The Midnight Breed Series Companion Page 7

  But Darker After Midnight proved to be a bigger book than I anticipated. It took longer for me to get it just right. When I finally turned it in to my editor, she told me it was the best one in the series so far. It was a big book, she said, with a big book feel. And because of that, Random House was going to release it in hardcover. Which meant an even further delay in publication than if the book had come out as a mass market original.

  Deeper Than Midnight released at the end of June, 2011. It debuted on the New York Times at what remains my highest showing on that list, the #3 spot. Since my last release, the Times had recently begun tracking ebook sales in addition to print, and Deeper Than Midnight also placed high on the ebook/print combined, coming in at #5. It stayed for two weeks on the New York Times, USA Today (peaking at #12) and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists.

  It was around this time that Random House also made an offer for my next two books. I had already decided I was having too much fun with the Midnight Breed world to let go now—and I also had this germ of an idea for a second story arc that could feature an all-new generation of Order warriors in a near-future setting.

  As we went to work on a contract for what would become Books 11 and 12 of the series, I also pitched the idea of the series Companion you’re reading now. My editor liked the concept—and the plan to include Gideon and Savannah’s story as an original novella—but ultimately Random House and I could not agree on how to publish the book. They wanted to do it ebook only, with the potential of a limited-run hardcover release if, and only if, sales of the ebook were robust enough.

  I was adamant that the Companion release in both print and ebook formats. And besides, with the industry changing so rapidly, giving authors more and more freedom to publish their work independently, I decided to decline their offer and table the Companion until I could do it on my own.

  A Taste of Midnight

  BOOK 9.5

  (novella)

  Romantic Leads

  Danika MacConn

  Malcolm MacBain, aka Brannoc

  Plot Summary

  A widowed Breedmate of the Order, raising her infant son alone after the death of her warrior mate in action, seeks the solace of a Christmas in Edinburgh, Scotland—her beloved’s homeland—never dreaming the holiday escape would bring her face-to-face with a deadly Breed crime boss and the dark, mysterious henchman who serves to protect him...someone she once knew—and could have loved—a long time ago.

  Primary Story Locations

  MacConn family Darkhaven estate outside Edinburgh, Scotland

  Various places in and around Edinburgh, Scotland

  Playlist

  Who Wants to Live Forever by Queen

  Wherever You Will Go by The Calling

  I Will Stay by We Are The Fallen

  Story Background

  This ebook original novella came about quickly and unexpectedly. I’d recently completed the manuscript for Darker After Midnight—which was to be my first hardcover release, in January 2012—and I’d just unsuccessfully pitched the concept of a Midnight Breed Series Companion featuring a novella for Gideon and Savannah.

  As we were in the midst of contract negotiations for Books 11 and 12, my editor asked about the possibility of me writing an ebook original novella to be used to fill the time gap between Deeper Than Midnight and Darker After Midnight, the idea being the new novella would also help promote the upcoming hardcover. They wanted to include an excerpt from Darker After Midnight at the end of the novella, and later on, after the book was reissued in mass market paperback, the novella would then be included as bonus material in that release.

  It all sounded great to me…until they mentioned they wanted me to give them Gideon and Savannah’s story to use as the ebook original novella.

  Well, no way. Out of the question. As longtime readers of the series know, Gideon and Savannah met and fell in love thirty years before the timeline of Kiss of Midnight. To release their story on its own toward the big finale in Book 10 would make no sense in the fabric of the series. And on top of that, I wasn’t about to pull their story—a true series prequel—out of the Companion, which is where I felt it belonged for many reasons.

  I said no, and I figured that was the end of the ebook original conversation. But Random House really wanted me to write something to fill that void, so I started thinking about secondary characters and storylines that could exist if not within the overarching plot already in progress, then running parallel to it.

  My first choice was Danika. And since the ebook novella would be coming out in early December, I decided to write a holiday story and set it somewhere other than where the series had been so far. Naturally, that sent my imagination to Conlan MacConn’s homeland of Scotland. Edinburgh, to be specific.

  In A Taste of Midnight, I wanted to craft a story that I hoped would respect the relationship Danika and Conlan enjoyed while he was alive, yet introduce a passion that readers could believe in, especially considering the short storytelling timeframe a novella dictates. Danika had to fall in love fast and deeply, so I decided to give her Malcolm MacBain, a Breed male she and Con both knew very well, a very long time ago. Both Danika and Mal had lost people they loved, so giving them a happily-ever-after together seemed fitting to me.

  In A Taste of Midnight, we also meet a new and intriguing Breed male from the Enforcement Agency named Thane. Although I don’t have a storyline in mind for this black-haired, ruggedly handsome and mysterious man, I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of him.

  A Taste of Midnight released in ebook December, 2011. It is the only Midnight Breed story not available in print on its own in the United States. Readers can only find this story in ebook, and in the back of the mass market paperback of Darker After Midnight. Danika and Malcolm’s story is available as a standalone in Germany through Egmont LYX in both paperback and ebook.

  Darker After Midnight

  BOOK 10

  Romantic Leads

  Sterling Chase

  Tavia Fairchild

  Plot Summary

  Separated from his brethren of the Order and struggling with an addiction that threatens to consume him, Sterling Chase has fallen far from grace—but he soon finds his best hope for redemption in beautiful, mysterious Tavia Fairchild, a woman unlike any other the world has ever seen.

  Primary Story Locations

  Order's compound headquarters in undisclosed location in Boston

  Lazaro Archer's Darkhaven in northern Maine

  Dragos's island lair off coast of Maine

  Various locations in and around Washington, D.C.

  Playlist

  Down with the Sickness by Disturbed

  One Last Breath by Creed

  Awakening by The Damning Well

  Bodies by Drowning Pool

  In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel

  Story Background

  After plotting out the bones of this story, the tenth of the series, back around the time I was writing Midnight Rising, when I finally approached the first chapter of Darker After Midnight it was with a mix of excitement, pride, trepidation, and even a bit of sadness.

  As Lucan, Gideon and Tegan—the Order’s longest-standing members of the cadre based in Boston—began to detonate the explosives that would seal the compound forever, I was right there with them, knowing it had to be done, yet not really sure what the future would hold for the Order and their world once this chapter closed.

  I knew the series would continue because I had just signed with Random House for the next two books, but I didn’t know if readers would be interested in a new generation of characters and a twenty-year leap into the future where the Breed no longer hid from mankind, but was struggling to find a place of peace among them. Nevertheless, the first arc of the Midnight Breed series was drawing to a close right here and now, and I had a lot of threads to finish off in Darker After Midnight.

  Chief among them was the resolution of Sterling Chase’s fall from grace and his ultimate redempti
on and healing. Things with Chase had gone from bad to worse as his story opened here. Through his bad attitude and reckless behavior, he had lost the respect and friendship of his brethren in the Order. His spiral toward blood addiction was dancing him closer to the edge of going full Rogue. And of his own volition, he was now in human police custody, being charged in a shooting at a prominent Massachusetts senator’s private residence.

  The very last thing Chase needed was to race to the rescue of a beautiful young woman who had stepped into the crosshairs of Dragos’s escalating war against the Order. Then again, maybe that’s just what he needed. And I’d been waiting all this time—six books’ time—for Chase to come face-to-face with Tavia Fairchild and the big secret that her very existence would finally bring to light.

  One thing I felt had been sorely missing from the Midnight Breed series from fairly early on was the possibility of a female Breed. Going into the series as first a trilogy, then a sextet, it wasn’t long before I started chafing against my own world rule that all of the Breed were born exclusively male. But I’d also had a world rule stating that the race as a whole forbade biological and technological interference when it came to conception and birth. Aha!

  So natural births produced male babies every time, but had anyone ever attempted to fiddle with biology? Certainly someone like Dragos would not be opposed to breaking Breed law to further his own mad plans….

  So, back at Book 4, when I took a leap of faith and assumed the series might run as long and as far as I wanted to take it, I decided that one of the final twists in the overarching story arc would be the existence of a female vampire. But not just a female Breed, a genetic splicing of Ancient and Breedmate DNA, which would give this first-of-her-kind female the ability to blend in among humans—so long as she maintained strict medical monitoring and treatments.

  She would be as strong and as powerful as any Gen One, yet have the ability to walk in the daylight and consume human food. And if she reproduced, it opened up the very real possibility of more females among the Breed—perhaps even a daywalker or two in the future.

  Introducing Tavia to the series—writing the scene where Chase first realizes what she is—was one of my favorite parts of Darker After Midnight. And it was awfully fun introducing Tavia to the other members of the Order in all her hissing, vampiric glory, when Tegan, Hunter, Niko and Renata arrive at Mathias Rowan’s Darkhaven in Boston to haul Chase in for some Breed-style intervention back at headquarters.

  But Tavia wasn’t the only big surprise in store as the series rolled toward its climax.

  In Darker After Midnight, Jenna reveals through her link to the Ancient’s memories that the otherworlders were not the only preternatural beings on Earth at the time of their crash-landing thousands of years ago. There was another powerful race of immortals—Atlanteans—with whom the Ancients had been fighting in a private war of their own. Some of these Atlanteans, despite being forbidden by their queen to mate with humans, had produced hybrid offspring of their own on Earth….

  Daughters born with the Atlantean symbol of a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon.

  This explanation of the Breedmates’ origins was, I’ll freely admit, an afterthought that came to me only when a reader at one of my events in Germany during my first book tour there pointed out the lack of logic in this part of the series. It bothered her, the fact that Breedmates were somehow, inexplicably special and could be born with different genetic makeup than any other human female. This reader wanted the “why” of it, and I came home determined to find an answer that not only made sense, but that would fit within the already established lore and text of the series.

  Now, you might be scratching your head and thinking, Altanteans?

  But go back to Kiss of Midnight. You’ll find a line in the book mentioning the various civilizations that the Ancients wiped out after their arrival on Earth. One of them was Atlantis. All I had to do was find a way to connect Atlantis to the Breedmates, make sure I hadn’t written myself into any corners with the histories of the Breedmates already introduced in the series, and also figure out why no one in the story world thus far would know about this connection.

  The answers to all of those questions finally came to light in Darker After Midnight. Even more exciting to me, as I was putting those pieces together a few books back, I realized I also had the basis for some intriguing new characters and storylines—even a powerful new enemy, once Dragos was given his just desserts. I imagined all kinds of possibilities for the continuation—the evolution—of the Midnight Breed series, taking it in a whole new, exciting direction.

  Which brings me to what I feel is the biggest twist in Darker After Midnight: the outing of the Breed to mankind.

  This is another of those events in the series that I’d been writing toward since around the fourth book. One of the worst things to happen to a long-running series is stagnation. While I hadn’t gotten bored writing Midnight Breed books yet, and certainly not when I was just halfway through the eventual ten-book storyline, I didn’t want to fall into the trap of keeping my series on artificial life support just because it was a success and readers wanted more.

  So, I started planning early for a way to shake things up. I wanted to give the series a finite resolution, while still leaving the door open in case I did want to take it further. One way to do that was to kill my darlings. No, not literally. But remember how I said in another section that happy characters make for boring fiction? The same can be said of your story world.

  Granted, removing such a large piece of what made the Midnight Breed series popular with readers—the secret, hidden aspect of life among the Breed—was a risk. But I believe it was the most authentic way to close the original story arc. After all, Dragos wouldn’t go down without one hell of a fight. And he’d given plenty of evidence for anyone to assume he would be just mad enough to orchestrate a retaliation so awful and irrevocable.

  Although the world they once knew no longer exists, at the end of Darker After Midnight, the Order and their mates have made it through the fire, a little battered perhaps, but unbroken. There is new life already arrived, and still more on the way.

  And in the end, for all the darkness, there is also hope.

  Darker After Midnight released in hardcover at the end of January, 2012, debuting on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list at #9, and on the ebook and print combined list at #8. It remained on the New York Times list for two weeks, and on the USA Today bestseller list for two weeks as well, where it reached a career high for me of #17.

  Novella: A Touch of Midnight (Gideon & Savannah's story)

  DEDICATION

  For every reader who asked me to share this story.

  Thank you for loving Gideon and Savannah. I hope this glimpse into their past will make you love them even more.

  CHAPTER 1

  Boston University

  October, 1974

  Savannah Dupree turned the silver urn in her gloved hands, studying its intricate engravings through the bruise-colored tarnish that dulled the 200-year-old work of art. The floral motif tooled into the polished silver was indicative of the Rococo style of the early and mid-1700s, yet the design was conservative, much less ornate than most of the examples shown in the reference materials lying open on the study lab table in front of her.

  Removing one of the soft white cotton curator’s gloves meant to protect the urn from skin oils during handling, Savannah reached for one of the books. She flipped through several pages of photographed art objects, drinking vessels, serving dishes and snuff boxes from Italy, England and France, comparing their more elaborate styles to that of the urn she was trying to catalogue. She and the three other freshman Art History students seated in the university’s archive room with her had been hand-picked by Professor Keaton to earn extra credit in his class by helping to log and analyze a recent estate donation of Colonial furnishings and artifacts.

  She wasn’t blind to the fact that the s
ingle professor had selected only female students for his after-hours extra credit project. Savannah’s roommate, Rachel, had been ecstatic to have been chosen. Then again, the girl had been campaigning for Keaton’s attention since the first week of class. And she’d definitely gotten noticed. Savannah glanced toward the professor’s office next door, where the dark-haired man now stood at the window, talking on the phone, yet staring with blatant interest at pretty, red-haired Rachel in her tight, low-cut sweater and micro-miniskirt.

  “Isn’t he a fox?” she whispered to Savannah, a row of thin metal bangle bracelets clinking musically as Rachel reached up to hook her loose hair behind her ear. “He could be Burt Reynolds’ brother, don’t you think?”

  Savannah frowned, skeptical. She glanced over at the lean man with the shoulder-length hair and overgrown moustache, and the mushroom-brown corduroy suit and open-necked satin shirt. A zodiac sign pendant glinted from within a thick nest of exposed chest hair. Fashionable or not, the look didn’t do a thing for Savannah. “Sorry, Rach. I’m not seeing it. Unless Burt Reynolds has a brother in the porno business. Plus, he’s too old for you. He must be close to forty, for crying out loud.”

  “Shut up! I think he’s cute.” Rachel giggled, crossing her arms under her breasts and tossing her head in a move that had Professor Keaton leaning closer to the glass, practically on the verge of drooling. “I’m gonna go see if he wants to check my work. Maybe he’ll ask me to stay after school and clean his erasers or something.”