"I don't take contract hits," he told her. "I don't accept payment for killing."
"What makes you kill, then?" she came back at him, quicker and harder than he expected. "What's it take?"
"Loyalty. I'm not a hitman."
She regarded him a long moment, sitting up with the covers around her waist, sipping coffee with her breasts trying to spill out of her red bra. "Then what are you?"
"Most of the time, I don't know."
At the time of its conception, this book was the most challenging project I'd tackled to date. For all that Mercy and Ava and most of the rest of the club walked on the wild side, there were familiar, easily lovable character traits to be found in all of them. Be it affability, or badassery, or a certain Southern charm, most of them felt recognizable in some way for readers used to this kind of fiction.
Michael and Holly were much less charming, though. Not only that, but their relationship was much quieter; less bombastic, more careful. They circled one another warily, both painfully honest, despite their stark, superficial differences.
Every time I pen a romance between two characters, I'm playing matchmaker for them. I'm never thinking, "what will make this character attractive to the audience?" It's not a match between character and audience, but between character and character, so the goal is never to create the ideal man or woman. I'm always trying to put together two people who fit. Who complement and challenge each other, who have good chemistry, and who can really come to understand one another. Holly's circumstances were extreme, so I knew she needed an extreme match, and Michael definitely fit the bill.
While I do enjoy revisiting themes and tropes that I've already explored, usually to try them in a different way, for the most part I'm always looking for a new challenge. I don't want to write the same story over and over with different names slapped on the characters. While Mercy and Ava's relationship was characterized by such drama, Michael and Holly's relationship hummed with a quiet, constant tension, winding tighter and tighter, and then settling into something sustainable and supportive. Their conversations are shorter, fraught with long looks, and body language; nonverbal cues. It was such a change of pace, and I enjoyed that.
The other thing I enjoyed - the most pleasant surprise - was being able, in real time, as I was writing, to see that I'd made progress with my craft. I'd rocked along writing in the same way for a while, but with Angels, my prose took a step forward. The writing was simply better in this book. That's been one of the most interesting and thrilling aspects of my writing journey: being able to see progress.
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