I did a big whoopsie when I sent out the latest newsletter half an hour ago: the title was "Two characters that insisted on having their own stories."

And while I did include news on the $.99 Spring Break Sale for those two books, I completely forgot to include a discussion pertaining to the title.

Whoops.

I'm sure I've talked about this before (somewhere), but in case I haven't, and to correct that major oversight mentioned above, here we go...

While I was writing The Prophecy, the first Daughters of the People novel, I needed a group of Daughters for a particular scene near the Big Fight at the climax of the action plot. Here's a brief excerpt describing the Daughters:

Four other people were already on board, all immortal Daughters renowned for their skills as warriors. Alafair originally hailed from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. Brigid was also from what had become the British Isles. She smiled politely at Maya and James as they approached. Hawthorne’s fiery temper had led to more than one unfaithful man losing his head, and probably good riddance. The fourth Daughter, Greta, had immigrated to the Midwest with her immigrant grandchildren some hundred years before and had settled in the South after their deaths. Maya greeted each of them with a nod. Thank the Blessed Mother the director had been able to gather such a good group on what amounted to a moment’s notice.

Of all those immortal warriors, Hawthorne stuck in my head. I don't know why. Possibly because of her most common moniker (The Beheader), possibly because her back story is truly tragic.

I won't go into the latter here (because spoilers), but suffice it to say that she poked at me until I wrote her story, Tempered, which went on to become a finalist in the 2015 Maggie Award for Excellence in the Paranormal Romance category.

Now, like all the Daughters of the People books, Tempered was filled with unusual and interesting characters, including Hawthorne's beloved great-grandson, the inimitably sexy Levi Ewart. Whereas Hawthorne sort of stared icily at me from a corner of my mind until I broke down and wrote her story, Levi actively cajoled me.

On a daily basis. For weeks on end.

Finally, I gave in, as I usually do with characters, and started developing his story. Say Yes took seven months (!) to finish, in part because it was a side quest (it was written around other stories, in my spare time) and in part because it's just so dang long. This spinoff novel weighs in at a hefty 127,000 words and is, as far as I can tell, my longest story to date.

To be fair, Tempered reached a respectable 86,000 words itself and is, if I'm reading my records correctly, the longest Daughters of the People novel to date.

(As an aside, I expect War's Last Refuge, the final Daughters of the People novel, to reach at least 100,000 words in length. There's just so much going on in it! More on that later.)

Now, plenty of other characters insisted on having their own stories, or were so intriguing I just had to give them one. India Furia, for one, and I'm so terribly glad I gave in to her, too, and (eventually) wrote Redemption.

But that's a story for another day.

Please accept my most sincere apologies for not including this discussion in the newsletter, where it belonged.

Don't forget to pick up Tempered and Say Yes while the Spring Break Sale lasts!