THE STRANGER by Megan Hart

Currently reading this and I keep looking at the cover. Isn’t it yummy? 🙂

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The Evolution of a Story – NIGHT FALLS DARKLY

Death is inevitable.
But there are some souls, more wicked and disobedient than most, who defy Death’s claim.
Rebellious souls who must be called to heel.

ARCHER, Lord Black, returns to England at the behest of Queen Victoria to immerse himself in the dark, hellish streets of London’s East End. Among the immortal Shadow Guard, he is the most prolific and cunning of the Reclaimers. He revels in the hunt of his current prey: an ill-mannered, reluctant soul reviled in the daily newspapers as Jack the Ripper. Archer has only one weakness … one distraction … the young woman he spared from death two years before.

ELENA WHITNEY has never wanted for anything – not since coming under the protection of her mysterious and absent guardian, Lord Black, who has gifted her with everything a young woman of quality could ever hope for, including an enviable address, an unlimited income and entrée into the drawing rooms of high society. But now, after nearly two years of indifference, he believes he can sweep into her life and rid himself of her by marrying her off. If he knew anything about her – anything at all – he’d know she had greater aspirations than that.

I’ve had a number of people ask how I come up with story ideas, and more specifically, where I came up with the idea for my October release, NIGHT FALLS DARKLY. Usually my stories start out in my head as an inciting event – that first big scene that starts everything else rolling. The characters and the plot will then spiral out from that starting point. NIGHT FALLS DARKLY came about a little differently.

I’d always been fascinated by the movie, MEET JOE BLACK. Have you seen it? The heroine falls in love with a mysterious man played by Brad Pitt, only to eventually come to the realization he’s not a normal mortal man, but that he is Death, and he’s come to claim her father. The movie was a “paranormal” but subtly so, and every scene was played out in the context and boundaries of the mortal characters’ world.

So I started toying with an idea of a similar nature, one set in a historical period. I’ve always been fascinated by England’s Victorian era, so I set my book there. I originally wrote the story so that my mortal hero discovered the woman he’d fallen in love with was actually Persephone of ancient myth, and if he wanted to be with her, he’d have to free her from her from Hades’ dark, eternal possession. Who said she had to stay with that jerk forever, right? I set up a dangerous love triangle, and wrote Hades as a shadowy, mysterious Baltic prince, temporarily in England on business … Jack the Ripper type business.

I really loved the story, but … my agent pointed out that Hades, even playing the part of villain, was just too sexy. Too intriguing. He distracted from the central story, the primary romance. Who cared about the mortal hero when Hades was on the scene? She was right.

So I jumped into a new story — one centered on an immortal bounty hunter of wicked souls, a character who became Archer, Lord Black (in homage to my original inspiration), the hero of NIGHT FALLS DARKLY. If you’d like to read the resulting story, just post a comment to this blog and we’ll be drawing the name of a winner who will receive a copy of the book.

Kim Lenox lives in Texas with her husband, two children and collie. She enjoys reading, going to flea markets, cooking, thinking about diet and exercise, and spending time with family and friends. Visit her online at www.kimlenox.com

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