SHE’S SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY
Mixing business with pleasure gets more complicated for Detective Charlotte Caissie when her sexy preternatural lover, Max Savoie, is accused of a high-profile murder. To prove him innocent she must distance herself, but her tangled emotions don’t make it easy for her to stay away from him. And neither does Max.
HE’S DESPERATE TO UNCOVER HIS PAST
Left in charge of a criminal empire and protector of a clan of shadowy shape-shifters, Max walks a precarious line. Can he believe the cunning stranger who claims he can teach Max the things he needs to know to stay alive? A con man who would betray anyone to make a profit, who may be a ruthless killer?
TOGETHER, THEY’RE TEMPTING FATE
The harder Cee Cee fights to clear Max’s name, the more he pushes her away. He’s protecting a dark truth that could blow the top off her investigation. And that means hiding his motives and lying to a woman who values truth above all. The woman who can save him . . . if he’ll let her.
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Creating my BY MOONLIGHT series was like mixing together an action-oriented Stephen Cannell prime time cop drama with a complex character-driven Adam Sorkin saga then pouring on the emotional pathos of Days of Our Lives. Though each very different in look and approach, all bring an important element to the series party.
The Cannell school of entertainment presents a single storyline wrapped up in a pulse-pounding hour of non-stop excitement. You’re given the mystery to solve in the opening seconds and through various twists and turns, miraculously, by the end of that sixty minutes all loose ends are tied up in a satisfactory bow. Like Castle, 21 Jump Street, The A-Team, or The Rockford Files, when picking up a BY MOONLIGHT book, there is a central external problem that involves the continuing characters. It’s the focus of the hour even though an ongoing thread of plot links those hours together into Seasons One, Two, etc. There are car chases, dead bodies, baffling crimes and wisecracks galore. And you can’t tear your eyes away until there’s a commercial. A viewer/reader can tune in on any episode and follow the central story without getting terribly lost, even though they’ll want to buy the whole season/series because they’re intrigued by the underlying subtext of characters.
Characters. That in a word is what Sorkin’s West Wing and lesser known but no less exceptional Sports Night were all about. The characters carried the story at their quick walking pace from scene to scene, week to week, sucking us in with their intelligent patter and unfolding personal issues. You loved them, you hated them, but you couldn’t ignore them. Each one was so well drawn, so intriguingly unique you felt as though you knew them and cared about them. Each scene, each episode presented a more intimate and personal glance into their psyche and their history, and finding out those bits and piece of information was as addictive as the plotline. When creating Max and Charlotte and the rest of the cast in my series, I wanted them to be strong, yet vulnerable, direct yet still secretive, honorable yet flawed. The readers get to know them chapter by chapter, book by book just as they’re growing and discovering things about themselves. It doesn’t bother me that a few readers were put off by Charlotte’s manipulative behavior or by Max’s occasional naiveté. They’re products of the pasts I’ve given them and are works in progress. If they were perfect by the end of MASKED BY MOONLIGHT, there would be no reason for evolving and resolving issues in the three subsequent books. My favorite heroine of all time was also the most unlikable and selfish: Scarlet O’Hara. Even though she had motivation for everything she did, she was often closer to villainess than heroine and I did want to give her a good swift kick in the corset on more than one occasion. She irritated me, infuriated me, yet she never bored me, and secretly, I admired her for her self-interest. So go ahead and be frustrated by my characters and the choices they make, but give them a chance to prove themselves in the long run. The same is true of all the BY MOONLIGHT cast. Each one was developed with the potential of becoming a hero/heroine in their own story. And some will be.
What on earth does a soap opera have in common with Academy Award winning drama?
Okay, it’s an overblown potboiler of sex, treachery and more cases of amnesia and remarriages than you can count. But what it does, and does well, is hook its audience so they’ll come back for more. Whether it’s emotional or situational, every show ends with a cliffhanger to pull you back the next day or keep you on tenterhooks over the weekend. Character storylines intertwine and tangle. Dark secrets explode. Hidden agendas surprise with sudden WTF moments that keep you guessing and entranced. There’s no certainty that anyone is safe from unexpected tragedy. And even the improbable can be forgiven for the sake of the engrossing emotional attachment.
Sustaining a six book (so far) series with its four book same hero/heroine romance arc meant coming up with a sticky political/legal web of circumstances that would snare the unwary, with a paranormal world that seeps into New Orleans like a noxious BP spill to stir up life-threatening danger and force epic choices, with deep, complex and sometimes heartbreaking characters who can constantly amaze, alarm and delight. I think of it like knitting, each link joining another to make an overall pattern that isn’t apparent until the last stitch is complete, weaving Cannell-like action and mystery into a Sorkin wealth of human drama threaded through with irresistible soap opera pacing that has you anxious to know what happens next.
And if you’ve read MASKED BY MOONLIGHT, can’t wait for CHASED BY MOONLIGHT, and will preorder CAPTURED BY MOONLIGHT, then I’ve learned my lessons well.
Learn more about me and my BY MOONLIGHT series at http://nancygideon.com.
What main element hooks you the most: the plot, the characters or the pacing and what’s your favorite example? One random commenter will win a copy of CHASED BY MOONLIGHT.
Always–the characters hook me the most. Enjoyed your column. Thanks.
I think the pacing, then the characters hook me. For example, I just read Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep. It starts right out with a bit of action, you get to know the main character a bit, and then there’s quite a bit more action, and you get to know more about the characters, and then the plot starts being revealed. The book just drew me in and I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.
I’ve already been “Masked”. I’m dying to be “Chased”, and I absolutely cannot wait to be “Captured” : )
No matter what I am reading, I always look for well-developed and involving characters and an interesting, detailed story line. “Masked by Moonlight” is a great example! I love the characters of Max and Charlotte, and the great passion and deep love which grew despite their seemingly insurmountable personal and professional differences. A super paranormal romantic suspense read!!!
Interesting and different characters always hook me on a read and the plot of the story has to reel me in!
Definitely the characters are what hooks me.
First hook would be well-developed characters then almost a tie would be the pacing and finally the plot, which could tie with the first two also. So hard to pick! I love a book that moves at a fast clip. I just read Unholy Ghost by Stacia Kane, and think it’s an excellent example.
The characters are what hook me… their personalities and their actions…
Hi Nancy!! Great to have you back and writing too. Miss your stories. A tough question because I want to say a bit of each! Or that it depends on the story! When I was reading through a series of Mary Balogh recently, I so loved reading about each of the Huxtables! And there was one cousin in each of the books that started the whole story so that character of Constantine I so looked forward to getting to know more and more and now his story, last in book, is finally being told. So I too love when you have series, like a set of 3 you have where we get to peek into knowing them all a bit til we get to read all them! Then too there’s their story we so want to know!
Caffey
Oh we sly writers, hooking you on those distant cousins so you want to know all about them, too. But I agree totally. I love a series, especially when you keep hoping your favorite will be the next one to get their own book.
The characters hook me the most. But they really need interesting plots to go with them to make it a keeper book.
I would agree with some others, it’s the characters, specifically the hero.
Love the sound of your book, all the best for its release!
Hi Nancy! First off I want I want to say that I thought Masked by Moonlight was fantastic! I am obviously eagerly awaiting the release of Chased by Moonlight. I am pretty much with everyone else in saying that most of the time it’s the characters that hook me in. I really like Nalini Singh’s books and characters for that reason.
I’ve heard such great things about her books. I just got the first of the series on my IPad. I love that ‘1-click’!
Hi Nancy,
It’s the suspense that hooks me. I have to find out what, when, where, why.
Me, too. I love suspense, especially when it surprises you. I guess that’s why I always sneak in a little into all my books.
Usually it’s the characters first for me, then the plot. LIke your post relating to ongoing TV series, Nancy, I say that about some of my favorite book series, particulary paranormal and urban fantasy, where you have a continuing plot line and character relations evolving through each subsequent book in the series. So I don’t mind not having an ending to any romance, waiting for it to see what happens, just like with my favorite TV series.
great question…i love the characters 🙂
Characterization comes first, then everything else follows!
For me it’s always the characters first and the best two examples I can come up with are: Nalini Singh (for series) and Sherry Thomas (for stand alones). Both these authors are on my auto-buy list.
The characters draw me into a story. But if there isn’t a good plot, there is nothing for the characters to do. For example, the Stephanie Series. The characters are well developed and quite funny. The plot is always great.
twoofakind12@yahoo.com
The characters always hook me. If they don’t then the story is kind of so so. I love your book cover and your books sound really good.
I think that the cover is what makes you grab a book, but the characters are what keep you reading past the first ten pages. If the characters don’t grab you, then you aren’t going to give much care to the plot and action. After you get drawn in to the characters, then the book needs lots of action, suspense, moving (make sense?) to keep me hooked. I hate when I start a book and like the characters but then nothing else happens, or it happens REALLY slowly.
But definitely characters count first!
the characters hook me then the plot
It’s the characters for me too. If the characters are wonderful and engrossing, I can overlook just about anything. You can have the most wonderful plot in the world, but really bad characters can destroy my ability to concentrate on it.
The Plot! I have to like the storyline otherwise I’ll never meet the characters.
Ransom & The Wedding -Julie Garwood
Chesapeake Bay series -Nora Roberts
I liked your intro to Cee Cee and Max in Chased By Moonlight!
johnslake at usa dot com
I think character development does it for me. Not only the primary characters, but those little tasty details of the secondary characters are like bait for this fish! Keeps me coming back for more!
It’s the characters that I love the most and that hook me. They’re growth and feelings, hopes and dreams, their lives. That’s what I want to read about.
definitively the characters – they can make me love or hate a book!
congrats on your newest release 🙂
greetings, Ina
The characters and the plots grab me. If I’m drawn to both, the book needs no end for me!