The new novel.
One night back in January of last year I was struggling with what to write next. Then Josh and Damian popped up. The published short story wasn’t exactly the way I’d originally thought out these characters.
You see, Scarred Souls has been through many revision in it’s lifetime. I first wrote it back in 2007 or 2008, and it turned into a 130K monstrosity. This novel was shared between three couples: Josh and Damian, Chad and Dion (from Measured Doses), and Spencer and Lesley (Damian’s co-workers).
When I started reading m/m romance I split the three couples into three stories, and again Josh and Damian went through several revisions and rewrites.
The now out of print short story.
When I wrote the published short story, I was quite happy with it. But I was still clouded by what I thought a m/m romance did need, especially when I wrote Yesterday’s Tears which also featured these two. I thought sex was expected in m/m stories, so I wrote them as such.
But it’s not really in Damian’s character. He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t want it, and he’s strong-willed enough not to be pushed into it. That’s who he really is. And Josh… Josh has been through so much in his life, and the aftereffects in the published stories just weren’t big enough.
Thus they came to me one night, wanting their story told how it was supposed to be. I made the decision to write the new version in first person point of view, and I do not regret it. They work better that way, the story works better, and I, personally, believe I write better that way.
So Scarred Souls has become a novel. Their experiences and the trauma they’ve suffered is the same, but the aftereffects is bigger, greater, more troublesome, and have more realistic aftereffects.And Damian finally embraces his own sexuality, in that he doesn’t have one.