History of 'His 16th Face'

A little over ten years ago, I started a project where I was going to write a collection of short stories for an anthology.  I wrote seven stories.  Two of them became the first two plot arches of 'Behind His Mask' called 'The Lord of the Capricorn' and 'The Witch and the Fool'.  One became my first ever published book 'The Blood that Flows' (which is no longer available), and another one became 'Rose Red'.  Two more remained short stories and are called 'How to Seduce Jane Austin' and 'Blog Entries of the Brokenhearted'.  Now finally, the last one is finished and it is a beauty.  The very last of the project is 'His 16th Face.'  Let's talk about it.

'His 16th Face' is a novel written from the perspective of Beth Coldwell and details her relationship with Christian Henderson.  The story begins with Beth lying in her hospital bed in the middle of the night.  Christian sneaks into her room because the tragedy of what is unfolding before him is too much to bear.  Her parents died, and her upcoming operating has a very slim chance of success.  Holding her, he asks her if she has a last wish.  In love with a man thirteen years older than herself, Beth asks him to kiss her.  At first, he refuses.  She's a minor and he's her legal guardian, but she convinces him and he kisses her.  Suddenly, he drops her on the bed proclaiming that it was wrong and he proceeds to flip the whole world upside down.

He has her removed from the hospital, and when she wakes up, her surgery is complete and she never has heart problems again.  What did he do to save her?  Beth doesn't know but understands that he has done something unthinkable, unforgivable, and very dangerous. 

Over the next few years, as she's approaching adulthood, she attends boarding school and only sees Christian occasionally when they go on vacation together.  Slowly, she starts to piece together more and more about him.  The most important fact being that Christian Henderson is not his real name.  He has been lying on repeat and she has no idea who he really is.

Sooo... me... writing this book for ten years... why didn't I abandon the project if it was taking this long?  That's a very good question.  Ten years is a pretty unacceptable amount of time to be blocked on a novel.  Let's go back to the beginning.  I wrote the opening chapter of this book and put it on fictionpress.com.  It's still there.  Pretty good reader responses for the single chapter (that was supposed to be a short story), but I am not made to write short stories and I saw a novel where that short story was. 

I started cracking at it, and I cracked along very well... until I got to the end of one chapter.  I was about 63,000 words in and I had this idea.  It was not a normal idea.  It was a stupendous idea.  It could be argued that I never had a better idea in my life.  But I hadn't done anything to prepare the audience for this inside out, upside down, turn of events.  I decided not to worry about it and just to continue cracking on.  I finished the novel at about 98,000 words and labeled it my 19th novel.  Excited to see what I'd made, I reread the last chapter. 

GHASTLY.

Seriously, it was the kind of garbage writing that made me want to become a novelist in the first place.  I was opposed to that kind of crap being distributed in the world and now I had let my brain descend into the kind of ordinary, boring, insipid crap that I vowed to replace with excellence. 

I cut 35,000 words off the end of the book and went back to the end of the chapter where I was certain that at least that moment was not garbage.  Thirty-five thousand words is a lazy man's novel all by itself.  Cutting it off was like cutting off 30% of my body.  So, I cut it and left it, waiting for the answer to come to me. 

When it did, it was like Christian Henderson strode into the room himself and told me what he had done and what he was willing to do.  I said no.  I said it was going too far.  He walked the black and white checked floor and said in the way he was wont to, that he was braver than I was giving him credit for and that what he was willing to do was far more than I was prepared to show.  I needed to be brave too and show him for who he truly was.  A hero who would give everything with no thought of reward. 

I think I fell in love with him a bit then. 

It's true that some characters become real for the author the longer they stay with them, and Christian, with his angles and idiotic high spirits, became the type of character that could win me over. 

I think he'll win you over too.

The ebook is available now for preorder on Amazon for May 1st (available at this link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08669LTXV/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4.)

The paperback should be available on Amazon that day or soon after.  Slowly, it will be available on Google Play, Barnes and Noble, KOBO, Apple Books, Smashwords and more!  You might want to wait for the paperback.  Just saying, it's going to be beautiful.