The Black Dagger Brotherhood_An Insider's Guide

by J. R. Ward

This truly is the perfect car for him.

  Z starts the engine, and the calibrated vibration that comes from the back is a loud-and-clear about the number of horses in the trunk. As he K-turns on the pebbles, working neatly around the fountain which has been drained for the winter, he works the clutch and the gearshift seamlessly.

  We head out past the compound’s gates, and the trip down whatever mountain we’re on is a blur to me because of the mhis. After we get level there are turns and straightaways, and when the landscape comes into focus again for me, we’re at one of the countless intersections on Route 22. Z hangs a left and floors it. The Porsche is psyched by the demand and digs into the pavement like its tires have metal spikes and its engine is powered by jet fuel. As we blast forward, my stomach pools in the cradle of my hips and I grip the door handle, but not from fear that we’ll crash—even though Z doesn’t have the headlights on and the dashboard isn’t lit. No, in the moonless night, there is nothing but the Porsche and the smooth road, and I feel like I’m flying. My grip is an attempt to ground myself against the weightlessness.

  Except then I realize, I don’t want to be tied down. I release my hand.

  We drive along the road, or it could have been the galaxy, and though I can’t see the turns and hills, I know he can. The metaphor for life is unavoidable: Each of us in the seat of our destiny, driven along a road we cannot see, by someone who can.

  We drive in silence, and I’m not surprised. You don’t interview Z. You sit and open up a space and maybe he fills it, maybe he doesn’t.

  The next biggish city from Caldwell is a good thirty minutes from the bridges downtown but only about twelve minutes from the Brotherhood’s compound. As we roll into its fringes, Z turns on the headlights to be legal. We pass by an Exxon gas station and a Stewart’s ice-cream shop and a McDonald’s and a host of nonchains like The Choppe Shoppe hair salon and Browning’s Printing and Graphics and Luigi’s Pizzeria. The parking lots are lit like something out of an Edward Hopper painting, pools of light congealing around parked cars and ice machines and Dumpsters. I’m struck by how many wires are suspended from telephone pole to telephone pole and the way the traffic lights dangle above the intersections. It’s the neuropathways of the city’s brain, I think to myself.

  The silence is not awkward. We end up at Target.

  Z pulls into the parking lot and heads to a secluded space away from the six parked cars clustered around the bank of doors in the front. As we approach the spot he picks, the massive light over us goes dark—probably because he willed it off.

  We get out, and while we walk to the toffee-colored building with its red bull’s-eye, Z gets closer to me than he ever has. He’s about two feet behind me on my right, and it feels, because of his size, like he’s on top of me. He’s doing his guard thing, and I take it as a gesture of kindness, not aggression. Going along, our footsteps over the cold pavement are like two different voices. Mine are Shirley Temple. His are James Earl Jones.

  Inside the store, the security guard doesn’t like us. The rent-a-cop straightens up from the partition demarcating the food section and puts his hand on his pepper spray. Z ignores him. Or at least, I assume Z does. The Brother is still walking behind me, so I can’t see his face.

  After he gets one, we head for . . . the baby department. When we get to the displays of onesies and tiny socks, Z steps ahead of me. He handles the clothes on the racks in the most gentle way, as if they are already on Nalla’s sturdy little body. He fills the cart. He doesn’t ask me what I think of what he’s buying, but that’s no disrespect to me. He knows what he wants. He buys little shirts and ruffled diaper pants in all kinds of colors. Tiny shoes. A pair of mittens that look like they belong on a doll. Then we go to the toy section. Blocks. Books. Soft stuffed animals.

  He’s in charge of the cart. I follow. He buys Armor All and a bunch of chamois cloths. Then the new Flo-Rida CD. An Ina Garten cookbook. When we pass by the food section, he gets a bag of Tootsie Pops. We pause at the menswear section, and he chooses two Miami Ink baseball caps. In the stationery department he picks up some lovely thick white paper and a set of colored pencils. He takes a deep red knitted scarf from ladies’ accessories, and then pauses by a display of silver chains that have charms dangling off of them. He picks one out that has a small quartz heart hanging from the chain and is careful as he lays it out on top of his neat pile of onesies.

  I thought he was being careful with the way he touched the baby clothes because of what they were, but in fact, he treats all the merchandise with the same respect. He looks like a straight-up killer, and his expression is as dark as the black in his eyes, but his hands are never rough. If he picks something up off a shelf or a rack or a display and doesn’t want it, he returns it where it was. And if he finds a sweater that’s just been crammed back into a stack or a book that’s been mis-shelved by another customer or a shirt that’s cockeyed on a hanger, he rights it.

  Z has a kind soul. At heart, he’s just like Phury.

  We go to check out, and the twenty-year-old guy who’s manning the cash register looks up at Z like the Brother is a god. As I watch all of the items being scanned, I realize the purpose of the trip is not just to get the things, but to send a message. These items are his interview. He’s telling me how much he loves Nalla and Bella and his Brothers. How grateful he is.

  Ah . . . because a present for Beth is a present for Wrath. And I bet the Armor All is for the three boys to massage Qhuinn’s Hummer with. But there’s nothing for . . .

  Tohr. God, Tohr . . .

  After Z pays with a black AmEx, we walk past the security guard, who looks at the red-and-white bags like he has X-ray vision and there could be guns in them—even though the store doesn’t sell click-click-bang-bangs.

  Outside, I help Z put his purchases in the minuscule backseat of the Porsche. They overflow, and I end up sitting with some at my feet and on my lap.

  We’re silent the whole ride home, until we get to the mhis that surrounds the compound. As the landscape blurs again, I look over at Z.

  There’s a pause, one that lasts so long, I figure there’s going to be no response. But then he downshifts as we come up to the mansion’s gates.

  Lover Awakened

  The People:

  Zsadist

  Bella

  Phury

  John Matthew

  Rehvenge

  Mr. O

  Mr. X

  Mr. U(stead)

  Wellsie

  Tohr

  Sarelle, Wellsie’s cousin

  Lash, son of Ibex

  Qhuinn, son of Lohstrong

  Blaylock, son of Rocke

  Catronia (Z’s Mistress when he was a blood slave)

  Places of Interest (all in Caldwell, NY, unless otherwise noted):

  The Brotherhood mansion—undisclosed location

  Bella’s farmhouse—private road off Route 22

  Lessening Society persuasion center—east from Big Notch Mountain, thirty-minute drive from downtown

  Tohr and Wellsie’s home

  Rehvenge’s family home

  ZeroSum (corner of Trade and Tenth streets)

  Summary:

  Zsadist, a former blood slave and the most feared member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, finds love as he rescues a beautiful aristocratic female from the obsessive hold of a violent lesser.

  Craft comments:

  I think with Z, I’ll start with something from Dark Lover. This is from the beginning of the book, when Wrath has called the Brotherhood together following Darius’s assassination by the Fore-lesser, Mr. X. Zsadist makes his arrival, so to speak, thusly:

  The front door swung open, and Zsadist strode into the house.

  Wrath glared. “Nice of you to show up, Z. Busy tonight with the females?”

  “How about you get off my dick?” Zsadist went over to the corner, staying away from the rest.

  —DARK LOVER, p. 30

  When I first saw Zsadist walk into that house l
ike that, I assumed he was an antagonist. Had to be. His vibe was too legitimately fuck-off for him to be a hero. And then the impression he made got even worse with this scene of Beth waking up to find him with her:

  The man towering over her had black, lifeless eyes. A harsh face with a jagged scar running down it. Hair that was practically shaved it was so short. And long, white fangs that were bared . . .

  “Pretty, aren’t I?” His cold stare was the stuff of nightmares, of dark places where no hope could be found, of hell itself.

  Forget the scar, she thought. Those eyes were the scariest thing about him.

  And they were fixated on her as if he were sizing her up for a shroud.

  Or for some sex.

  She moved her body away from him. Started looking around for something she could use as a weapon.

  “What, you don’t like me?”

  Beth eyed the door, and he laughed.

  “Think you can run fast enough?” he said, pulling the bottom of his shirt free from the leather pants he had on. His hands moved to his fly. “I’m damn sure you can’t.”—DARK LOVER, p. 226-227

  Yeah, okay, so not a hero. The thing was, though, the voices in my head were shouting that he was getting his own book and he was going to end up with an HEA.

  Oh, great. Fantastic. And not the last time in the course of writing this series when I’ve been like, You have GOT to be kidding me—I can’t pull that off.

  By the end of Dark Lover, however, I was seduced . . . and totally driven to write Z’s story. The turning points for me were two scenes in that book. One is of Beth meeting up with Zsadist in the pantry as they get the food ready for her mating ceremony (p. 318). In this exchange, Z reveals that he has no intention of hurting Beth and that he doesn’t like to be touched. The other scene is just after the ceremony. The vows have been spoken and the carving done and the Brotherhood is serenading the couple:

  But then, in a high, keening call, one voice broke out, lifting above the others, shooting higher and higher. The sound of the tenor was so clear, so pure, it brought shivers to the skin, a yearning warmth to the chest. The sweet notes blew the ceiling off with their glory, turning the chamber into a cathedral, the Brothers into a tabernacle. . . .

  The scarred one, the soulless one, had the voice of an angel.

  —DARK LOVER, p. 334

  By the end of DL, I needed to write Z so badly that for the only time yet, I dictated book order against what I saw in my head. Z was supposed to be the last in the series, the end cap of the ten books (which included Wrath, Rhage, Butch, V, Phury, Rehvenge, Payne, John Matthew, and Tohrment). But the thing was, when I sold the Brotherhood series, the first contract was for three books. At the time the deal was made, paranormals were hot, but people were already beginning to speculate when the market would hit its crest and begin to fall off in terms of popularity. I wasn’t sure I’d get to write all of them.

  Call me an optimist, huh.

  It was with that mindset that I approached the future, and as I finished Dark Lover and started to outline Lover Eternal, I knew if I didn’t put Zsadist on the page I would never get past it. So I bumped him forward.

  Writing him was gut-wrenching, and there were times when I had to stand up and walk away from my computer. But he came out as I saw him in my head, and I love him more than any hero I’ve ever written. He was tricky, though. Z was an honest-to-God sociopath. The difficulty was presenting him in a way that was at once true to his pathology and yet sympathetic enough for readers to see what I saw in him and understand why Bella fell for him.

  There were two keys. One was his reaction to Bella’s abduction, and the other was his past as a blood slave and its sexual repercussions. Gaining sympathy for Z with readers was a classic show-not-tell situation. The book opens with Z on a single-minded mission to get Bella back. Very heroic, and the altruism is justified in spite of its being contrary to his nature because it’s obvious that he sees her situation through the lens of his own captivity and abuse: He couldn’t help himself, but he sure as hell can help her. And after he gets her out, he treats her with great gentleness. Bella becomes the catalyst to his expressing something warm and protective, and his interactions with her balance out his more sadistic and masochistic scenes.

  And then there is the sexual side of things. By showing Z under the Mistress’s ownership through a series of flashbacks, the reader can see for themselves that he was made into the monster he became, not born like that. Z’s sexual issues with Bella, which were introduced in Lover Eternal, are evidence that the traumas he suffered are not only with him to the present day, but they own and define him as a male. At least until Bella comes into his life.

  There was real potential for Z not coming across as heroic, and I was really nervous when my editor read him for the first time, because I wasn’t sure whether I’d pulled it off. She loved him, though, and so did the readers. So do I, although I have to say that I haven’t reread him since I reviewed his galleys—and he’s the only book of mine that I haven’t cracked open when he came back to me bound.

  I think it’s going to be a lot longer before I read him. And I might never.

  A word on the editorial/publishing process. Lots of people, prepublished authors and readers alike, ask me how exactly the different stages of production work and how long each takes. For me, the whole thing is about nine months.

  Once I finish my outline, which takes at least a month, I send it to my editor, who reads it. After we touch base, I get down to work, taking what is in the outline and fleshing it out with description, dialogue, and narration. I tend to write half of the book, then go back and read and edit my way through that block of material. This reread is critical for me. In the Brotherhood books there’s so much going on that I don’t want to risk losing track of all the plot arcs and character development. When I get to the halfway point again, I finish the book all the way through. This whole first drafting process usually takes about four months of seven-day-a-week writing.

  Typically I take a week off and let the manuscript sit while I work on other things. This break is really important so that when I go back I have fresh eyes—and if I don’t get the downtime, I really don’t think the draft finishes as well as it should. When I return to the book, it usually takes me another six weeks to do the heavy lifting associated with getting scene order correct and chapter breaks at the right point and the proper intensity of emotion. Then it’s another couple weeks to smooth, smooth, smooth.

  At this point I’m blurry eyed and dizzy, because the closer to the end I get, the longer my days are—usually the two weeks before I turn anything in, I’m working fourteen to sixteen hours a day. When it comes to whatever Thursday night is the deadline for mailing (it’s always Thursday so the manuscripts drop on Friday), I print the whole book out, get into my car in a zombie state and a pair of wilted sweats, and drive across town to Kinko’s, where I FedEx the thing overnight to my editor.

  Usually the manuscript boxes weigh about eight pounds and cost a hundred dollars to send off.

  After my editor reads the material, she and I go over what we think comes through well and what could be even stronger. We also touch base on whatever might go a little far for the market either sexually or in terms of violence. What I love most about my editor is that she lets me be true to what I see and doesn’t dictate. It’s a collaboration focused on making sure that what’s in my head gets onto the page with the best impact possible—and any changes or additions are my choice and my choice alone.

  After that editorial meeting, I go back and rework the manuscript, tightening it, getting the words more precise, amplifying where necessary. By this time the chapters are set, the scene order is solid, the peaks and valleys in emotion and action are really humming along, so it’s pretty much just tweaking. That and line editing. I am incredibly anal about words and dialogue and flow, and I go over every single word in the manuscripts over and over again. Nothing ever feels good enough.

  For thi
s phase of the process I typically take six weeks, and the manuscript will grow in page length with each succeeding pass I make. A first draft for me is about five hundred pages, double-spaced Times New Roman twelve point. (I can’t write in Courier for some reason, although a lot of authors do—that font screws with my voice.) By the time I finish the revised draft, the manuscript is usually around the six-hundred-page mark.