Patti O'Shea | Risky Business

One of the things that satisfies me most about writing is exploring the characters’ fears, their hopes, and dreams. Each book has had something new for me and I’ve enjoyed stretching myself—and I’ve especially enjoyed torturing—um, I mean pushing—the hero and heroine. It isn’t always deliberate, but if I have a heroine who’s afraid she’s going to fall to the dark side in her magical world, you can bet she’s going to end up in a situation where that’s tested.

IN TWILIGHT’S SHADOW (Jun 3, 2008) gave me something different to think about—risk.

I’d explored the idea of courage in an earlier book, but I never thought about risk until Maia and Creed’s story. Maia was a troubleshooter for a society of magic users and she gambled her job, her standing, even her life by playing with black magic.

She lost.

Certain that her sister, Ryne, would be sent to hunt her, Maia gave up her magic, but she also gave up the only world she’s ever known. Considered an outsider among her people, she lives a human life. She has a job she hates, a mortgage, and bills. And she’s playing it safe now, afraid to take a chance again, afraid to lose more than she already has. So she stays in the job and endures it.

Of course, that’s a guarantee that she was going to find herself in a situation where she couldn’t play it safe. If Maia doesn’t take the risk, her sister could be killed. Since she would do anything to protect her, Maia wasn’t about to stand back when Ryne was in danger.

But Maia threw a twist at me—she wasn’t all that worried about the physical risk. She didn’t want to die, of course, but she’d been a troubleshooter and had lived with that threat for years. She was used to it.

What scared her was emotional risk.

Not just fear of getting involved with Creed, her hero, but fear of pursuing her dreams. Maia loves art, she knows a lot about it, and she’d always wanted to work in a museum, but instead she became a troubleshooter and never bothered to attend college. Now that she’s no longer a player, there’s no reason why she can’t explore that dream. But she doesn’t.

This immediately intrigued me. Why doesn’t she go after something she’s always wanted now that she has a chance? Fear of the risk. What if she fails? My job was to get her to see things a little differently—what if she succeeds?

IN TWILIGHT’S SHADOW is focused on the action/adventure, the paranormal aspects, and the romance, of course, but the underlying story is about something riskier—taking a chance on a dream.

Patti O’Shea



Patti’s website: http://www.pattioshea.com/
To find out more about In Twilight’s Shadow: http://www.pattioshea.com/twilight.shtml

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Patti O'Shea - A Peek Behind the Book

Ideas come to authors at different times and in different ways. Sometimes one flash is enough to trigger an entire story. That's what happened with THE POWER OF TWO. I was staring out the window at my day job when the word "nanotechnology" came into my mind. All I had to do was ask, well, what about it? and the next thing I knew, I had my heroine, the hero, and the way they were tied to each other.

Other times, nothing more than a concept pops into my head and I'll write down what I have and file it away for some day. Only some day never seems to come--except with my latest book.

IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR started with a dream I had more than ten years ago. I knew the hero's name--Deke Summers--I knew he was under a magical curse, and I was aware of what that curse was, but there was no heroine and no story. I wrote down the concept in one sentence and moved on. I loved the idea and hoped that some day I'd have a plot to go with it, but I didn't hold out much hope because I have file drawers full of ideas waiting to be used.

Time marched on, and while I didn't exactly forget Deke, I didn't think about him often. Then it happened. December 2003 a woman appeared in my head and started talking about her people. (It's true, I hear voices. It's a good thing I'm a writer.) Anyway, this character wouldn't share her name, not until she'd spent weeks telling me all about a magical society called the Gineal. Only after that did she let me know that her name was Ryne Frasier and she was a troubleshooter.

When a character comes in and talks to me, I know I'll be writing their story, but I had a problem. While I had all kinds of facts about her people, I didn't have a hero for Ryne and I didn't have a clue what her story was. It's funny I remembered Deke at that moment--or maybe it isn't. Once I realized he and his curse belonged with her, the story began to flow--for a couple of chapters.

I could see the opening of the story clearly and how tough Ryne was--and how vulnerable and lonely. I could see her relationship with her sister and how both of them were hampered by their pasts, And I could see how Ryne and Deke met and how that would play into their relationship. But I couldn't seem to get a handle on Deke beyond his curse and how much he hated it. Then I found the picture.

The man was gorgeous and he had attitude written all over his face. This guy totally fit Deke and that quickly, that easily, I had his personality. Deke is a horrible smart aleck and one of his favorite things in the world is to push people's buttons--especially Ryne's. She's so serious, so intense, and he likes to see the heat in her eyes so much that he can't help himself. He drove her crazy. Ryne was trained to control her emotions--she has to in order to function as a magical troubleshooter--but she had very little self-command when it came to Deke.

There was one other thing about this book that made it different for me--I knew the ending almost from the start. It's the first time I've had a clue how one of my stories would close before I was past the halfway mark, and usually it's deeper into the book than that. It was pretty darn cool to have that in my head from the beginning, but I'm not counting on being that lucky again any time soon.

Each book has a different story on how it came to be, but I thought I'd give you a little peek behind Midnight Hour. If you have any questions about any of my books, feel free to ask. I'm happy to talk about my stories.

Patti's Website - http://www.pattioshea.com/
Patti's Blog - http://pattioshea.blogspot.com/
Patti's MySpace Page - http://www.myspace.com/patti_oshea
In the Midnight Hour Video - http://www.pattioshea.com/midnight_video.shtml