How it all began.The 1st Manuscript

It's a very intimidating experience for a first time writer to stare at a blank document and type in Chapter 1. And then find all your wonderful ideas abandoned you. 

Cautiously you push on, type scenes you recall, dialogues and hope the flood gates open and the ideas come poring in and you can create a brilliant novel.

Nope, no such luck!

So, I wrote down the idea that had been growing in my mind for weeks.

What would a damned immortal do if he found his mate as she lay dying?

Macabre much?

Hell yeah!!! 

I love to throw my characters into the darkest, deepest hell and see what they do.

anyway, I'm digressing... here's what I wrote from that top line:

'He trawled the alleys, restless. The impeding sense of doom filled him as the icy kiss of winter slipped beneath his sweater to stroke his skin. He had to find whatever had his gut in a twist. His booted feet pounded on the wet asphalt, the sound reverberating in the empty alleyway, then he saw the broken figure of the human lying amidst the filth. His chest seized. He dropped to his knees and searched for a pulse, all he felt was a slight flicker as her heart gave out.

“No!” his roar echoed in the silent alley. He couldn’t lose her, not now, bitterness filled him as a devastating realization slammed into him. After millennia of roaming this realm, he’d found and lost his mortal mate in one second.'

Yes, yes, I know, it’s all very dramatic.

But something about his loneliness tugged at me, I had no choice but to give him his happily ever after.

He was neither demon nor god, or one of those divine haloed beings, but an angel of another kind... An Empyrean

And my Empyreans were born.

A race so perfect, they were damned by their very perfection.

By the time I finished writing Absolute Surrender, I limped away from my PC, battered, bruised and happy when it all came together...

Of course, it is nothing like what I started out with. But the thread’s of the idea is still there.

My hero takes on the Fates, goes to the ends of the Earth—or Hell in Aethan’s case and he flips off Heaven to get his mate back.

This mock-up cover was one my daughter did to spur me on, when the going got tough...