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Hi. My name is J.A. Belfield. And I hear voices in my head.
I could lie and say they haven’t always been there.
The truth is, I’ve heard voices in my head for as long as I can remember. I just didn’t do anything with them until 2 ½ years ago.
Sometimes they whisper. Sometimes they shout. On occasion they murmur husky sweet nothings.
I would say it all depends on my current situation. But I’d be lying.
The voices always arrive when they want to. They never have any consideration for me.
Maybe that’s why I’m so mean to them all when I write their stories. Gotta have some payback, right?
Take Sean Holloway, for instance. He thought he’d have it all his own way. Screaming in my mind. Yelling his name until I had no choice but to acknowledge some hot dude named Sean who wanted his story telling.
So what did he get for his demands?
My refusal to write Darkness & Light from his PoV.
In fact, his irritating attention seeking is where I got the idea for Jem to keep hearing his name inside her head. Odd where the smallest of ideas can come from, eh?
On that tiny basis, Darkness & Light was built. Of course, I always knew Sean would be a werewolf. My first, second & third novels I ever wrote were all werewolf novels and I was far from ready to break away from that mould (or obsession—depending how you look at it). I also knew they had been together before. Scenes like their reunion played out so loud and clear within my mind they were an absolute breeze to write. In fact, the entire novel grabbed me by the throat, dragged my fingers across the keys, and did not let go until I had written ‘THE END’. <<yes, the original did have those two words as closure. J
I loved writing Darkness & Light.
Me being a total pantser meant I had no plot outline. I simply sat at my keyboard … wrote the first line … then the next. And I allowed each and every scene to unfold on its own.
The biggest Darkness & Light mystery to me was the cellar. At the very first mention of it by Jem I knew there was something down there but had no idea what. Then there was the second incident when she ventures down to check it out—even then I knew it held something ‘special’ but it just hadn’t revealed itself to me. I didn’t sweat over it. I simply carried on writing. Then, around 80% through the novel, whilst writing a scene completely irrelevant to the cellar, I paused mid-sentence and said: “Of course—that’s what’s down there.” Yes, I did say that out loud. Yes, I was sitting in my bedroom alone at the time. Then I smiled … shrugged … and went back to the scene I was in.
From start to finish, Darkness & Light evolved in this way for me. I lived, breathed, dreamed Sean and Jem for 6 weeks (my family are VERY understanding), and 161,000 words (at 1st draft) later, Darkness & Light was born. My baby. The first novel I’d written that I 100% believed in.
And now I’m finally able to share it with you (thank you, J. Taylor Publishing). You all have NO idea how freakin’ high that makes me feel.
So … the morale of this story is: If you have voices in your head, do what they say ... unless, of course, you're on medication for it.
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If you want to stalk...err...I mean learn more about J.A. Belfield, you can find her at the below links.
Thanks for inviting me over. Writing the guest post was a lot of fun. :o)
ReplyDeleteIt was my pleasure!
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