Consume
(The Clann #3)
by
Melissa Darnell
August 27th 2013
by Harlequin Teen
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, CONSUME.
—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Tristan Coleman has survived the change from Clann magic user to vampire, much to Savannah Colbert's joy—and despair. By changing the Clann's golden boy and newly elected leader, even to save him from death, she has unleashed a fury of hatred and fear that they cannot escape.
As the Clann and the vampire council go to war, Tristan and Sav face a new threat—a fracturing of the all-consuming bond they share. To fight for peace, they must forge a new trust and risk everything to take down their deadliest enemy, even as they must run for their lives. Soon they will learn that some bonds are stronger than love—and some battles cannot be won without sacrifice.
What’s the best “treat” moment you’ve had as an author?
Every day when I get to spend writing out the rough draft of a story is a treat for me because of the writing process I use.
Before I ever start to write a rough draft for a new story, first I spend anywhere from weeks to months to occasionally even years mentally prepping for it. I always have at least 5 to 7 story ideas simmering on the back burners of my subconscious, where they may sit for years until one of them starts to “boil” and demands my attention (or if I have a deadline, I’ll pick the one that feels most ready to go). Then I will sit down and plot out the story in detail. My outlines tend to run up to 20 pages or more in length and contain whole pieces of dialogue and action as well as general rough sketch summaries of scenes. I will play with the plot quite a bit here, rearranging scenes as needed, playing with the story’s timeline and the characters’ back stories and internal and external motivations. When I can see the entire story like a movie in my head complete with a celebrity cast of actors chosen to play each major character, I then create a custom soundtrack for that story, which I will listen to on loop while I finish plotting, writing and revising the story. Then I copy my outline over to my writing program, dividing it up by scene and adding to each scene’s notes as new bits of dialogue, action, location details, timeline tidbits, and even symbolic elements come to me.
By the time I start to write the actual story, it is extremely clear in my mind, and the act of writing its rough draft is more like an exercise in typing as fast as I can as the story “drains” from my mind onto the pages like a tsunami. This part of the process is very fast for me, and is a whirlwind of nonstop treats for me as an author. For instance, I just finished writing my latest YA novel, a contemporary romance, which ended up at 136,000 words in length and took me just two weeks to write. The last day I spent writing its rough draft was a particularly memorable 22 hour writing marathon where I broke my previous personal daily word count record (13,000 words) by writing over 32,000 words in one day! (By the way, I would NOT recommend doing this often, as it then took me a full three days to recover! lol) However, while writing the rough draft of this long novel only took me 2 weeks, its initial story idea came to me a year or two ago, and the plotting stage occurred off and on over a period of several months before I was finally ready to purge that full story onto paper. Which is why finally getting to write its rough draft felt like such a long anticipated treat!
About the Author
For information about her other books, please visit Melissa’s website at www.melissadarnell.com.
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