Love Story

The question of the central love story in On Black Wings is an interesting one. There's her future-self husband and two others who attract her eye. Of course she feels obligated to her future-husband, but there is a turning point where she breaks with him over a dark and very nasty secret.

It had to happen, I wanted her in emotional free-fall by a certain point and she got there quickly.

It sets up the meetings with the villains of the story quite nicely, and it also highlights the notion that her husband and her children may not even be real. I still get this odd feeling that parts of this story are imagined by her, and quite possibly her entire older life is a projection of her dreams upon her future. That break though with her husband may be the key to this, if she had that love, if it were real, would she do what she did?

After that point, where she loses everything, her heart is wounded, but open. Even she realizes this change come about her, and I agree, it makes her quite a less attractive and romantic character. She's not throwing herself at these new men, but those thoughts are there, partially because she has just had that break in her life, and also because she is realizing her younger self is not her older self - it is merely a path she walked in one future time.

She clings to that version of herself quite strongly though, and she never meets herself in any different form. It is a strange sort of coincidence, she has this idealized view of herself and it is so strong it becomes her future.

The other men she meets are attractive to her, one for his looks, and the other she feels great sympathy for. The romantic side is not laid out, it is hinted at, so it is not a strong motivator here. She is still surviving and getting her temporal balance throughout the book, so to make her go all love-struck over men would have just seemed petty given the circumstances. There is one point in the book she makes a major change in her relationship with her future-husband, and it is a bittersweet moment that forces her to walk a new path in life.

I loved that scene, and it wrapped up a tiny but important thread in the book.

I would have to say the love story in my book isn't as overt as your typical YA novel, where someone falls head over heels for someone else. I know that probably dings me in the love-struck relations YA checkbox, but it isn't the focus of my book. It clearly is on who we want to be versus who we were, and the clash between those two sides of someone. I can't have those two sides muddled by a love story hanging out in the middle, and especially not with a new person.

I know when the Hollywood script-writers get to this I'll be in some studio meeting somewhere and someone will suggest 'hey, let's put another love interest in the movie!' I shall epic facepalm at that moment.

It's not that type of book, really, in a way it's about what how she envisions her 'perfect life' and if that is really so perfect. She's struggling to figure out how she got from seventeen to thirty-four, and the choices she made along the way, good or bad. The love story is in a way with her possible future-husband, and how that is destroyed along with the world and everything else. Early on though she has something going with him, something special and fun, but it's lost. I think part of the tragedy is she eventually accepts it.

So yes, there is a love story here, but it is more a 'struggling with love' sort of story instead of a 'falling in love' story. The things she does, she does for love, and it is mostly selfless love. She sacrifices so much by the end, and it is a redemption for her initial selfish motives. So if that script-writer adds another angst-filled teen love interest for a audience-pleasing love-triangle, I shall then have to say her 'perfect life' involves raising a family, and having a love-triangle thing going on with someone like Edward out of Twilight.

At the same time.

Yes, that epic facepalm is going to hurt while I try to explain this to them. Yes, I know, there is a lot more to say here.

But no, don't make me write a sequel to this, I had not planned on it. I specifically planned against it, so no amount of writer's guilt about stories untold or books left opened will get me to explore that place.

But still....

No, this is what it is, and I am happy leaving it here. I feel you have to have that commitment for some books, to not drag it out or leave things for later. The love story here is the love story, a complete and interesting arc.