by JA Huss
lol. I swear to God, that was me.
I’m sure there are some people who read my books because they enjoy the simplicity of my sentences, I almost never totally fuck a story up, and they usually come out the other end satisfied. Right? It’s just a good book to most people.
But then… there are the fans. People who do scream GAH! when Five shows up, or Oliver shows up. Or Ariel or Ford’s name. Whatever.
I try not to “write to” any one group. In other words I’m not aiming for only fans when I write a story. Or only new readers or casual readers. I try to balance it out. I like to give you a hint of a “bigger world” without overwhelming you and I do that with these cool little Stephen-King-esque call-backs, which is a literary device called allusion.
Allusion is when information is implied. In most cases artists, like filmmakers and authors, use allusion to redirect the watcher or reader to the world outside the story—something that exists in the world of the reader. Something big or little. Sometimes it’s nothing but intellectual minutia used to pat all the other intellectuals on the back and assure them they are smart.
But I mostly use it as a way to redirect readers to the overarching storyline of other books I’ve written where the characters or plot might cross, however briefly.
If the reader doesn’t understand the reference then my words are merely decoration. If you read Wasted Lust as a standalone (and you can, if you want. I swear, all the information you need for that story is in there) then you miss the allusion and you end up with a very different perspective of the story.
Some readers don’t like internal allusion. But fans usually dig it. So the allusion is for the fans even when I’m doing my best to write for both the reader and the fan.
This book was kinda hard to write because of the time line. Mysterious has been in all the books, but he had huge parts in Mr. Romantic and Mr. Corporate. He’s much more than a side character. So when it came time to write his story I wanted to account for all those actions.
If you picked up Mr. Mysterious first and read the series out of order you might be thinking – this is not a standalone. I sort of agree—BUT—I did give you everything you needed to know for THIS book. So I consider it a standalone. Yes, you’re missing info, but what the fuck could I do? That info is all in the other books. You get the gist of it, right? If you need details go back and read the other Mister books. Start from the beginning this time.
One cool side effect, if you will, of writing this way is that there’s almost two ways to read some of my stories.
There are lots of places to jump into the Rook and Ronin world. You could start at the beginning with Tragic and read them all in order. In that case you get all the allusion and you get it fed to you in the “standard” order. But you could also start at Dirty, Dark, and Deadly—read those three books, then go back and read Rook and Ronin and you’ve gonna have those Gah! moments when you realize how they connect. You can also start with the Ford books. Or Meet Me In The Dark, or Wasted Lust. Each of those books can be interpreted two ways because of the allusion.
Some people like to connect the dots… some people don’t. I try to keep it all balanced and hopefully I’m doing a good job.
I also hope people don’t get too sick of me going back and forth in time. I don’t use this “literary device” lightly. In other words I don’t do it just for the fuck of it. I only do it when it’s necessary to tell the story a certain way. Usually I’m hiding something from you—I write romantic suspense, after all.
But I remember getting a complaint about it in 321 from someone. They said the time jumping was confusing. But the only time jumping in that book was in the prologue and the last few chapters. If that is confusing I can’t help people with that. It really wasn’t hard to follow. There was almost no allusion in that book at all. It’s a straight standalone.
BUT… this book was sorta difficult. So if this time line confuses you, sorry. I try my best to keep the story as simple as possible but sometimes this is just how the shit shakes out.
Story comes first and this story required a full accounting of Paxton Vance’s actions in the other books as it relates to the plot in his book.
When I first envisioned Mysterious, while writing Mr. Perfect, I really didn’t know who “his girl” was. I think I told you that in the last EOBS for Mr. Corporate. That I plot the books when I’m nearing the end of the prior book. But I figured out Cindy Shrike was Mrs. Mysterious while I was writing Mr. Romantic. God, it just fit into the story so perfectly. And while I was writing the end of Mysterious I was thinking about Five. Because Five is in this world now and he’s in another world too. Even more so that Oliver and the rest of this gang because he was born at the end of the Taut book and he had his own epilogue at the end of the Guns book. And I will say this about Princess Rory—I wasn’t sure if I wanted to mention her at all. If you’ve been a fan for a while you know I’ve been promising a Five Book for two years now. More than two years, actually. And my reason for not writing it yet was because I just didn’t have the right story figured out.
But it all came together for me while writing Mr. Mysterious and that book will be out next year.
As far as Oliver Shrike goes… well, I already know who Mr. Match’s girl is and I know what kind of guy Oliver turned out to be after his whole Mr. Brown experience, so we’re good to go there. He’s a dirty motherfucker, ladies. So be prepared. His book gets epically erotic in chapter one.
Two months. That’s all you have to wait. Just two more months and all the mysteries will be solved.
Well… sorta.
;)
Sorry if I have typos is this EOBS. It’s kinda late right now. ARCs are going out tomorrow morning and I gotta get the paperback formatted before bed. So I’m not even gonna re-read this. I’m just hitting the Go Button.
If you’d like to hang out with me on Facebook I have a private fan group called Shrike Bikes. Just ask to join and someone will approve you as soon as they see it. I am in that group chatting with the fans every single day and we have a lot of giveaways and fun stuff going all the time. Especially around release days. I usually do a takeover and give away all kinds of stuff related to the new release, so come on by and say hi.
If you enjoyed this book please consider leaving me a review where you purchased it. I’m still indie. And the success of each and every book I put out depends on readers like you leaving their thoughts and opinions about the story in a review.
Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and I’ll see you in the next book.
Julie
JA Huss
END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit (called the EOBS by me and my minions). This is book five in a series, so you Bombshells know the drill. I sorta think of this last chapter as like a little mini-review of my own books. Hahah.
So much to say about this series now that it’s complete. First of all, Five will be back in September 2017 for the rest of his story. I get so many messages about that, but it’s my own fault because I’ve been promising that story for more than two years now. But for reals, next September.
This EOBS I’m gonna talk about each book so let’s jump right in and start with someone who now feels like an old friend, Mr. Perfect.
When I first came up with the idea for this series I was thinking it would be a quick serial. Sorta like Social Media, but releasing one month apart instead of two weeks. But I quickly realized I’m not really a novella writer. I don’t write super long books at all. I think of all my romances, 321 is the longest and it only comes in at about 90,000 words. So it’s not that I always go long. I just have this process in my head about where each plot points fits and making that 50% plot point mark at 15,000 words instead of 40,000 just kills me. I can’t do it. It’s pretty difficult to build up to the 50% mark in only 15,000 words.
I knew pretty early in Mr. Perfect that my novella serial idea was bust and I just kept going like I usually do.
> Once I got over that whole mistake I started thinking about the sex scenes because let’s face it, when you’ve written as many sex scenes as I have you start to run out of ideas. So when the butter scene came up out of nowhere while I was writing I knew it completely ridiculous. But Ellie had already made herself out to be a completely ridiculous person by chapter six, so I embraced that butter scene and kept going. Fast forward a month to the night Jana Aston called me up while she was reading the ARC:
Ring, ring, ring.
Me: Hello?
Jana: Dude, that butter scene…
Me: Hahahahahahahhahahah
Jana: OMG, I’m picturing your reviews for this and I’m worried. I’m not even kidding.
Me: Hahahahahhahahhahhah
Jana: They’re all gonna write about this…
Me: Hahahhahahahahhahahah
Jana: Why are you laughing?
Me: I just don’t care anymore. Let them say whatever they want. I probably deserve it. I just do not care.
But Bombshells, if you’re in my Facebook fan Group, Shrike Bikes, then you know how much fucking joy we’ve gotten out of that butter scene. That alone was worth it. And every single time one of you guys posts a funny butter meme, I laugh all over again.
I did get plenty of one-star reviews for this series because I just don’t care what people think of my stories anymore. I got people saying the butter scene made them feel dirty and they needed to go to church. I had people accuse me (once again) of condoning rape because of Mr. Romantic’s fantasy. I’ve had people say I bored the hell out of them with Mr. Mysterious. (what? Like for real, if you hated Mr. Mysterious, just move along. lol. You are not my people).
None of that matters because there are people out there who like what I write. They get me. So I’m gonna keep going.
But the sex scenes man. I have a lot of ideas for the upcoming Turning Series because that’s ménage stuff. I’ve only done one ménage book. But bitches, I have written like thirty hetero-couple books and each one of them has between three and five sex scenes. And at least one of them has to be a sex scene that is not about the sex. It has to be about the feels. Let me tell you, it’s not easy to come up with Spencer fucking Veronica with paint in every book. Or Ford and Ashleigh having the “perfect date” in Vegas. Or James and Harper doing it in a bathroom in Death Valley while Sasha eats gummy worms out in that blazing hot Hummer.
It’s takes a lot of imagination to come up with something completely different for each book and even though I probably could write the same sex scene over and over again and people would still buy my books, I won’t. Because I’d disappoint you guys and I don’t want to do that. Even if it means some people won’t get it and some people will make stupid assumptions about my motivations, I only have one motivation.
Tell a good story.
There are plenty of books out there that don’t tell a good story and still have great sex scenes. Those authors can still sell a ton of books and I’m all for that. But that’s not why I write. I write because I have a story I want to share with you. I write because the only opinion about my story that matters is my own.
Writing, as a profession, as a way to pay bills and meet your basic needs, is very difficult. And I’m not talking about the competition or the marketing. I’m talking about the discipline it takes to actually finish, publish, and then do it all over again, and again, and again.
I see so many posts about author burn-out. They write too much, they hate marketing, they have no time for anything else. And if they fall behind on any of these things, people forget about them and move on to find another favorite author.
It’s a valid concern. And if authors get burned out on telling stories there’s really nothing you can do about that. You need a pretty good imagination to keep going as a writer and that imagination has to be limitless.
I work every day. Some days, like today, I will work sixteen hours, easy. I have to write this EOBS, I have to make links for the back of my eBooks for each distributor and upload files, I have a cover reveal for Taking Turns tomorrow so I need a blog post and I have to do all kinds of last minute things to my Rafflecopter giveaway. I have a media kit to send to Giselle for the Match blitz next week, I have to format my Mr. Match paperback and upload that to Createspace so I can order copies and fulfill the 100+ orders I took in October for signed Mister books. I have a lot of shit on my list today that has nothing at all to do with actual writing.
And yeah, that’s hard. But the one thing that keeps me going is the story. The end, in fact. There is no rush like getting to the end of your book and writing that last line, knowing it is perfect. Maybe there’s lots of imperfect things that come before that last line—maybe there’s twenty typos or autocorrect mistakes you didn’t catch or a plot hole or two—it doesn’t matter because you have that one thing that keeps you going.
The End.
I cannot imagine a time where I get burned out on writing The End.
But in order to get to the end you have favorite moments inside that story that keep you interested. The butter scene was one for me. So was Ellie’s little “tampon outburst”. And Mac’s scavenger hunt. That scavenger hunt was all the things that make me love a book. So this is the real reason why what people think about the butter scene doesn’t matter to me. It kept me going. It kept me interested and got me to the end.
In Mr. Romantic it was the way Nolan explained the “sex slap” using horse racing. It was the yellow dress and the yellow rope, and yeah, the ENTIRE rape fantasy scene which kept me going. My favorite chapter in Mr. Romantic is at the end of the fantasy when Nolan realizes what’s driving him. Why he’s the way he is. I love it. I could read that scene over and over again and never get tired.
In Mr. Corporate is was Victoria Arias. She took a lot of heat for her personality but looking back on Victoria, knowing now that she is the only thing that saved the Misters back on That Night (because she knew Corporate was never guilty—he had a witness), I love every spying moment, every sassy moment, every slapping moment about her. Victoria is the reason I love Mr. Corporate. She is standing in the middle of a world filled with vampires holding a crucifix, telling everyone to get the fuck behind her, she’s got this.
In Mysterious it was the Del Mar scene. Both the track and the house. I loved the fact that Paxton went out and got strawberries for Cindy, just so they could have a drink together. I loved the fight between Pax and Oliver over his baby sister. I loved Mr. Perfect’s chapter and his stupid dog, Scout.
In Mr. Match it was the first chapter. And how lucky is that? How many times do you write a book and you get the first chapter perfect? If you haven’t read the Rook & Ronin series it might not seem so perfect, but if you have, it is. And that first chapter, when Oliver is talking about his world, it’s the whole reason I kept going.
When I got to the “feels” sex scene in Mr. Match I was on the phone with Jana again, complaining about not having anything good in mind. I needed something more than sex at this point in the book and it took me days (days I did not have to spare) to come up with the Gimme more… gimme more… gimme more scene. And when I finished I was completely satisfied.
Aside from all the sex my books will typically have a pretty twisted plot. When I wrote about Corporate’s little treasure in his book I did it on faith. It felt right to me. How it was going to play a part in the final book never even entered my mind. “I’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
When I’m writing a series with a mystery running through all five books like it did in the Misters, I typically leave the solution to the mystery for later. And I do this because I like to have a framework that reigns me in. If you’ve read Meet Me In The Dark I talk about this a little in the EOBS. How Merc was in so many of the Dirty, Dark, and Deadly books, as well as the Rook & Ronin books, and how I had to sort of piece his past together using all those other story lines as the constraining framework.
It’s challenging for sure. But I just believe in the
story and go from there.
So when it finally came time to weave Mr. Corporate’s treasure into the end of Mr. Match, I couldn’t have been happier to look up “lost treasure” on the internet and find the RMS Republic. Which really was carrying gold meant for Russia and really did sink off the coast of Nantucket.
Insert huge smile here because I had already written in the gold, Nantucket, and the Russians.
It’s like that little piece of information was just waiting for me to go looking for it and add it to my story.
I can’t say much more about my writing process without sounding like a freak but this is how these stories come to me. One piece at a time until they add up to something more than I started with. Pieces of a puzzle I didn’t realize I was trying to put together, but which make perfect sense once I’m done. Fate, maybe.
The Misters took up almost my whole 2016 and I cannot think of a better way to spend ten months of my life. Even though it was stressful and I had to give up quite a few things to stay on track, it was completely one hundred percent worth it.
Yeah, the competition is hard and the marketing is a time suck. But when it’s all said and done I still have the end.
And it’s enough. It keeps me going.
I hope you enjoyed the end. I hope you got the answers you were looking for and if you think I left something out, I really didn’t. It’s in there, you just need to find it and form your own opinion. Not everything should be so cut and dry. I already know I’m going to get a hundred questions about the Smitten Kitten, but I left that out on purpose. Just another bit of fate, Princesses. Fate that fits, but I like the mystery.
AND LASTLY - The story actually has a prequel AND an epilogue.
The Prequel is called FIVE and the links for that can be found HERE
And the Epilogue is called Mr & Mrs and the links for that can be found HERE.
