May 11, 1999
In the Forests of the Night was my debut novel for the world of publishing, but it was not the first book I ever started or even the first book I ever finished. I believe it was the seventh novel finished, coming somewhere amidst titles you may hear me reference from time to time- Red Moon, Blue Moon, F&D, Searing the Flesh, Mortal Silence, Rising Night, Red Wine and Blood Lie- but which will never see the light of day.
The inspiration for Forests was a seventh grade English assignment, for which everyone had to memorize a poem to recite to the class. One of my best friends (Jessica, who you will hear about again in the page for Demon) had chosen "The Tiger" as her poem, and somewhere amidst the seven-hundredth high-speed repetition of "what immortal hand or eye" in the school cafeteria, an image occurred to me of a tiger, pacing in a cage. I jotted the scene down in my ever-present writing notebook, which at that time was a blue, 5-section CVS-brand wide-ruled notebook. Other notes included some on Renegade, and a couple bits and pieces about an author or something somehow related to a vampire that wasn't really going anywhere. That was May 11, 1997, which I wouldn't remember if I hadn't happened to flip through that notebook again years after I stopped using it.
The book moved out from there, drawing in a character briefly mentioned at the end of Red Wine: Risika. I started typing it on the Macintosh computer my mother had brought home so she could do some work (ha!). With Alanis Morisette's "Jagged Little Pill" album filling my ears (I cannot write in silence) I began to write. At this point, Ather was the main villain and I think Aubrey was a bloodbond. He may have been an elf; the species and breeds native to Nyeusigrube were still in flux back in 1997.
At some point in June or August, I hit two snags. One was that little demon known as writer's block. I simply had no idea where the book was going. The other problem was massive computer failure.
The Mac crashed. People say viruses don't attack Macintoshes. The truth is, there are more viruses for PCs, but those that hit Macs can be just as bad. The computer crashed and when I stupidly went to back up all my files, I transferred the problem to all my backup discs. Whatever it was, it was bad enough to crash the computers at the tech department that tried to salvage those discs. In a panic, I printed everything I could- everything but one file, Renegade, which had been badly corrupted and wouldn't even open. The computer went to the computer-doctors, and I was left with the printouts of my life.
Then we went on vacation to Cape Hatteras, an island off the eastern shore of North Carolina that had been a family vacation spot for my mother's family. At some gift shop along the way I spotted a tiger beanie-baby and was seized with the impulse to get it, as I had been writing about a tiger; my mother was kind enough to oblige my impulse, (probably because I was an emo kind of adolescent in the midst of a deep depression from the computer crash and she would do anything if it would just make me enjoy my vacation, which I ended up doing). With the beanie-baby on my head (no, I don't know why, don't ask me these things) I started forlornly re-typing the pages of my tiger story on a laptop that I believe had been borrowed from my father's work. I might have had to share the computer with my siblings, in which case I would probably never have done any writing at all, but the mouse buttons broke and I was the only one capable of navigating the computer using only key commands.
Naturally it's boring re-typing thirty or forty pages, so I made some "minor" changes, like promoting Aubrey to one of the most powerful vampires in history. After Cape Hatteras we visited my aunt, and during a deluge thunderstorm I wrote the last words of that story.
But the tale ends not there. It does not even end after I printed the manuscript.
In fact, I suppose it ends in your hands... for that manuscript was my first to be published, and is now the beautiful book you-- assuming you are a fan, for if you aren't, I don't know why you're reading this-- have either read, seen, or own.