• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Rule four: Plotlines Are Like Sharks. They must move or die.

The series needed to start at a place where there were things to be fixed, otherwise there would be no struggles, no conflict, no evolution and resolution. And even with the improvements made in Lover Enshrined, the world remains ripe with strictures that need changing or areas where conflict is going to breed—Rehvenge’s Lover Avenged is going to have a lot of that.

A symphath working with the Brotherhood? Pow.der.keg.

The thing is, plotlines must advance across a credible playing field of people. Always. For example, to me, the most powerful scene in Phury’s book comes when he leaves the Scribe Virgin’s private quarters after having freed the Chosen. Here, he returns to Chosen’s sanctuary:

He froze as he threw open the door.

The grass was green.

The grass was green and the sky was blue . . . and the daffodils were yellow and the roses were a Crayola rainbow of colors . . . and the buildings were red and cream and dark blue. . . .

Down below, the Chosen were spilling out of their living quarters, holding their now colorful robes and looking around in excitement and wonder.

Cormia emerged from the Primale temple, her lovely face stunned as she looked around. When she saw him, her hands clamped to her mouth and her eyes started to blink fast.

With a cry, she gathered her gorgeous pale lavender robe and ran toward him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

He caught her as she leaped up to him and held her warm body to his.

“I love you,” she choked out. “I love you, I love you . . . I love you.”

In that moment, with the world that was his in transformation, and his shellan safely in his arms, he felt something he never would have imagined.

He finally felt like the hero he had always wanted to be.

—LOVER ENSHRINED, pp. 492-493

I’ll be honest: I bawled like a baby right there. It was just the most perfect moment for Phury—and it couldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been something huge to fix in the world.

And speaking of things that needed to be fixed, a word on Phury and Z. The relationship between the twins had to be addressed in the course of the book, and there was some serious stuff to deal with. Phury had a lot of pent-up frustration and anger, and it eventually came out (I’m thinking of that scene in front of the mansion that starts on page 277, where the two of them go at it). I will say that I think Z’s lack of gratitude was more about the current suffering he was dealing with—namely the concern about Bella and her pregnancy—than a fundamental resentment over the fact that he had been saved. After all, it’s hard sometimes to be grateful that you’re walking the planet when the very foundation of your life is unstable.

Phury needed the acknowledgment from his twin, and needed the thank-you, though. Hands down for me, one of the most moving scenes in the series—and the one I absolutely wept at when I wrote it—was the reunion of the twins following the birth of Nalla. By this point, Phury’s on the road to recovery and has redefined his role as the Primale—and Bella and Nalla have lived through the birth, so Z’s in a much better place as well. The twins, however, remain estranged. At least until Zsadist comes up to Rehv’s house in the Adirondacks and approaches his brother while singing Puccini:

Phury got to his feet as if his twin’s voice, not his own legs, had lifted him from the chair. This was the thanks that had not been spoken. This was the gratitude for the rescue and the appreciation for the life that was lived. This was the wide-open throat of an astounded father, who was lacking the words to express what he felt to his brother and needed the music to show something of all he wished he could say.

“Ah, hell . . . Z,” Phury whispered in the midst of the glory.

—LOVER ENSHRINED, p. 531

If you look throughout the book, you’ll see that here and there I put in a line about things not needing to be said to be understood. We’re talking