The Black Dagger Brotherhood_ An Insider's Guide - J. R. Ward [85]
My editor figured it out, though. Jane was a healer, not a white lab coat. She was a warm, caring, compassionate woman who was more than just a repository for medical knowledge and know-how. On the second trip through the park with the manuscript, I tapped into Jane’s core, and the relationship between her and V started to sing, reflecting more what was in my head.
On a side note, one of the first scenes that I saw for V and Jane hit me way back when I was writing Lover Awakened in 2005. I was running at the time, and this vision of V standing in front of a stove, stirring hot chocolate, suddenly came to me. I watched as he poured what was in the pan into a mug and handed it to a woman who knew he was going to leave her. Then I saw her standing at the window of her kitchen, looking out at V, who was outside in the shadows cast by a street lamp.
That, of course, became the good-bye that starts on page 322 of their book.
When the scenes from the Brothers come to me, they do not arrive in chronological order. For instance, visuals of Tohr and where he ultimately ends up hit me before Wellsie even died on the page. So, in the case of the hot-chocolate exchange for Lover Unbound, I was stuck wondering how in the hell Jane and V were going to end up together. The thing was, I knew she was a human, and I wanted for them what the others had, namely a good seven or eight centuries of mating. But with Jane not being a vampire, I had no clue how that was going to happen—plus I knew she got shot, because I’d seen V’s visions and knew what they meant, even if he didn’t. . . .
When I outlined Lover Unbound, I just kept wondering how the two of them were going to have an HEA, and I was really worried. What if there wasn’t one at all? But then I got to the end . . . and saw Jane standing in V’s doorway as a ghost.
I was actually relieved and thrilled. I was like, Oh, this is great! They get the long time frame!
Unfortunately, some readers didn’t see it that way, and part of that I blame on myself.
Usually when I get to the end of a book, I feel that although I wish I could refine the line-by-line writing even more (I’m never satisfied), I’m confident that the scenes themselves and the way the plotlines flow is rock-solid. I’m also fairly certain that I’ve given sufficient context and grounding for the reader so that they can see where things started, what happened, and how everything ended up.
For me, I was so relieved about Jane and V’s future (with her life-span issue being resolved), that I took for granted readers would feel the same way. My mistake was that I underestimated the challenge to romantic convention with her being a ghost, and I was unaware that it would be a problem to the extent it was for some. I’ve been over and over the disconnect in my mind (the one between the market and my internal radar screen) and have decided that part of it is my background in reading horror and fantasy—because the resolution worked within the world and provided the hero and heroine with a solution, I just assumed it was okay.
Except here’s the thing: Even if I had realized it was going to be a problem for certain folks, I wouldn’t have changed the ending, because anything else would have been a copout and a lie. I don’t write to the market and never have—the stories in my head are in charge, and even I don’t get to see what I want to happen in the world occur. That being said, if I were writing the book again, I’d put in another ten pages or so at the end with V and Jane interacting to show the happiness they both felt—so readers were superclear that in the couple’s minds things ended up just