The Black Dagger Brotherhood_ An Insider's Guide - J. R. Ward [75]
Butch fits right in with the other heroes in the series: He’s got a god-awful past that has shaped who he is, as well as a complex interweave of faults and virtues. With respect to his early years, some of the details of it come out in the scene when he finally tells Marissa a little about his background (LR, pp. 322—326.) It’s been clear all along that he’s driven to self-destruction by his sister’s abduction and murder and that he’s a cop with a razor edge because of what he sees as his culpability in that crime. As he tells Marissa about his drug use and the violence in his life and the fact that he’s always felt alienated from everyone around him, it brings into focus how critical the Brothers and their world are to him as a person—the mansion is the only place he’s ever felt comfortable in, and he doesn’t want to be on the fringes of the Brotherhood’s world as an outsider. (When you think of John and Beth, Butch is very similar to them in this regard. All three have always sensed that there is something that separates them from the humans around them, but they are unaware of the why of it all.)
From a character standpoint, I was aware that for Butch the need to belong and be true to an inner self he could only guess at were key aspects of his makeup. And from a story perspective, I knew two things about him: He was going to end up with Marissa and his and V’s destinies were inextricably intertwined. In my mind, Marissa was the perfect heroine for him, refined, ladylike, incredibly beautiful—someone he can put on a pedestal and revere and worship. As for him and V . . . well, more on that later.
As I mentioned before, Butch and Marissa’s love story was originally going to be a major subplot in Lover Eternal, but they demanded so much attention that I cut out their scenes and put them aside. When I got to the end of drafting Lover Awakened, my editor and I touched base about what book was next. I wanted to do Butch, but she felt it was better to stick with the Brothers that were vampires, and I agreed—which meant the next in line was Vishous (because at that point Tohr was gone, John Matthew hadn’t been through his transition, and Phury couldn’t have his book come after Bella had given birth).
Trouble was, when I started to outline V, I realized something that I had known since Dark Lover: There was no way you could do Vishous’s book before Butch’s. V’s relationship with the cop, and the emotions he felt for the human, were what opened him up emotionally so that he could fall in love. Additionally, in order for him to be vulnerable to someone else, he needed to come to terms with his feelings for Butch and I couldn’t see all that happening in one book for a couple of reasons. First, I try to show as much as I can (as opposed to telling)—so V’s book would have been full of scenes between him and Butch, especially in the beginning—which would be dangerous, because that kind of plotting runs the risk of being seriously misbalanced (i.e., a ton of scenes of Butch/V, V/Butch, Vishous and Butch . . . then suddenly switching to scenes of female/V, Vishous/female, Vishous and female). Further, with Butch unattached romantically, Vishous wouldn’t be able to let him go sufficiently to find love with someone else—to really get V bonded with his heroine, Butch needed to be happy and committed with Marissa.
I tried to do V, though. Gave it my best shot.
The outline didn’t work.
After a couple of weeks of banging my head, I followed rule eight (Rice Krispies) and called up my editor in classic Houston-we-have-a-problem style. When I explained to her what the issues were, she understood and agreed. Which is only one of the billion reasons I worship her: She gets how it is with me and the Brothers.
So Butch was up next. And, boy, talk about your corkscrews.
When I started to outline him, I had no clue about the Destroyer Prophecy or the transformative role