It wasn’t easy. The shadows did little to hide me from curious eyes as I made my way down the sidewalk without shoes, my skin black and blue and what little was left of my clothes hanging on me by a thread. The rain beat down on me and each drop felt like nails being driven into my skin. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this bad.

 

It was all because I couldn’t let go of him.

 

I turned onto the darkened street, and looked up. My eyes lit up the sidewalk in front of me and I kept putting one foot in front of the other by sheer force of will. My head throbbed with each step and I slowed my pace and closed my eyes. I felt Caed watching me, laughing at my weakness, enjoying my pain. The longer I pushed forward, the faster his power grew. He leached every bit of my strength and waited for me to squirm like a worm in a mud puddle, slowly drowning but unable to help myself. I wasn’t that weak. Yet.

 

Thunder clapped and I weaved unsteady on my feet and tripped onto the concrete steps. I brought my hand up to my forehead, the throbbing intensified until bile rushed up my throat. Electricity charged the sky, and goosebumps raced along my naked flesh. I didn’t have to do this. I could ignite my flame and stick my hand in the water. It wouldn’t be a painless death, but merciful compared with what I was about to do.

 

Instead I was selfish and stuck my finger in the doorbell.

 

I wrapped my hand around the wrought iron rail and hauled myself to my feet. My fingers clenched around the metal, pain radiated down my spine. I could feel my power welling up inside of me, threatening to overflow and I clenched my jaw until my teeth started to giveaway.

 

I never heard him come to the door. He opened it enough for me to see the firelight behind him, haloed around his dark head. Water dripped from my hair into my eyes and made my sight blurry. The rain kept coming down, soaking into me but as his eyes swept over me, I did not feel chilled.

 

He raised his black eyes until they met mine and I took a step into him. His hand brushed my cheekbone, thumb traced my lower lip. I trembled at the thought of what was to come next. He pressed the gun into my temple and his lips brushed against my ear.

 

“There is another way.”

 

I choked on the words I wanted to say to him- my savior, my killer. Instead the only words I could push past my lips were, “Maybe next time.”

 

I closed my eyes as I pressed my hand into his chest. Blue fire flickered to my fingertips and skittered along his chest just as he pulled the trigger.

 

****

 

 

 

I love the rain. There is something very pure and cynical about the rain. You might be wondering what I mean, and I’m not sure I can explain it. The rain is a way to cleanse, to purify, yet, the rain inspires me to do many things that go against this very nature. Many of the blackest moments I’ve ever thought of have to do with rain. It’s almost as if you’re being violated twice with the black moment, not only by the very thing that causes the black moment but also by power behind nature.

 

One of my favorite romance novel moments involves the rain. Sixteen years ago, I read my first rain scene in a novel, Masque of Betrayal (Andrea Kane, 1993) and I fell in love. I wore the pages out of that library book. It was a very awe-inspiring moment for a girl who’d not noticed black moments or really ever thought about particular scenes in a book. There’s something about the way the heroine, Jacquie Holt, finds her way to the hero’s doorstep in the middle of the night in the down pouring rain. She’s soaked to the very marrow of her being, afraid, yet not afraid- I just can’t explain the feeling and emotion behind this scene.

 

I still remember it sixteen years later. Not to mention I’ve had to rubber cement my pages back to the spine of that book. That scene inspires me to write the right dark moment (not black moment, mind you, because there was nothing black about it, only that Dane, the hero, thinks Jacquie is a spy for the French.). Their relationship was so full of ups and downs but that moment was the perfect fit.   

 

For me, there are three parts of dark moments in a novel. There is the dark moment in the first third of the book that brings the hero and heroine together. There is the dark moment that seals our hero and heroine’s fate together and then there is the ultimate dark/black moment that resolves the whole plot. Now, I like to refer to them as dark moments, because I’m still under the impression that black moments should involved death of the hero/heroine, or another main character.

 

Dark moments are my favorite kind of scenes in a book and I love writing them. There’s always enough room for a little angst in the plot.

 

How many dark/black moments do you like to work into your writing? Readers, what are your favorite dark/black moments and which ones do you think are overdone? And can you remember any books that you’ve read where dark/black moments have stuck with you?

 

Influence this week-

The Bottom (Under The Flood, The Witness, 2006)

 

I stood at the edge. My hair floated behind me like a black cloak protecting me from evil. Today the wind blew fierce, chilling me to the bone. Yet, I didn’t shiver in fear. I didn’t shrink back from the edge. I embraced it. The waves crashed into the rocks below. The jagged rocks of despair. I could not feel lonely here. Here was my destiny. I belonged here among the broken edges.

 

I rocked forward. The wind carried me to my tip toes. I could feel the freedom within my grasp. I was a heartbeat away. All I had to do was let go. Let go and embrace the chance. The risk. To take it in. For the moment and just be myself. I wanted this more than anything. I just wanted to be with him one last time before he was no more than a whisper. I wanted it to be real.

 

This was the only way.

 

I took a deep breath. The salt water spray burned my nose, stung my eyes, but I didn’t look away from the horizon. The edge of eternity hovered within my reach. Reminded me of why I came here. The darkness rolling in would be my salvation. It would carry me away when I didn’t think it was possible. At my back, the sun burned bright. The struggle between good and evil. And I was in the middle. I would always been stuck. I had to take charge of my future.

 

I stood at the edge. Looking out.

 

My heart was timed to the crashing of waves. With each moment, my heart grew heavier. A gust of wind blew over the cliff and carried me closer. Closer to flying. I wanted wings. I wanted to fly. I wanted that freedom. For just once in my life.

 

I didn’t think.

 

I didn’t look.

 

I was airborne.

 

The way the wind fluttered through the long layers of my dress made me feel like I was floating. The breath in my lungs was nonexistent. The black oblivion swallowed me whole and pushed me further down.

 

And I embraced the darkness. It was my soul. It was my guiding light.

 

It was my eternity. With him.

 

 

When writing a great love story, there is always tragedy before eternal bliss. What’s the biggest obstacle your hero/heroine face and how do they connect? For our readers, what’s the best black moment you’ve ever read?

So, you’re shuffling along in your story, plowing through scene upon scene like Captain Jack Sparrow cutting the crowd at a party on his way to the rum punch. When I say you, I am, of course, referencing the ubiquitous you, the you that would be all of us if we were sitting at our keyboard writing this instance. Hey, it’s easier on me psychologically if it’s you and not me. Stay with me here. So, you’re plugging along in your story and suddenly, blam, you start questioning yourself. How am I doing? You worry. Will anyone want to read this? You fret. Who cares what I have to say anyway?! You panic. These conversations can occur late at night while you’re wired up on caffeine or feeling a little loopy from an extra glass of wine. But, they can definitely occur when you’re in the middle of your WIP and you’re starting to question what in the name of Peter, Paul, and Mary got you moving along this particular writing path in the first place.

Not pointing any fingers here, but that’s definitely happened to someone on this boat. Ok, I give up. It’s me. In fact, my moments of vulnerability have been aired out on my own blog and my critique group here on the boat are certainly privy to them.

Now, what keeps you, er... me, ok us, going through this? What stops us from closing up that file and burying it under our beds (or at least in the back of the Word.doc files)? What gives us the strength to keep writing through the black moments in our work?

Our point, that’s what. That bit of truth at the core of the story.

And don’t tell me that you don’t have a point because I’m sure you do.

I’ve been reading romance a long time and the books that stay with me stay because they said something. Their message or core idea didn’t have to end poverty, promote world peace, or cure cancer but it had to resonate inside of me. At the end, I would put the book down and feel uplifted, like I understood the world just little better.

This past week, I realized that I had something to say. Who knew, huh?

In my WIP, my heroine, Cory, watched her father’s unrequited love of her mother and vows to avoid love’s complications in her own marriage. My hero, Will, has been burned by love in the past and isn’t sure that it’s worth trying again. Through the course of their story, they realize that love is worth any risk.

Sounds like an ok story, right? My characters learn something, the end. But, in fact, this story means more to me than that. This story gets at what I personally have to say to the world; that really, there isn’t anything as important as love.

This message is what keeps me pushing. I know that others have tackled this theme. I have no delusions that I am the first, or last, writer to express this thought. But, like those great stories I’ve read, I’m hoping that I tell the story in such a way that my reader, after turning that last page, feels like they understand the world a little bit better too.

So, dearest wenches, what is it that you are trying to say (ie, what’s your Core Idea)? What keeps you writing your story through your black moments? How do you shore up that sagging middle? And when do you feel the weakest in your writing, morning, night, beginning of story vs the end, sex scenes vs black moments? Do tell.