Evolution

I love the evolution of a story. 

Sometimes, for me,  it begins with a voice.Others, its just a spark on an idea. As I listen, and invest my time into the idea, it grows. It becomes a world with places, people, and events. It develops a past, a present and a future. Its inhabitants get families,  friends,  jobs. They have regrets and flaws and hopes and dreams just like anyone else. It becomes their story and they tell it. I just listen and write it all down.

I recently began Maybe Tomorrow.  This story began with Darcy. It began with a what if? It began with butterflies  and fairy cakes.  It began with Darcy being celebrated for her achievements in the field.  It began with Darcy running into the man she left to chase butterflies. It began with a kiss on a rooftop and a strike of lightning. Awww swoon. It began with Darcy discovering she was sick and she was going to die.

But it was Keon's voice that was stronger.Keon who told me when and how they met. How she captivated him and threw him of his destined path. How they loved and lost. And it was Keon who told me their story. He broke my heart and made me cry. For he's never stopped loving Darcy and now fate brought her back into his life, death is ripping her away. And he told me he was her doctor he was the one to break the news. So this story became Keon's and Keon's alone.

You know it's funny, the evolution of a story.  Because Darcy isnt happy with the way Keon is telling their story. Hates the way she is being presented. So now I hear Darcy. There are things she wants to do and things she needs to say. So maybe it's not just Keon's story after all?

Like I said, I love the evolution of a story. I love the way the characters take this spark of an idea, bring it to life, and make it their own. I love not quite knowing if the path I'm on is the one I'll stay on right to the very end.

My entire story has changed since the first time I met Darcy and Keon. It's still very much two broken hearts fighting to forgive, fighting for closure, fighting to overcome the inevitable need for acceptance. But what is their fate?

I've Pictured Your Death a Thousand Times

I was going to post this a couple of weeks ago ... this character has a firm grip on my heart and isn't letting go!  He's the male lead from a single title which has been floating around in my mind but not going anywhere and then suddenly he was there! I ended up writing a very interesting and intimate scene that I was going to share it with you until my internet crash. And then when I woke up the following morning, he was there again and he was saying "I've pictured your death a thousand times".

I simply had to share what followed. Then my internet crashed. I guess you weren't meant to see inside Maybe Tomorrow at that time. But then I planned the entire novel and Keon and his entire family have me very much enthralled. He knows he's next on the list when Behind Closed Doors goes back to my very lovely editor.

 Maybe Tomorrow

Does a heart ever really heal from its first break?

On an unusually hot night in late September ER Doctor Keon McGowan is called away from a family gathering to a hospital emergency. Amongst his patients that night is a blast from his past he’d rather forget. He’ll certainly never forgive butterfly hunter Darcia Vilmere for the circumstances that left him a single father while she chased butterflies through the Amazon Rainforest.

Coming face to face with the woman who broke his heart after all this time leaves Keon exposed to the realization he never fully healed from it. But any chance of finding closure is ripped away when Darcy’s grave prognosis forces Keon to play by the rules. Their conversations are privileged. And then Darcy chooses to die amongst her beloved butterflies. Will Keon let her go one last time? Or will he fight for the tomorrow they may not have?

Maybe Tomorrow is an emotional journey of love caught between fate and destiny.

If you were on Facebook yesterday you'll have seen some of this already. I shared some of this chapter in my brief update. But I wanted to share some more with you. Here's some of what I've been working on while the migraine was being a nuisance and frying my brain.

Unedited excerpt

"I've pictured your death a thousand times." Keon confessed.

His whisper carried across the warm night air. He knew she'd heard him. Her response shivered across her broken expression before taking an age to die inside her dampened eyes. 

He didn't regret it. But Darcy still didn't take her attention from the city streets below. Keon hated seeing her like this. The Darcy he knew, the one he’d tried to pretend had never existed for the last ten years, was vibrant and full of the same elegant spirit as the creatures she sort. Her enthusiasm for the very thing that broke them apart could transform a conference room full of boring academics into rowdy students. Eccentric her peers called her. Infuriating, more like. It was impossible to pretend Darcy didn't exist.

But the woman sat before him, she wasn't the same woman who traipsed across Africa and Malaysia and wherever else she'd been in search of adventure. This woman, she hadn't stopped hugging her knees in the twenty minutes he’d stood trying to convince her all was not lost. Not even to wipe the tears from her cheeks.

"You know" Keon stepped closer "you'd trip over one of your own moth traps, fall down a big hole and disappear into oblivion. Or you’d overreach with your blasted butterfly net and go over a jagged cliff edge. Or maybe you'd wander into a cave of hibernating bears or have something big and heavy fall out of the sky like a... like a..."

Words failed him and Keon felt as lost on this roof top as she was. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Life wasn't supposed to hand him everything he'd every wanted on a silver platter including his desire to see Darcy on her knees and practically at his feet all on the same day. And he certainly wasn't supposed to still care what happened to her. Thank God she wasn't listening to him. 

Those dampened cocoa eyes turned towards him for the first time since he'd disturbed her and the small lift at the corner of her lips hit him like a punch in his gut. "Like an anvil?" She suggested and then a quite chuckle bubbled in her throat. "You still watching kids' cartoons Keon?"

"Yeah" He scoffed at the remark. It was nothing to be ashamed of. "Perks of being a parent." He shrugged ignoring the way her eyes widened at that revealing bit of news. So she didn't know her parents had brought Lily to him after Darcy disappeared ten years ago? That explained why she'd never been in touch after she went back into the field leaving nothing more than signed adoption papers on her hospital bed five days after giving birth but it didn't explain why she didn't didn't tell him about their little girl in the first place.

Even the chilling memories from the past couldn't douse the warmth he felt towards her right now. Sure, his hatred for her and what she'd done to him and Lily ran deep but... a long slow and painful death? He didn't want this for Darcy. Maybe it was the shock of diagnosing her illness was why he wished so much that he was wrong.

"A thousand times huh?" She whispered.

"Give or take" Keon shrugged "another thousand." She smiled and he lowered himself to sit on the wall beside her. "It had to be something funny and ironic because..." He closed his eyes and let go of the sigh he didn't realise he'd been holding on to for ten whole years. "Well, you left me." He said turning to look at her, really look at the woman she'd become over the years they'd been apart. "You left me to chase those damn butterflies around the Amazon Rainforest." He paused for a moment and then added "Maybe one day, you'll tell me why."

Well, what do you think?

Erin

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