The Midnight Breed Series Companion (9 page)

Dear reader, meet Renata.

Naturally, a woman like that needs an equally strong partner. I couldn’t think of anyone more suited to go toe-to-toe with Renata than the adrenaline-junkie, combat-loving, gear-head of the Order, Siberian-born Nikolai.

As you can probably tell from the playlist of music I listened to while working on
Veil of Midnight
, Niko and Renata’s story was hard-driving, fast and gritty, full of action. It was also sexy and dark, at times very tender. I strive to make each Midnight Breed book feel new and different from the others, while still maintaining a sense of cohesion within the series.
Veil of Midnight
was certainly different from the others, but it also marks a turning point in the series. One that set the second half of the series into motion, but also laid the groundwork for what I didn’t know at the time—that the ending I’d plotted for Book 10 would actually be the beginning of a whole new generation of characters and a further arc in the series as a whole.

Which brings me to Mira.

Now, I’m not really into kids. I never had any of my own, whether that was the result of too many teenage years of babysitting jobs or something else, I don’t know. But as I was plotting this book, I realized that for all of Renata’s toughness and almost superhero invincibility, she needed to have a soft underbelly. She needed something to make her vulnerable, and I mean something aside from the reverb migraines she suffered after using her mind-blasting ESP talent. Renata needed to care about something, about some
one.

And that someone was an eight-year-old orphan girl (a young Breedmate with the gift of precognition) whom Renata had rescued from a Montreal blood club run by Renata’s future employer, the nefarious Gen One, Sergei Yakut.

It was Sergei Yakut who brought Nikolai to Montreal on a mission for the Order, but it was the child-seer Mira who showed Niko that his future was tied to the hot female bodyguard who handed him his ass the first time they met.

Writing this book was a hell of a good time, and I hope it shows in the text. It was also a challenge, because in addition to the romance and the action plot of Niko and Renata’s story, I was also introducing new characters and weaving external suspense threads that would continue into the rest of the series.

It is in
Veil of Midnight
that the storyline of my next book,
Ashes of Midnight
, starts to unfold. Since the arrival of Berlin Darkhaven leader Andreas Reichen in
Midnight Awakening
and his further involvement in
Midnight Rising
, I knew I wanted to include him in the series in a more meaningful way. This goes back to my own German roots, and to my awareness of how unusual it is to find German characters in American commercial fiction—romance, in particular—who are not straight-up Nazis or some other brand of bad guy. Plus, I really loved Reichen!

It was difficult tearing his world down so completely. I loved the relationship he had with his long-time human lover, Helene. I loved his Darkhaven family in Berlin, such as the young mated couple with the new baby who’d only recently named Reichen godfather. I loved the life he had in Berlin, and I loved his easy-going, charming personality.

But there’s a popular saying among writers:
Kill your darlings.

The fact was, the way I’d written it so far, Reichen’s life was perfectly settled. His storyline thus far did nothing to move the series forward. Reichen had no conflict, had made no mistakes in life, had no enemies…
or did he?

I realized that to give him a compelling story of his own, I needed to first destroy everything I loved about him. It sounds really cruel, but one thing I’ve learned as a writer is that happy characters make for boring fiction. So I set out to make Andreas Reichen very, very unhappy. And very, very angry. By the time his story takes place, Andreas Reichen is a man on fire—in more ways than one!

Other introductions taking place in
Veil of Midnight
include the first on-page appearance of the Ancient, no longer in hibernation but imprisoned in Dragos’s breeding lab. We also meet for the first time, golden-eyed Hunter, one of Dragos’s homegrown assassins. Hunter is one of an unknown number of Gen Ones bred from the captive Ancient and raised to be emotionless killers, loyal to Dragos not only out of duty and training, but also because of the unremovable ultraviolet collar that keeps these lethal soldiers under his total control.

By the end of
Veil of Midnight
, Hunter is no longer shackled to Dragos’s command. Thanks to the Order—and a vision glimpsed in Mira’s prophesying eyes—Hunter leaves Montreal to join the Order in the fight against his creator and villainous master.

Veil of Midnight
released in late December, 2008. It was my first book to stay on both the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestseller lists for four weeks straight!

Ashes of Midnight

BOOK 6

Romantic Leads

Andreas Reichen

Claire (Samuels) Roth

Plot Summary

Consumed by revenge for the murder of his kin, Darkhaven leader Andreas Reichen embarks on a quest of fiery retribution...a quest that leads him to the woman who once owned his heart, but who now belongs to his most treacherous enemy.

Primary Story Locations

Wilhelm Roth's Darkhaven estate outside Berlin, Germany

Wilhelm Roth’s office in Hamburg, Germany

Danika's little farmhouse in Denmark

Order's compound headquarters in undisclosed location in Boston

Claire's grandmother's estate in Newport, Rhode Island

Playlist

Broken
by Seether and Amy Lee

Close to the Flame
by H.I.M.

Going Under
by Evanescence

All of This Past
by Sarah Bettens

Dreamsleep
by Collide

Falls on Me
by Fuel

Story Background

So, I’d left poor Andreas Reichen in quite a state at the end of
Veil of Midnight
. As his story picks up in
Ashes of Midnight
, he is a man with a plan. And that plan is the total annihilation of his newly recognized enemy, a Breed male named Wilhelm Roth. A Breed male who’s been mated to Claire Samuels, the woman Andreas once loved—and lost—a long time ago.

Claire is one of the gentlest heroines in the series. But don’t mistake her calm exterior for weakness. True, she’s made some mistakes in her life—chief among them, doubting Andreas’s love for her and choosing another mate, the powerful Wilhelm Roth, after Andreas leaves her without a trace or a word of good-bye. Once she realizes the depth of her mistake many years later, after Andreas strides back into her life on a tide of fire and ash and bloody-minded vengeance over what Roth has done to Andreas’s loved ones, Claire is prepared to march into battle right along with him.

After writing
Veil of Midnight
and spending time on the page with a kickass heroine like Renata, I came to
Ashes of Midnight
still very much on a “I am woman, hear me roar” kind of high. It is in this book that the women of the Order—who now included newcomers Renata, Dylan, Elise, Tess and Gabrielle, in addition to Gideon’s longtime mate, Savannah—first step in to lend their own skills to the Order’s rising war against Dragos and his followers.

Although Lucan and his cadre of Breed warriors are strong, none of them paired up with a woman who would be willing to stand by and let her man fight alone when she has unique talents to lend to their missions. For Claire, that talent is dreamwalking, which she uses in
Ashes of Midnight
to help Andreas and the Order locate one of Dragos’s breeding labs and defeat one of his most dangerous lieutenants, Wilhelm Roth.

In the end, Dragos wins this round. His escape—and the hasty relocation of the captive Ancient—sets the stage for big things yet to come in
Shades of Midnight
and the books to follow. As for Andreas Reichen and Claire, while they do not come into the Order’s fold officially in
Ashes of Midnight
, they remain an integral part of the series.

Another character we meet again in this book is Danika, the widowed Breedmate of Conlan, who was killed in action in
Kiss of Midnight
. During the events in
Ashes of Midnight
, I needed a safe house for Claire and Andreas to elude Roth’s men. With Germany being so close to Denmark, it only seemed logical that the Order would call upon Danika for this special favor.

What I hadn’t expected was the response from readers after
Ashes of Midnight
released. So many people were thrilled to see Danika again! Apparently, they’d been wondering how the Breedmate, who’d been pregnant with Conlan’s son at the time of his death, was faring since leaving Boston to deliver her child back home in Denmark. Readers emailed, asking if I would write a story for Danika and give her a happy ending. Although I didn’t have plans to expand on her future at that time, the ideas started percolating, and eventually I got the opportunity to revisit Danika again.

Ashes of Midnight
published in May, 2009, spending three weeks on the
New York Times
bestseller list, two weeks on the
USA Today
list, debuting at #31, my highest showing on that list at the time. And still another high spot, Claire and Reichen’s book hit #6 on the
Publishers Weekly
bestseller list its first week out as well.

Shades of Midnight

BOOK 7

Romantic Leads

Kade

Alexandra Maguire

Plot Summary

A mission to Alaska to investigate a string of savage vampire attacks sends Breed warrior Kade to the frozen land of his birth, where he encounters a sexy female bush pilot whose own quest for answers forces him to confront his darkest secrets, and an even greater evil that could destroy all he holds dear.

Primary Story Locations

Small (fictional) town of Harmony, Alaska

Kade's family Darkhaven outside Fairbanks, Alaska

Order's compound headquarters in undisclosed location in Boston

Playlist