Skip to main content

Nikolai finally gets his happily ever after

With the recent release of The Vampyr’s Husband, the question that keeps popping up is who shot James? Since the humans remain uncooperative and the crime scene was horribly muddied, the sentinels have no suspects. Whether we discover the culprit in a future novel is uncertain, but there are several people close to James who aren’t content with the mystery. 

As far as the animosity that exists between humans and the Council, there is no easy fix. The Council remains uninterested in investing time and resources in what they see as an unsolvable issue and the humans barely acknowledge that sorcerers and shifters exist. We’ll have to wait to see if any bridges can be built to narrow the large chasms that separate them.

James and Nikolai were a treat to write. It’s ironic how things work out sometimes. Nikolai was a foundation character who pre-dates much of the series. The first version of him had him as the nephew of the vampiric leaders who were pretty horrible people. His relationship with Sebastian was a contentious and complicated affair, and Nikolai and James never left DC. 

But everything morphed when Grigori appeared ready to be mated to Delaney. Nikolai had zero siblings at that point, so Grigori stunned me. His personality and how he related to his parents morphed everything about the vampires and Nikolai. Grigori’s bright presence had profound effects on Nikolai’s situation and helped crystalize his brother’s formerly convoluted story. Originally, there were so many twists and turns that it probably would’ve taken three books to get it all in.

I’m happy that James and Nikolai kept the core of their personalities when they fit together properly in the D’Vaire universe. I don’t think I would’ve remained interested in them if Nikolai wasn’t the smooth, romantic vampire dedicated to his mate and James lost any of his human skepticism about the Council and the entire mate business.

When I sat down to write James and Nikolai’s story, the next project was slated to be a short story. My plan was to tie it into the vampires and take a journey back to when Tigglesworth met Charlie. Unfortunately, by the time I wrapped up The Vampyr’s Husband, the couple refused to cooperate with me and I had to scrap the plan. That doesn’t mean the story won’t be written, I’m very fond of Tigglesworth and Charlie and would love to share their romance. Hopefully, they’ll allow me to do that in the future.

It left me scrambling for a short story and, luckily, a couple who’d been hanging around since before I wrote my first book hopped into the driver’s seat to tell their tale. That couple is next up and their short story will be released in late October. One character is a dead guy you’ve met, and the other belongs to a race mentioned in the series, but they're mostly a mystery to us. I can't wait to hear your guesses about who you think might be in it!

I recently wrapped up the thirty-first book in the series which will be published later next year. After finishing, I started a new novel featuring two characters you’ll get to meet soon. It’s slow going because my schedule is a bit too hectic right now. The next three months are busier than my characters would like, but I hope to wrap up the entire book list for next year by the end of December. Wish me luck!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Origins

As I look ahead to the release of Dra’Kaedan’s Coven, my thoughts are drawn back to how it all started. There have always been characters in my head, but it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I understood they were stories that needed to be told. I have created many and for years I worked on a series of books that I still have yet to write. There are notebooks of plot outlines and timelines but nothing more than a collection of a few chapters. They are all contemporary stories and they started as M/F. My first gay character started as a secondary one, but I kept getting drawn back to him. Once I started reading M/M his story wouldn’t go away. Suddenly, it wasn’t just his story in my head but there were other couples as well. Since I have always been a gamer, its difficult for me to escape fantasy and some of these new people wanted powers. It was time to create a new series. At the start, I was going to do a mixed series. One book M/F and the next M/M. They were going to be mostly s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Songs for the Grand Summoner

The Summoner’s Path came out last week and I just can’t let anymore time pass without giving you the playlist that helped me bring Dre’Kariston and Somerly’s story to life. Their path was definitely a windy road but thankfully they found their way to love while only giving their storyteller a few gray hairs. I haven’t been writing these blog posts as often as I did when I first started. As much as I would like to keep you in the loop with all that is going on in my exciting and fantastical life, the truth is I’m kind of boring. My best friend is coming to visit our new house in Nevada at the very end of February, so I’ve been knee deep in painting and picking out furniture. We brought nothing with us from Maryland but our clothes, precious treasures, and computers. So, we had a lot to do with the house and we put it off when we first got here only buying the essentials. (We got some potentially worrisome news in regards to his health last night so if you want to send some random h...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Emperors, Part 1

Last week you finally got to step into the world of Emperor Chrysander Draconis. From the moment I created him his mate was there, and Emperor Ellery Draconis is one of my favorite characters. Cliffhangers are irritating I know but there was simply no way to put everything in a single novel. The conclusion of Chrys and Ellery’s story is titled Eminently Elf and will be available on July 25th. Although I would love to give you their playlist I’m going to wait until after Eminently Elf is published. I’m always afraid I will give out spoilers that ruin it for you so that’s why I’m delaying that. I promise it’s not just because I’m mean. Next week, select titles in the series will be available in print format for the very first time! I’m very excited to be able to offer Dra’Kaedan’s Coven (D’Vaire 1) and Sentinel’s Dagger (D’Vaire 2) in lovely paperbacks. The goal is to eventually get all of them converted but I don’t have a timetable for that yet. I can tell you that No Ordinary Drak...
Post a Comment
Read more