Passion Rising

by JA Huss

  I am a storyteller. All I want to do. And when Julie Ann Huss asked if I wanted to write romance novels with her, I saw it as an opportunity. I have devoted my life to the art (and the work) of both interpreting stories and creating ones I feel strongly about. There is a power in storytelling that I haven’t found anywhere else, and I saw this as a different medium with which I could engage and share my love of the communal experience of discovered narrative.

  When she and I began discussing what we would do and how we would introduce our collaboration, I asked Julie what she wanted out of partnering that would distinguish it from the work she had done on her own. She said a lot of things in response, but it can be distilled down to: She said she wanted to do something different, challenge herself, challenge the work, and stretch and grow via the process of writing with someone from outside her expected sphere. That sounded pretty good to me and I said, “great.”

  I then asked, “How far are you interested in stretching traditional boundaries?” She said, “Pretty far. What do you have in mind?”

  So, what I’m going to talk about here is three things:

  — What my goals have been (and continue to be) in writing books with JA Huss.

  — What I wanted to achieve specifically with this particular book series.

  — What it’s like for me to be JA Huss’s writing partner.

  And I’m going to do that in reverse order.

  BEING JULIE’S PARTNER

  I would be hard pressed to identify a person I’ve met who suits me better as a creative collaborator than Julie Huss. If you read Angels Fall and that EOBS, then you already know that it isn’t always smooth sailing. Julie and I can disagree a lot and sometimes vociferously. Once or twice they’ve even been the kind of disagreements that might’ve ended a less secure relationship. So, when I say that I know no one who suits me better as a partner, I’m not kidding.

  But that doesn’t imply that we share a brain, or the same worldview, or even the same set of artistic or career priorities. It means that despite the ways in which we are different and the times when we disagree, we are able to move beyond – usually pretty quickly – the friction and get back to what’s the most important thing to both of us: Making the best work we can.

  That’s only possible because we respect each other as people and we have an unceasing love and appreciation for the talent of the other. Only way it can work. There’s no chance, if we didn’t impress each other, that we’d even want to figure out how to navigate something as dense and complex as an effort like the one we’re in together.

  Respect is the centerpiece. And that’s our anchor when seas get rough.

  Julie recently described us as Kirk and Spock. I’m Kirk. She’s Spock. I’m all passion, and emotion, and blood, and leap before I look. Julie’s practical, and logical, and knows how to calculate the next best step. It may have something to do with the fact that I have no children, and Julie has done a spectacular job of raising two awesome humans to adulthood. There are things you learn from something like being a parent, and conversely there are risks you can afford to take when you’re not accountable in that same way.

  Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s how we are.

  Ironically, when it comes to the work itself, I tend to be the one who’s methodical and deliberate and likes to plot and outline, and Julie’s much more “write by the seat of her pants.” Yet again, yin and yang. Fire and water. Kirk and Spock.

  It is a credit to the balance in our dichotomy that when Julie asked what kind of thing I wanted to try writing first, and I said, “I’d like to do a multiple part exploration of the nature of self and love via a deep character study of the evolution of two wounded people, and also offer a commentary on mysticism and the salvation myth inside the framework of an extended allegory about loss and redemption,” she didn’t immediately hang up the phone.

  The rest of the conversation was brief and went something like this:

  Her: “So what you’re saying is... You don’t want to sell books.”

  Me: “What? No. Of course, I do.”

  Her: “Okay. But do you want to sell these books?”

  Me: “Obviously.”

  Her: “So... For our first try, you don’t wanna just write, like, kind of a fun, sexy book about hot people?”

  Me: “... Why does what I’m saying and what you’re saying have to be mutually exclusive?”

  Her (god bless her): “...Yeah. I see that. Okay. Let’s do it.”

  And that right there is why JA Huss is special.

  She’s not special because she’s smart (although she is), and she’s not special because she’s a good writer (although I didn’t set up a TV project at MGM television based on thirteen of her books because I don’t already have enough to fill my days), and she’s not even special because she has courage (although she does). Smart, talented, courageous people are actually probably about a-hundred-dollars a dozen (I don’t want to make it sound unimportant – it’s not common – it’s just not as rare as people make it out to be).

  What makes JA Huss special is that she has vision.

  Vision is one of the rarest talents in this great universe.

  And because of that vision, you are reading these words right now. She knew that what we were going to undertake had the potential to be special in some way. And even if that specialness came with risks, she believed, with me, that the rewards would be worth it. And that doesn’t mean writing an international bestseller, necessarily. It means laying a groundwork for a partnership that will show up to the party with a bang and grow stronger into the future.

  Real talk? I am more demanding than you or anybody you know wants to deal with.

  I mean, I’m one of the most delightful motherfuckers you’ll ever meet, but I place an expectation of excellence on everyone around me. Because I never want to be the smartest person in the room. Whenever possible, I want to be learning from people who know more than I do. Or at least I want to be jockeying for a leadership role. I want to earn it. I want to fight for what’s worth having. Julie and I push and activate each other in ways that are unique to anything I’ve known before.

  And she will run the marathon to the last mile and never quit.

  But at the same time ... she will allow me to steer when it’s important.

  And this is the part that speaks to a lack of ego I have only seen maybe a handful of times in my life.

  So, after Julie said, “... Okay. Let’s do it,” we started plotting and writing. But partially owing to Julie’s concurrent solo writing career and partially owing to something I’ll talk about in a second, there came a point when I started requesting a little more.

  Here’s what I mean:

  Again, we alluded to this a bit in the Angels Fall EOBS, but there would be times when I would have to assume some of the writing duties that were otherwise slated for Julie’s computer. Workload was the thing that started it. Workload, time, hours in the day, etc. But as we got deeper into the series, I became very invested in the way things were going and began requesting if I could keep working even when it might be time to hand the work off to her.

  And here is the part that is incomparable...

  Julie would say, “...Okay.” She would let me just keep writing. She would let me steer and maneuver. She trusted me to take things over and, on OUR behalf, move the tale along. And if you know anything about writers and writing and ego and being precious about work ...

  I ain’t never seen some shit like that in my life.

  To be clear: We always still hand off to the other and if the other has notes, adjustments, revisions, etc., it’s open season. The work is not proprietary to one of us. It is shared. It is not about her or me. It is what serves the book and tells the best story.

  But as I became more and more passionate about things, Julie welcomed me to express our shared vision through my fingertips. And I’m honored.

  For what we’re doing, she is the best partner a person who is me could hope
to have.

  (I’d like to offer one last comment about everything I just said: Because of what I described, I would suggest that if you enjoyed these books, it is only because of our collaboration. And if there’s stuff you hated about these books ... it’s all my fault.)

  WHAT I WANTED TO ACHIEVE WITH THIS SERIES

  I wasn’t joking about that thing I said to Julie. I wanted to get underneath the very DNA of romance and find a deeper meaning while exploring complex themes and universal truths.

  Sounds pretty douchey.

  Maybe it is.

  But here’s the thing: If someone asks you what these books are about, I want there to be an answer. In other words, I don’t want you to say, “Oh, it’s about Tyler and Maddie and blah, blah, blah, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.” That’s the PLOT. Not what the books are ABOUT.

  I have nothing against telling a good story. Quite the opposite. I think the only reason to tell a story is if you’re aspiring to make it a good one. But I think there’s a difference between a fun and entertaining story, and a good story. I hope, with these books, we have achieved both. I hope you have felt transported and diverted and entertained, and at the same time enriched and moved and stimulated to think about some things.

  Moving forward, not every book that Julie and I write is going to be like this. But here. Now. These books... It was important to me that Julie and I SAY something.

  One of the other reasons I wanted to work with Julie is that she doesn’t write one thing over and over. That was very appealing to me. No person that I want to know is ONE thing. I don’t know a rule that says an artist can only paint in one style, an actor can only play one kind of role, or a writer can only write one kind of book.

  I also don’t know of a rule that says a genre (like romance) can’t reach beyond the genre and touch something else. What the hell is Pride and Prejudice, for crying out loud? Now, I’m not saying we wrote Pride and Prejudice. And if you say I did, I’ll deny it and call you out as a liar. I’m pretty pretentious, but I’m not arrogant enough to believe that we made some kind of contribution to the literary canon that will alter the landscape of romance writing for eons to come. Or even for five minutes.

  But I hope that if you hung in there with us, you got your arms around some of what we hoped to achieve and that your world feels just a little brighter for having taken the time to read. Hell, if all we did was offer you some escape for about 250,000 words, then that will feel very satisfying too.

  MY BROADER GOALS IN WRITING BOOKS WITH JULIE

  Kind of what I said above. It will depend. It will depend on the book, on the time, on the environment, on the subject, etc. I may just hope to make you laugh. I may just hope to make you cry. I may want to see if we can write a book where nobody calls each other by their name. I dunno. It will depend on what Julie and I decide together.

  But I can say this, irrespective of other variables ...

  I hope to discover things about the world while at the same time sharing a point of view that you’ll not find elsewhere. I have always wanted to write a novel. And I never even thought of writing a romance novel. Which, when I stop to consider it, is odd for me. Because love, romance, passion ... These are the things I wake up for in the morning.

  Love, in all its various permutations, drives everything I do. I feel deeply, and I hope to cause others to feel deeply as well. Feeling. It is the stuff of life itself. I strive to shine a light on the beating heart of our shared human experience whenever I can. It gives me a joy that I can’t fully explain.

  Again, if you’re reading this, then you made it through. And together we have shared something special. I will never again write my first books. My first attempt at reaching readers and touching their hearts is over now. There will be other opportunities, and I’m sure the most aspirational and wide-reaching of chances to spread the stories of Huss/McClain (and at some point, I’m sure, of just Johnathan) are yet to be.

  But this... This gift of perilous excitement and uncertain outcome that is The Original Sin Series by JA Huss and Johnathan McClain can never be replicated.

  I’m privileged to have shared it with you. And I’m inspirited to see what happens next.

  -JM

  28 March 2018

  OH! BONUS EOBS! THE END OF END OF BOOK SHIT, I GUESS!

  I almost forgot. There are some little secrets and insider tidbits I thought it might be nice to share. There are many sprinkled throughout the books (if you were an existing JA Huss fan, the “Ford Aston” stuff in Sin With Me was for you, as you already know), but there are a few in this book specifically that nod to some things and I wanted to mention them to you.

  MAROON 5

  In Chapter 3, Tyler’s dad asks if Tyler wants tickets to see Maroon 5 on New Year’s Eve.

  Maroon 5 does indeed play a New Year’s Eve show in Vegas at Mandalay Bay every year. My wife, Laura, and I happen to be friends with James Valentine, the lead guitarist for Maroon 5, and this past New Year’s he gave us tickets to come see the show.

  I also asked if he would hook Julie up and he did. So, Julie, Laura, and I all met up in Vegas to see the show and then we had pizza with James and his family afterward. So that reference is a little doff of the cap to that.

  (PS: Those dudes put on one hell of a show. If you ever get a chance to check ‘em out, go. Playing together in a band for a decade and a half makes you real, real good at your job.)

  THE MANDARIN ORIENTAL

  The Mandarin is the hotel we stay in when we go to Vegas. For two simple reasons.

  — It’s the only hotel on The Strip that is not attached to a casino (Technically the Four Seasons isn’t either, but TFS is attached to Mandalay, which, as noted in this book, does have a casino), and when you’re in The Mandarin it really is a spa-like escape.

  — The Mandarin in Vegas is a fraction of the cost of a Mandarin anywhere else on the planet. Because even though there’s no casino, they know that people ain’t in Vegas for the seaweed body wrap. So, it’s like, affordable. (Unless it’s the holidays and you’re staying in The Emperor Suite. Which we most decidedly aren’t.)

  I bring it up because when Julie, Laura, and I met over New Year’s, Julie stayed at The Mandarin too. And we talked about these books. And we worked on these books. And it felt like a really important and special time.

  THE SHOPS AT CRYSTALS

  These are the boutiques across from The Mandarin, and I like shopping and don’t really gamble. So, if I’m in Vegas for work, you’ll know where to find me. And Julie insists on calling it “the mall.” So that’s where all the “mall” stuff in this book comes from. (After she read that I got a text from her saying, “It IS a mall!! LOL”)

  Also, Julie and I sat in the Starbucks where Tyler and Maddie sit in this book, and just as they talk about their future, we talked about our writing future. The Asshole Mall.

  87-3323

  The short code number that Logan uses to text Tyler spells out “UR-DEAD” on the keypad.

  I know. It’s corny. But I like it.

  FRANK’S

  Frank’s is not a real place. Frank’s is a fictional place that exists in the Las Vegas of the television show CSI. I think it shows up maybe a dozen or so times over the course of the series.

  The first episode in which the fictional Frank’s appeared was called Rashomama. That episode of CSI premiered in 2006. And I was in it. I played the son of Ray Wise and Veronica Cartwright and it was my third television job in LA, and my first on a drama series. I also made one of my best friends shooting that episode and he is still one of my and Laura’s closest mates to this very day. So. Frank’s is an homage to that.

  I GO WHERE YOU GO

  Tyler and Maddie learn a lot in these books. And they do so quickly. Which is how life happens sometimes. You can’t know a thing until you know it, and occasionally when you learn it, it’s like the lights being turned on in a pitch-black room. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust and for you to be able to comprehen
d what you’re seeing. But then when you do, you can’t believe that you didn’t know it was there all along.

  Theirs is a journey out of darkness into light. Out of pain and into comfort. Out of the blistering fires of torment and into the cooling waters of peace. They are both, in some ways, reborn. And part of that rebirth is informed by the new worldview they assume. A view of the world that causes a person to believe that the path to a full and complete life is one of generosity. Of giving. Of self-sacrifice. And that starts sometimes with looking at the person sitting next to you and committing to them in a full and total way.

  Laura and I have been together about a dozen years now, married for almost eight. Early on in our relationship, for various reasons, we had to be on separate coasts a lot. I would fly back and forth from New York to LA, and she would do the same. Back and forth. A lot.

  She was in a place where she was making some major life changes and I was deciding whether or not I would stay in LA and keep working in TV and film or whether I would go back to New York and do theatre. For a long time, neither of us were sure where we would land.

  Eventually it became clear that I needed to be in LA. Had to be. Many reasons, but it was the choice I had to make.

  Laura had pretty well settled on New York. She grew up there, it is home for her, and she loves it. It’s where she’s happiest.

  And for a time, it appeared that ... that was it. We weren’t going to make it. It was going to be over for us.

  And then, one day, she said, “I’m coming to LA. I’m moving there to be with you.”

  I was both elated and concerned. Because the last thing I ever want anyone to do is to make a sacrifice for me. It’s just not something that makes me comfortable. Which is a whole other EOBS. But the point is, I was stunned. And after many, many, many hours of conversation and me asking, “are you sure?” over and over, I finally asked it one last time.