Katee Robert | Writing a Labor of Love

I'll be the first to admit that writing THE LAST KING was a labor of love—emphasis on the labor part. It's always challenging to start a new series after spending years being in a different world, but this book had a very specific problem that it took me far too long to figure out. Beckett King, the hero, was a freaking jerk. Not a sexy jerk—just a flat out jerk.

In the original version of the book, he's washed his hands of his family and
their money, left the woman he loves behind for her own good, and is
essentially
living on a beach out of the country. He was, to put it frankly, an
insufferable
ass.

How do you fix a character like that?

You break him down to his bare bones and rewrite from the ground up. Let me
tell
you, it hurts something fierce to take that drastic of a step, but the new
Beckett King that emerged as a result is one of my favorite heroes I've
written
to date. He still doesn't get along with his father, but he knows where his
responsibilities lie and makes his moves in response to protecting the
people he
views as his.

This new Beckett would never dream of leaving someone he loves behind, and when he starts pursuing our heroine, Samara, he does it with them on equal ground. He doesn't expect his money or family name to sway her, and he respects the hell out of her ambition and the fact that she's been the competition for as long as he's known her. He's alpha to the core, but he's not an alpha-hole. And that makes all the difference in the world. With Beckett driving the book, it became less a story about a man fighting against an unwanted role in life and more a man fighting to preserve what little he has left of a fractured family—and to protect the people he cares about in the process. He heats up the sheets with Samara, but he's got an honorable thread that acts as a compass through the story. And that is what true heroes are made of!