Nearly a decade ago, I began this wonderful self-publishing journey with the help of my tech savvy husband and a few of my best girl friends. We were all sitting around having a heated brunch discussion about Fifty Shades of Grey (like so many other people at the time) and the conversation pivoted to how my friends believed that I could write it better. Fueled by several mimosas and some seriously inflated self-esteem I went home and wrote down the bones of what would ultimately become Book One of my Incubus Rising Series, Monogamy is Dead. A little bit of insider trivia here, our hero Gabriel was initially supposed to be a vampire (thus the dead in the title) but I scratched that idea pretty quickly since the market was so thoroughly saturated with vampires due to the Twilight phenom and subsequent movies that went with. (Fifty Shades is Twilight fan-fic by the way, if you didn’t already know that). As a rabid fan of anything vampire related myself, I naturally gravitated to the sexy blood suckers as my first official hurrah but felt like the idea just wasn’t original enough. Thus the Atunis were born as my modern day sex gods incarnate, with Gabriel Falcone as both my original gangster and my eventual figurehead — and the rest is, as they say, history.
When I was writing Monogamy the market was exploding with bite sized fan fiction, keep-you-hooked cliffhangers, and a general serialized format of continuing short stories. And since I knew from the start that I wanted Monogamy to be part of a much larger series, I wrote it with the idea in mind that it was always going to be a short story, or a novella. Which was (and still is) an extremely difficult thing for me, since I tend to be rather long winded in my writing style and always have been. Once I get started it’s hard for me to stop, my characters leading me into the abyss of my (thankfully) deep imagination. It was a definite challenge for me to keep the story tight, lean, and above all else short because that was the trend back then.
Being my first real attempt at putting something out there for anyone to read that was outside of my tight knit circle of friends and family (or a teacher), there was also a lot of pressure in my mind to try to be fresh and original. Which is why Monogamy doesn’t have the expected neat and tidy happy ending. I wanted it to be surprising, thoughtful, and not just another paranormal romance where the hero wins at everything just because he’s so alpha, and clever, and (googly eyes/sigh) handsome. As far as I see it, the entire crux of the story is that Gabriel was literally killing Bianca every time they were together, and no matter how much they loved each other, I just couldn’t justify a way that could ever work out for them in the long term. Plus, I always thought that the subtext was rather clear about how we often times go after things (or people) that are obviously bad for us, even though we know in our heart of hearts that it’ll never end well. And while that concept may’ve been heartbreaking to everyone who wanted so badly for Gabriel and Bianca to end up together somehow, it was never in the cards for them. Monogamy was more about sacrifice and second chances, not to mention the hard lessons we learn from the heartbreaking chances we take in life.
But that was then and this is now. And times have definitely changed baby!
The past few years the serial format has dramatically fallen out of style, cliffhangers piss people off, and the mere idea that there isn’t a HEA on the final pages is a total deal breaker for most readers of the paranormal romance/romance genre. It’s gotten so prevalent in fact that authors have been writing cheat sheets right there in their blurbs (myself included) so as not to scare off any potential readers. HEA guaranteed! No cheating! No cliffhangers! Don’t go away! I PROMISE THIS IS THE ROMANCE YOU’RE LOOKING FOR! Which is sort of sad for a writer in a way, since the reader isn’t trusting the author to take them on any sort of journey or allowing them to challenge their concept of what happily ever after really means.
That being said, the release of the Incubus Rising Box Set several months ago, which has not one but two NOT happy endings (in both Monogamy and Page Turner, where Tessa’s ultimate fate is left up in the air) has gotten me some of the worst reviews I’ve ever gotten in my nearly ten year, self-publishing career and the reason is clear — I didn’t give the audience the endings that they wanted. My readers (and readers in general nowadays) demand the fairy tale romance happy ending, and the world being up in the air like it is, I’m obliged to give it to them. While I’ll never change what I write exclusively to make some invisible ideal happy, I don’t disagree that we all need an escape and all the good feels we can get right now. That’s why, nearly a decade later, my original sexy beast Gabriel is finally getting the HEA that he not only deserves but that hopefully makes everyone out there happy as well. As long as I have a brain and something to write with, there’s always a chance for redemption.
And who knows? Maybe in the year 2031 vampires will be back in (fingers crossed!) and scratch and sniff books that smell like men’s cologne and get delivered right to your doorstep will be all the rage! I really don’t care — as long as I get to keep writing, that’s my ultimate happily ever after right there.
Thanks, as always, for sticking with me.
Gabriel’s Redemption, coming very very soon…
Stay healthy,
xo xo Jenn
