I remember how I felt at the beginning of the first story arc in the Fever Series...wondering if readers would trust me to watch the story unfold over multiple books, taking grief for writing in installments with years in between, and ending in cliffhangers. Promising myself I'd never do it again, that I'd go back to the simple, easy life of writing stand-alone novels once the first story arc of the Fever Series ended.
But in life little of worth is ever simple or easy, and there was that damn second story arc that I couldn't walk away from. It stalked me as relentlessly as the first story arc had. However, it didn't come quite so easily. Perhaps because my marriage ended while I was fishing my subconscious for it and my vision was temporarily clouded, perhaps it just wasn't ready to come yet.
When the first story arc came to me fully fleshed in a dream, and I wrote the titles on the wall of my study (then firmly refused to write the series for many months) I also wrote a quote next to the titles that puzzled me for the next 8 years. I trusted the dream implicitly, and over the subsequent years every detail I'd recorded ended up being worked in somewhere.
Except for that single quote that I not only never found the place for in the first five books--but was never even able to grasp the theme and motif of. I ran it across my tongue for years, evaluating, trying to define just what/who the hell it pertained to.
I know now. I get it. While writing BURNED it became crystal clear. Although much has changed in how I originally thought I would write the second story arc of the Fever Series, it went exactly where it was supposed to, albeit by a more circuitous route than I'd have preferred. I finally understand that fucking quote that's tortured me.
So, here I am again....ICED was my DARKFEVER, setting the stage and engaging emotion where I wanted it, BURNED is my BLOODFEVER, building the scenery and developing the nuances necessary, FEVERBORN is FAEFEVER & DREAMFEVER where the stakes become increasingly clear and everything goes code red. FEVERSONG is my SHADOWFEVER, where the shit I've been stirring into a mystery and a puzzle and a pattern hits the fan and flies off the blades to take its true form.
I love this series and every character in it. And although I'm committed to innate emotional justice in my fiction, that doesn't mean good things will happen to everyone. Still, like life, there is structure and form and beauty and joy in it, and your joy can fill you only as deeply as your sorrow has carved you (and I do love to carve:) and hopefully one helluva a good story and I thank you all from the very bottom of my heart for coming along for the ride again.
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