It was entirely too hot today for my sensibilities. I watched bleary-eyed as my littles splashed around in the pool while I took a break from pouring my heart and soul into writing book two of my adult paranormal romance series, Phoenyx Falling. With school being out for summer and the light's of my life at home with me until late August, the road to completion of my second novel is looking grim to say the least. Still, I persevere!
When I started writing Phoenyx in Flames, book one in The Phoenyx Series, I was a fresh-eyed twenty-something who had this incredible idea for a story. It took damn near twelve years to write. TWELVE. If I'm being honest, "write" is a strong word for what I really did. Actually, I role-played in my mind for the first few years and then frantically scribbled down the dialogue in hopes of capturing the same fervor in which I recited the lines in my mind.
I'm a weirdo and I talk to myself, what can I tell ya!
So, in 2017 when I decided I was going to give this "writing thing" a go, I created the pen name Mona Moore and started writing short erotic contemporaries. I quickly figured out that as much as I loved spinning the stories, my Bad Boy Hero's were about as bad as newborn puppies and my Heroines were a tad feistier than most. My heart was quickly losing interest until one day my husband said to me: "Hey babe, what about that weirdo vampire thing you were writing?"
Indeed. What about that "weirdo vampire thing"?
I launched myself into the basement the following morning and pulled out the SEVENTEEN Hilroy copybooks of dialogue I'd penned over the years and began to voraciously read them all over again. My eyes lit up like Christmas trees. THIS was what I'd been missing. THIS was where my heart truly lay. THIS was what I should have been writing all along. My beautiful, strong female lead, Phoenyx (aka Jane McGuire) was exactly the type of Heroine I wanted to write. She was as vulnerable as she was powerful, and my lead men, my Hero's--nowhere near the assholes most women devour in the modern romance novel, but at least they had substance!
I was whole again.
Phoenyx in Flames practically wrote itself in two months and it felt nothing short of glorious! I have never been prouder of anything else I've ever written. The Phoenyx Series being a five book series has been entirely mapped out, plotted, prepped, and ready to be written. The only flaw is that my characters have developed minds of their own and are now dictating my life. Go figure.
Which is why, today, I decided to kill one of them.
It wasn't as painful as I thought it would be and quite frankly, the story needs this. This character has to go to move the plot forward and I'm OKAY with that. How will my readers feel? Well, that's yet to be seen, but I have a feeling it will all work out in the end. In the meantime, I've Spotified quite the Playlist of songs for Phoenyx Falling and an exceptional instrumental list as well to write by. No one gets my fingers moving faster than Max Richter! He's a brilliant composer.
Well, that concludes my first EVER blog posting on the Daisy St. James Official Website. I hope it was entertaining. I'll try my best to keep up with it. Blogs haven't always been my strong suit, BUT . . . in the future, aside from the site here, you will be able to find me Guest Blogging on BeckyEmbers.com, so you can follow me there as well! Becky is a brilliant writer and an exceptional person. I'm really looking forward to sharing my thoughts, and maybe a few tantalizing tidbits on her site and with her fans as well.
Keep reading.
Stay beautiful.
Be bold!
Daisy xo
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