While navigating the perils of moving to a new place and dealing with mean kids who look at her weird because her grandmother practices voodoo, her path crosses with Dean Wakefield. And those kids avoid him even more than they avoid Holt. Because there's something that's just not quite right about Dean. He's dark, and not just the color of his skin.
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| Dean Inspiration |
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| Holt Inspiration |
There's been a blood feud going on between the two families for decades.
They should stay away from each other, but can't.
And it doesn't help when the House of Royals takes an interest in Holt, and the darkness that is growing around her like shield of power every day.
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| King Inspiration |
I started writing this book a long time ago. I took a research trip out to Mississippi, spent some time in New Orleans visiting voodoo shops, taking some interesting and dark tours, and visited the tomb of Marie Laveau. I got 40,000 words into the first draft.
And stopped.
I just couldn't seem to move forward. My brain just had this block, even though I knew exactly where the plot was going to go.
So I set it aside for a while. I wrote the entire McCain Saga. And when that was done, I picked THE REAL AND THE VOODOO back up. I realized there were some changes I wanted to make in it, so I started from the beginning once more, and again, wrote 40,000 words of it, roughly 1/3 of the book, and then found myself stuck once again.
I knew where the book should go.
I had a dream once, and I don't remember the specifics, but in it, I knew that something bad would happen if I finished the book.
And I finally knew, I couldn't write the rest of this book.
Which was really devastating, because I loved this book and I was excited about it, and I had 4 books in the series planned.
But I couldn't do it.
So I took a break. I wrote about 20,000 words of a project I knew wouldn't sell well, while I came up with an idea for something I knew would sell.
And then one night, while insomnia was being my dark companion, I had the idea to adapt THE REAL AND THE VOODOO for vampires. I kind of laughed at myself, because the idea was just silly. VAMPIRES? And how would that translate well?
Well, the House of Royals was quite a small part of the Voodoo version of this story, but it had the basis to make an entire series on. And King, oh how I loved King in Voodoo, he had potential to morph into a MUCH bigger character - King Cyrus.
So Alivia was born. The much less twisted, much stronger and loving version of Holt. And Ian came about, someone who hated the supernatural, but still couldn't fight it as it was in his very blood. He, he was strong enough to save Alivia, if only he could save himself. Elle evolved from a little, empty nine year old child, into a stoic, brilliant 16 year old sister.
And the HOUSE OF ROYALS was born. It morphed into its own story so, so quickly, because I had so many base elements already figured out from a very different version of this story. A certain mother. A poison garden. The manipulation and the lies.
So this alternate version of the story exists in my head. 40,000 words of it sit on my laptop, never to be completed, because there is power in the written word. Those words, those versions of the characters stay there, safe.
But I love this story. Love Holt and Dean. And I wanted to share just a tiny bit of their untold story.
DEAN
I am
headed back to my spot at the end of the hall at lunch when someone grabs me
from the side and suddenly I am pulled into a girls bathroom. I’m roughly shoved against the wall and the
door was pushed closed and locked.
“Is it
real?”
Holt
stands in front of me, one hand pushed hard against my chest, pinning me to the
wall. Her other hand hands in a fist at
her side. Her eyes were wide, hard, but
more terrified than I’ve ever seen her.
“Is what real?” I ask, my brows furrowing.
“All
of it.” she says, her voice hard and shaking.
“Everything everyone at this school says about you, about Nad. About our families.”
“What
are you talking about?” I defer. I try
shifting, my backpack pressing painfully into my back. Holt just shoves me hard against the wall,
not willing to let me move an inch.
“You
know what I’m talking about,” she hisses.
“I found this book that said things, things that sounded crazy, and
impossible. But I did one of them, and
it worked.” She is speaking through
clenched teeth.
My
blood chills as I froze. “What did you
do?”
Her
eyes fall to the floor and her hand on my chest relaxes. When she doesn’t answer, I repeat my
question. “What did you do?”
Her
eyes flicker to mine, but only for a moment.
“I was tired of Hayden Sullivan pestering me. He was saying these horrible things about me,
about my family. He was poking his nose
in my business. The hex was for meddlers.”
“What
happened to him?” I ask, my voice quiet and low.
She
walks away from me suddenly, crossing to the sinks and bracing her hands on the
counter. She looks at herself in the
mirror. She looks tired, she looks
scared.
“I
heard some of his friends talking in the halls this morning,” she says, staring
herself down. “They said he had to go to
the hospital last night. He has a
serious case of phenomena. Contracted
suddenly, without warning. He had to be
put on a breathing machine last night.”
I
curse under my breath, standing up straight.
“So, I
ask you again.” Her eyes suddenly shift,
looking at me in the mirror. “Is it all
true?”
Holt
and I have been like two orbiting comets.
We’ve been circling each other the past three and a half weeks. We both have heavy gravitational pulls with
all the history behind us, with the bloodlines we do have.
Eventually
we were bound to crash in to each other.
“You
already know that it is,” I say, taking a step toward her. There is something building up inside of me,
seeing Holt like this. Vulnerable,
uncertain. But powerful. That something in me surged hot and fast,
filling me up. “And you’re terrified of
it.”
“I’m
not terrified,” she says. But her voice
shakes.
“Yes
you are,” I say, taking another step forward.
“You’re afraid of this town, you’re afraid of Nad. You’re afraid of this school and the people
in it. You’re afraid of what you might
be becoming. And most of all, you’re
afraid of me.”
She
continues to stare at me in the mirror, her shoulders shaking as she takes
deep, raspy sounding breaths. I see
something change in her eyes, a heat that wasn’t there before.
Nothing
about this is right or fair. Holt doesn’t
belong in my world and she doesn’t deserve to have her parents taken away. She doesn’t deserve to be this afraid of
everything.
I step
closer, so that I am standing just behind her, looking over her shoulder. I let my eyes fall to her shoulder, exposed
under her thin tank top. Her skin is
smooth and just the perfect shade of tan and quarter black. I let my eyes slide up her neck, exposed
under her always braided hair.
“You
don’t deserve to be this afraid,” I say quietly.
“I’m
not afraid of you,” she says in a quivering breath.
“Yes
you are,” I say, feeling sick at the statement.
“But I don’t want you to be.” I
meet her eyes again in the mirror.
She
slowly turns to face me, her eyes dropping.
But there is a heat that comes off of her that intoxicates me. I hesitantly raise my hand to touch her jaw.
“I’m
supposed to stay away from you,” she whispers.
“And
I’m supposed to stay away from you.” I
lean in closer, my forehead just barely brushing hers.
“But I
don’t want to stay away,” the words were barely audible.
She
raises her face.
That
hot, primal thing inside of me grows, raging up and lighting me from the inside
out.
“Is
anyone in there?” someone calls, knocking loudly on the door.
Holt
jerks away from me, her eyes suddenly clearing, growing cold and confused.
She doesn’t say a word as she goes to the door
and opens it. A freshman girl looks
startled to see the two of us inside and blushes a harsh red as Holt bolts down
the hall. 
