arrogant and Oliver practically worshiped Vincent for years, so I needed to run both of them through the wringer in order to get their relationship to a good, solid place. …and it was fun running them through the wringer. I *heart* angst.

If I could edit the book now, what would I change (if anything)? Add a scene with Vincent sometime during the 3 weeks after Oliver broke up with him. In my head, Oliver is on Vincent’s mind constantly during those 3 weeks, and Vincent fully comes to accept that he’s gay and that he loves Oliver. But I didn’t have any good ideas for a scene, well at least an idea that wasn’t just Vincent ‘thinking’. So instead, I just picked up with Vincent after he and Oliver had the run-in outside the theatre, and added some paragraphs to cover what I skipped. Looking back, those are 3 critical weeks for Vincent, as far as character development goes. He does a lot of growing, emotionally speaking. I should have tried harder to get more than a glimpse of them onto the page.

Will there be a sequel – Yes. *g* Just finished Bound Forever on Monday. In fact, when I got the edits for Bound to Him, my editor asked if there would be a 3rd book. It took me over a year to get to it and then write it, but I finally gave the guys their final book and tied up all the loose ends in the series.

Misc stuff – In my very first concept for the book, Oliver ended up taking full advantage of Vincent’s offer to completely put himself in Oliver’s hands at the end of the book. But as I fleshed out the book, I realized Oliver wouldn’t do it. Well…that he wouldn’t go all the way. And I don’t think Vincent would have truly enjoyed it, no matter how good Oliver would have tried to make it for him. Both guys needed to ease their way into such a change in the dynamic of the bedroom. Therefore, I knew as I was writing Bound to Him that I would end up writing Bound Forever. And hopefully readers didn’t get miffed at me when Oliver pretty much said thanks but maybe later. ;)

That's the Story Behind the Story for Bound to Him. Any questions? Ask away! *g*

7 comments:

  1. Checking for other books with the same title = smart. :)

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  2. It took me a couple books before I figured that out. LOL.

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  3. I just love these posts!

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  4. Have I mentioned before how much I enjoy these Behind the Story segments? They're so interesting!

    Yay for book 3!!

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  5. Thanks, Eyre!

    Hi Lily - I'm so glad you enjoy the posts :)

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  6. "I needed to run both of them through the wringer in order to get their relationship to a good, solid place. …and it was fun running them through the wringer. I *heart* angst."

    That's the main reason why I loved them! I *heart* angst too. :)

    The story behind the story is fascinating. Still no date for Bound Forever, but yay for finishing it this Monday! :D

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  7. Thanks, Janna!

    I'll post the release date for Bound Forever as soon as I get it :)

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Barbara