When I began Shalia’s Diary, there was no definite endpoint in mind. I
set Shalia in motion and waited to see where she would take me. I had a vague
idea of where I thought she might end up in the future, but no real plan of how
she would get there. Indeed, having arrived at the end of the story, what I’d
envisioned over five years ago bears little resemblance to how I thought it
would be.
I know a number of readers hoped Clan Dusa would somehow turn into
Shalia’s happily-ever-after. Several begged me for it. The boys were sweet and
cute and wonderful for Shalia at that point in her life, and we adored them.
How could they not be her forever clan?
That they would not be her final choice for a clan was one of two
things I knew from the start. I always saw Clan Dusa as a kind of transitional
affair for Shalia, three guys who could help her find and accept her natural
sexuality…but not quite right to be her loves for an entire lifetime. Let’s be
honest; Shalia carries baggage better than a hotel bellboy. The kind of baggage
she toted around in those early stories pretty much guaranteed she wasn’t a
match for the naïve Clan Dusa. To be fair, the guys were a little too sure of
the path laid out for them by parents and empire. They had none of the
real-life experience that might have made them dare to rebel against the rules
to claim Shalia as their own.
It was a lovely affair, a necessary affair…but not one that had a real
future. At least, that’s how I saw it.
The second thing I knew would carry through until the end of the story
was Nang’s unhealthy fixation on Shalia. Though I didn’t know the details of
how it would end, I knew it would be dramatic. It is, which you will discover
in a few weeks when Shalia’s Diary Book
12 is released.
So there I was, at the start of a journey that I didn’t know the length
of, or the twists and turns it would take. For me, that’s pretty significant. I
plot my stories like a fiend. I joke that my outlines have outlines. Okay, so
that’s not really a joke. I do take the whole plotting thing to an extreme.
Not Shalia’s Diary. Just before starting a new storyline, I wrote a few
sentences about where I saw that particular chapter of her life going. With
that as my only guide, I wrote by the seat of my pants. It was kind of
terrifying for me, but Shalia was always organic in a way that none of my other
work has ever been. I just sat back and let her take over, allowing her to live
her life and tell me about it.
I had no idea how readers would take this serial story idea. It wasn’t
even on the radar to offer Shalia’s Diary as books at the time. My intention
with the free blog had been to say thank you to everyone for making the Clans
of Kalquor series a success, nothing more. Yet as the views climbed into the
thousands and people began to ask more and more for me to put the diary in book
format, it became pretty clear Shalia resonated with many.
Should that have been a surprise? Shalia kept us all guessing as to
what might happen next. Sitting down to see what she was up to was exciting.
She kept springing surprises on me, out of nowhere.
Case in point: I did not know she would get pregnant until I was
actually finished with the second story. Or that no one would know who the
biological father was. It didn’t hit me until I started thinking about the
third book, as the second was in the edit phase. My reaction was in line with
hers…WHAT?!? Then I had to rethink the whole timeline of Book 2 and make sure
that she could have snuggled with all four potential daddies to make it
impossible to pinpoint who won the big sperm race. Nang’s attempt to get to
Shalia and his altercation with Clan Bitev and his own clanmates was also a
last-second add.
Even at that point, I was left wondering how it would all play out in
the end. Bits and pieces were beginning to solidify as Shalia left her home
planet, but she had nine months of travel time between Earth and Kalquor. What
in the world could happen on a transport in all of that time?
Plenty, as it turned out. But that’s for another blog.
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