October 11, 2001
Shattered Mirror was inspired by Sarah MacLachlan's CD "Surfacing." Listening to its lyrics, to the haunting voice singing, I was struck with a story-- love between two individuals perfectly wrong for each other, love where one is willing and one is held back.
The story evolved.
Born was Sarah Vida, youngest daughter of an ancient line of witches, youngest daughter in a line that has hunted vampire since they existed, and is bound by rules forbidding connection with any of their prey. She is a "flawed" member of her clan, imperfect in the eyes of her mother and her older sister, desperately trying to win their approval.
In this state, she can hardly help falling for sweet, romantic Christopher... who is incidentally a vampire.
And she falls in love.
Beyond the music, Shattered Mirror is driven by an idea I hold highly: The belief in the absence of absolute good or evil. My characters, be they witch, vampire, shapeshifter or whatever else, are all essentially human. They can be "good" or "evil" as they choose.
As for the writing, and editing, process... well. That was fun. I don't recall many traumas while writing the thing; it went smoothly, with only a few surprises along the way, such as Richard Roberts (or was it Robert Richards?) becoming an important character after he had been written-in as an inside joke with my friends. The ending, however, came like a brick wall, in a snarl of unresolved issues and major out-of-character moments. In the first version, Kaleo was killed near the end; how that would effect the others, including his bloodbonds, was never addressed. Up until nearly the last draft, Sarah had a fiancé, Michael Arun, but his character and their relationship was never developed well; he was cut one edit before copyediting, and his scenes were given to Adia.
Smaller changes involved the fact that originally Sarah and Adia had also been twins. My editor objected that the book was a little "too twinny," a fact that hadn't occurred to me as my friends at the time included identical twin sisters Valerie and Irene, fraternal twins Karl and Katherine, and fraternal twin brothers David and Kevin, and I had another pair of twins in my biology class. However, the idea of having Adia be the older sister appealed to me, and in the end worked out well.
Other bits and pieces cut along the way include a scene with Sarah and Kendra, the history of Risika's (In the Forests of the Night) family, and a kiss between Sarah and Nikolas.
For the record: The cover models look NOTHING like who they're supposed to. Thank you to the artists who have made an effort to give me something far, FAR better than that cover.
Sequel?If you have browsed this site, you have probably already come across a link to All Just Glass, a project I have been working on, off and on, since before I even finished revising Shattered Mirror. Scenes and characters were cut from ShatMir that I thought were powerful, and that I missed. There was also so much back-story that I wanted to develop.
All Just Glass is not currently on the official list for publishing, but may be submitted to Random House at some point after 0113.