The Black Dagger Brotherhood_An Insider's Guide

by J. R. Ward

  When it’s finally time for me to leave, he and I go down the hall to the study. I say good-bye to Wrath and Beth, and Phury stays there to have a meeting with the king and queen. As I put the grand staircase to use, I hear the voices of the doggen once again coming from the dining room. They’re setting up for Last Meal, laying out the place settings for the Brothers and the shellans.

  Fritz comes forward, opens the vestibule’s door, and leads me back out to the Mercedes. Before I get into the sedan, I glance up at the mansion’s dour gray facade. Lights glow in almost every single window, evidence that in spite of the grim, bulwark-like exterior, there is great life and joy inside.

  I slide into the backseat of the car, and as Fritz shuts the door I see that there’s a small black leather pouch on the place where I should be sitting. After the butler gets behind the wheel, I ask him what it is, and he says that it’s a present for me. When I start to thank him, he shakes his head and tells me it is not from him.

  As the partition rises between me and Fritz, I take the satchel, pick apart the tie at the top, and spill its contents out into my palm.

  It’s a small black-bladed dagger, still warm from the forge. The workmanship is breathtaking. . . . Every detail, from the hilt to the razor-sharp tip, is perfectly wrought, and the miniature weapon gleams. It took its maker a long time to create it . . . and he cared about the outcome, cared greatly.

  I curl my palm around the gift just as the Mercedes eases forward and we descend from the mountain, heading back for the “real world.”

  Lover Enshrined

  The People:

  Phury

  Cormia

  The Wizard

  Rehvenge

  Xhex

  Lassiter

  Tohrment

  Zsadist and Bella

  John Matthew

  Qhuinn

  Blaylock

  Wrath and Beth

  Fritz

  Butch O’Neal

  Rhage

  Doc Jane

  iAm

  Trez

  The Scribe Virgin

  The Omega

  Lohstrong (Qhuinn’s father)

  Lash

  Mr. D

  Havers

  Amalya, Directrix of the Chosen

  Selena

  Pheonia

  The Princess

  Payne

  Low (the biker)

  Diego RIP (gang member in the jail)

  Skinhead (unnamed man in the jail)

  Eagle Jacket (the human drug dealer)

  Stephanie (the manager at Abercrombie & Fitch)

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

  The Brotherhood mansion, undisclosed location

  The Other Side (the Chosen Sanctuary)

  Havers’s clinic, undisclosed location

  ZeroSum (corner of Trade and Tenth streets)

  Screamer’s

  The Caldwell Galleria

  Cabin in the woods, Black Snake State Park, Adirondacks

  Rehvenge’s Great Camp, Adirondacks

  The farmhouse (Lash’s birthplace), Bass Pond Lane

  Lash’s parents’ house

  Blaylock’s parents’ home

  The Caldwell Police Department

  Summary:

  Phury finds love and conquers both his addictions and his race’s restrictive social and spiritual constructs.

  Craft comments:

  I love Phury. He was a dream to write, he truly was. And as I said, boy, did I need the break.

  On that note, some thoughts about my daily working patterns.

  My writing schedule is pretty much set in stone. I write seven days a week, no excuses, no compromises: sick days, holidays, travel days—my butt is in the chair. I’ve kept this up for about ten years now, and I think I’ve missed three days in that decade—due to extremely extenuating circumstances. I’ve gotten up at four-thirty in the morning in Manhattan in hotel rooms to write. Sat down after root canals. Stayed inside when it’s sunny. My point is—writing is a priority, and I make it clear to everyone around me that writing time is nonnegotiable. It’s not that I’m a superhero. I’m just very disciplined, for one thing, and for another, I need to write. If I don’t, it’s like not exercising. I just get antsy to do it.

  Were all these days stellar examples of drafting at its finest? Absolutely not. I can write crap just like everyone else does sometimes. But I keep after it and rework it and just hammer away until the words feel right. Often, it’s slow going, and tedious. When I’m laying down a first draft, I can do only about six to ten pages a day. When I revise those pages, the first trip through is usually no more than ten pages a day. Then it’s fifteen. Then it’s twenty. After my editor reads the manuscript, I’ll go through it again and again, doing no more than twenty-five pages a day. If I’m hitting copy edits, maybe I’ll do forty. For galleys? It’s hard for me to do more than fifty or seventy-five.

  The thing is, I don’t write fast, I write long—which means I just put the hours in.

  My normal day starts when I get to the computer upstairs around eight. I write for two hours. Take a break to make more coffee (during which I sometimes check e-mail downstairs), then go back up for another two hours. After that I run and come back and spend the rest of the day editing and dealing with business-related stuff. This all changes, however, if I’m under deadline—which means nothing except a run takes me away from the computer.

  I do not have Internet access on either computer I write on, and I strongly urge folks, if they can afford the luxury, to draw that line and keep Web and e-mail distraction far, far, far away from their writing machines. See, for me, the writing uses a very specific part of my brain. If I stop working to deal with other issues, it can be a struggle to get back to the zone I was in before I put on my business head.

  No one goes up into my working space except my dog (who’s always welcome) and my husband (who’s usually welcome). I don’t describe it anywhere, and there are no pictures of it. I will say that it is extremely uncluttered and has a tremendous amount of light. I think part of the reason I’m so territorial about the physical space is that keeping the real world out helps me to focus on what’s in my head. I’m also by nature, as I said, rather private, and the writing is very personal to me—so I’m quite protective of it.

  In addition to my agent and my editor (and all the spectacular folks at my publisher’s who are incredible), I work with a lot of absolutely amazing people. My personal assistant makes sure everything runs smoothly and keeps me in line by being thoroughly unimpressed by any of the J. R. Ward stuff and liking me for me (well, most of the time it’s about our friendship—sometimes I drive her insane and she stays only because she loves my dog). My research assistant is a walking, talking Brotherhood encyclopedia who can find obscure pieces of knowledge and know-how with amazing alacrity—he’s also endlessly patient with me and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I also have a six-foot-ten-inch consigliere with a metal fetish—because everyone who writes about vampires needs one of those—and a woman who, even when six months pregnant, is willing to hump bags around hotel lobbies and go to conferences and make sure the trains run on time (we call her the APA).

  My critique partner, Jessica Andersen (who writes fabulous paranormals), and I met like eight years ago, and we’ve been through a lot of ups and downs (the downs are what we call roadkill periods). She writes plot-driven stories and I’m into character sketches, so we don’t have a thing in common when it comes to material—which is one of the reasons I think we work so well together. I call her my CP, but because I don’t really share my content much, she’s more like a brain trust. I run a lot of business as well as writing issues by her, and she never fails to give me good advice.

  My two assistants run the J. R. Ward message boards and the BDB Yahoo! Group and work with a tremendous team of volunteer moderators, most of whom have been with the Brothers from the very beginning. Our mods are amazing, and I�
�m so grateful for what they do just because they like the books.

  Everything’s a team effort. And I couldn’t get the time and space to write like I do without the help of these folks.

  Usually my days end around nine at night, when my husband and I get to spend a little time together before we pass out and get up and do it all over again. The truth is, I’m actually kind of boring. I’m mostly in my head all of the time— writing consumes my life, and the solitary existence nourishes me as nothing else could or has: I’m happiest at the computer by myself with my dog at my feet and it’s been that way since day one.

  I kind of believe writers are born, not made—but that’s not specific to writing. I think it’s true of athletes and mathematicians and musicians and artists and engineers and the hundred million other endeavors that humans pursue. And in all my life, I believe the single best thing that’s ever happened to me, aside from having the mother I do, is that I found my niche and have been able to make a living out of doing what I love (my husband has had a huge hand in this whole publishing thing, so I thank him for that).

  Now, before I nancy out completely and get all mushy with gratitude, let’s talk about Phury.

  I have always seen Phury as a hero. From day one. I’d also been aware all along that his book was going to be about addiction—which was going to be tricky. To be honest, I was very concerned about the heroin thing. I remember, when I got the image of Phury passed out next to the toilet in that bathroom, going, Oh, God, no . . . I can’t write that. How are people going to be able to see him as a hero if he shoots up and ODs? And my problems weren’t just about him doing it, either.

  The thing is, heroes are not always right, but they are always strong. Even if they tear up or break down, the context that brings them to that state is so overwhelming that we excuse them for their brief unraveling. With Phury abusing red smoke and exhibiting an addict’s need to protect his habit (with all the lying that implies), I was really concerned that if I didn’t portray him correctly, readers would view him as weak, instead of tortured.

  Tortured is okay for heroes. Weak, in terms of constitution, is really not.

  I think it’s understandable that Phury has some serious problems getting through the day. Considering all the stuff with Zsadist, and the complex interweave of guilt and sadness and panic that Phury’s had to live with all these years, the red smoke was a way of self-medicating his feelings. The first step to depicting him sympathetically was bringing the Wizard out before the readers so they had an idea of what Phury was trying to shut up with all the blunt rolling and lighting. Once again, like V’s actions at the war camp, it was all about context.

  The Wizard is the voice that drives Phury’s addiction, and it lives in Phury’s head:

  In his mind’s eye, the wizard appeared in the form of a Ring-wraith standing in the midst of a vast gray wasteland of skulls and bones. In its proper British accent, the bastard made sure that Phury never forgot his failures, the pounding litany causing him to light up again and again just so he didn’t go into his gun closet and eat the muzzle of a forty.

  You didn’t save him. You didn’t save them. The curse was brought upon them all by you. The fault is yours . . . the fault is yours. . . .

  —LOVER ENSHRINED, pp. 5-6

  The next thing that needed to be shown was Phury beginning to realize that he is an addict. For him to be a hero, he had to conquer his drug use, and the first step of recovery is recognizing you have a problem. The initial inkling for him comes when he and a lesser are looking for some privacy to fight downtown and they interrupt a drug sale. When it looks as if the transaction won’t go through, the desperate buyer ends up attacking the dealer, killing him and cleaning him out before taking off:

  The rank joy on the addict’s face was a total head nailer. The guy was clearly on the express train to one hell of a bender, and the fact that it was a free fix was only a small part of the buzz. The real boon was the lush ecstasy of super-surplus.

  Phury knew that orgasmic rush. He got it every time he locked himself in his bedroom with a big fat pouch of red smoke and a fresh pack of rolling papers.

  —LOVER ENSHRINED, p. 47

  Identifying with another addict was the start for Phury. But things had to get worse before they got better:

  “Am I still a Brother?”

  The king just stared at the dagger—which gave Phury the three-word answer: in name only.

  —LOVER ENSHRINED, p. 87

  Phury’s getting the boot from the Brotherhood was not just about his addiction, but also about his other method for dealing with his emotions—torturing lessers before he kills them.

  This was, originally, something I thought Zsadist was doing. I even alluded to it on the message board. Except I was wrong. It was Phury who was cutting up slayers before stabbing them—which is pretty hard-core. Funny, when I saw the scenes, I just thought that Phury, the nice one, the kind one, wouldn’t do something as base and cruel as torture. But here’s the thing—and I think to some degree it’s one of the points of Phury’s book: Even people who dress well, come from titularly good backgrounds, and look put-together can be totally unhinged on the inside.

  Speaking of backgrounds, a word on Cormia. The parallels between her and Marissa are obvious. Both are high-stationed females suffering under the load of social expectations they were born into—and both transform themselves, becoming agents not only of their own liberation, but of others’ as well (the vote at the Council meeting and her work at Safe Place for Marissa; helping Phury to transform the Chosen for Cormia).

  As a couple, I think Phury and Cormia work on a lot of levels, and in this passage I think she sums up her side of the connection well:

  . . . But that wasn’t what really compelled her. He was the epitome of all that she knew to be of worth: He was focused always on others, never on himself. At the dinner table, he was the one who inquired after each and every person, following up about injuries and stomach upsets and anxieties large and small. He never demanded any attention for himself. Never drew the conversation to something of his. Was endlessly supportive.

  If there was a hard job, he volunteered for it. If there was an errand, he wanted to run it. If Fritz staggered under the weight of a platter, the Primale was the first out of his chair to help. From all that she’d overheard at the table, he was a fighter for the race and a teacher of the trainees and a good, good friend to everyone.

  He truly was the proper example of the selfless virtues of the Chosen, the perfect Primale. And somewhere in the seconds and hours and days and months of her stay here, she had veered from the path of duty into the messy forest of choice. She now wanted to be with him. There was no had to, must do, need to.

  —LOVER ENSHRINED, p. 18

  Of course, this puts her in direct conflict with her role as First Mate—who under the traditions of the Chosen must share the Primale with her sisters. This clash between Cormia’s upbringing and who she is and what she truly wants is the core of what she struggles with, not only romantically but individually.

  On Phury’s side, I think that in addition to the instinctual bonding thing he has going on, Cormia really sticks by him. She is incredibly steadfast and accepting, and the two of them go through a lot. She is also instrumental in his recovery—more on this later.

  Phury’s decent into the dark hell of his addiction truly bottoms out after he’s with Cormia sexually. The scene where he takes Cormia’s virginity was a hard one to write, because I knew I had to be very careful with what I saw, and I didn’t want there to be any confusion: Cormia absolutely wanted what happened to go down, but Phury, in his haste, truly believed he had hurt her.

  There is nothing sexy about rape. Period.

  Phury’s misconception about his actions drives him right into the Wizard’s playground. He’d had a near miss with heroin already (in Lover Awakened), and I suppose his doing H was inevitable, given his addiction and his emotional instability. It did break my heart, howeve
r:

  This shit was definitely not red smoke. There was no mellow easing, no polite knock on the door before the drug stepped into his brain. This was an all-guns-blazing assault with a battering ram, and as he threw up, he reminded himself that what he’d gotten was what he’d wanted.

  Dimly, in the far background of his consciousness, he heard the wizard start laughing. . . . heard his addiction’s cackling satisfaction get rolling even as the heroin took over the rest of his mind and body.