FINALLY — Warrick
It’s been a while since I’ve updated y’all. My apologies. Actually since my last post, I wrote and illustrated an entirely new book. One that so many of my readers have been awaiting eagerly. Warrick.
Well, the official title is The Duke and The Domina : Warrick : The Ruination of Grayson Danforth. Long, yeah? Yeah. I’m good like that.
Warrick’s story was pretty elusive, all we knew about him was he was mysterious, quiet, powerful, disappeared from London (and his family) and loved weapons.
But we sure did fall in love with him in The Rake and The Recluse, didn’t we? He was just so very, very. But like you, I had no idea what his story was. Then these things happened:
1. A couple of years ago I happened upon an image of a man in a corset that gets around the internet A LOT. I’ve been searching for the provenance on the image for a long time. The image was so powerful to me, this stunning, beautiful image of a man’s torso, in a corset. I’ve had his images, five of them that were public on the internet, on my phone because I was just so taken with them, and wanted very much to track him down.
2. When I visited Delilah Marvelle in Portland a couple years ago we went to the Pittock Mansion. It was GORGEOUS, and I fell in love with the rib cage shower there and the idea of tying someone to the ribs. The idea of this shower has been rolling around in my brain the entire time, the visual of a beautiful man tied to the ribs of that shower? Yeah. I actually told Delilah, as we looked at it, that I wanted to shoot that shower with a naked man tied to it.
3. And perhaps the biggest piece of Warrick’s story. Once upon a time, last April, I was messing around on twitter with Tiffany Reisz, Del Dryden, and Maisey Yates (all amazing writers, so go read them). We were talking about the marriage of convenience trope and putting a spin on it. It turned to writing it into a femdom BDSM story, and then Tiffany wrote a poem:
He’s poor. She’s rich.
He’s a sub. She’s a switch.
It‘s not love. It’s a Marriage of Kink-venience!
I knew the second I read it that it was Warrick’s story. How? Well I’m a visual person with a vivid imagination, and the minute I read the words I saw Warrick’s face come from the depths of my imagination, dark, brooding, powerful. All he said was “That’s me.” then he disappeared again. It hit me in the gut and I told them I was going to write it, but at the time I was in the middle of Louisa’s book, and wasn’t really sure where to start with Warrick, so I just let it ride for a bit. The coolest part of this poem, was every little bit of it fit SO PERFECTLY. It was an intense realization.
4. I was glomming Vikings on A&E last summer and there was an episode with a blood eagle. It was an old Norse form of ritualized execution. It’s horrific and disgusting and I’m just going to leave it at that. If you want to google it, do so at your own peril. *shudders* So the symbolism of giving a man wings was born from the grotesque ritualistic execution of an enemy. Now it’s a symbol of passion. Wing symbolism is truly quite powerful, but I had to figure out how to give a man wings without killing him in the process.
5… and this is the final piece to the puzzle. I was sad, The Duke and The Baron, a story that I absolutely loved and wanted to share had basically tanked. It was depressing and I said something about tit on twitter to which Tiffany replied, and then DMd me. If you don’t follow her, you should. She is a brilliant writer and wonderful person. Anywhoo… we chatted for awhile, and one of the things she said to me was “Write what you want to read.” She’s said this before when giving advice on twitter. But this particular time I happened to be searching for the provenance on that image again. In my head I heard “Write what you want to SHOOT.”
Three days later I had 35K on Warrick’s story and was still going strong. To give you an idea of just how much that is… the sweet spot for a romance novel is around 70-80K. A long romance is 110K. 35K is a lot of words. Many writers have daily goals, anywhere from 1K to a very ambitious 5k (and some are even higher) The other thing about these words, is that they didn’t change much, from the beginning to the end. The story is pretty much as it was written.
The complete manuscript, from start to finish took me five months. Pretty incredible for me considering The Duke and The Baron took me almost three years to write.
So to recap: Warrick was inspired by a poem, an image of a man in a corset, a ribcage shower, and the Blood Eagle. Without these, there would be no book.
Jenn LeBlanc 