The Midnight Breed Series Companion (11 page)

Other new characters enter the series in this book as well: Mathias Rowan, an Enforcement Agent in Boston and a former friend and associate of Sterling Chase; and the Archer family, Lazaro, the Gen One patriarch of a Boston Darkhaven, and his son Christophe, who come to the Order requesting help in recovering Christophe’s teenage son, Kellan, who’s been abducted from their home by unknown captors.

This abduction—and the recovery of Kellan Archer—set into motion events that would alter the Order’s future in the next book to come, and would change the landscape of the series forever.

Taken by Midnight
spent the most time on the U.S. bestseller lists after its release in September, 2010. It stayed four weeks on the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestseller lists, and three weeks on
Publishers Weekly
. It also made the Indiebound bestseller list—another career first for me.

Around this time, I started hearing from my agent that Random House wanted to take the series into hardcover soon. Hard to believe that just five years earlier, I thought my career was over. I suppose the lesson here is not unlike the underlying theme of Brock and Jenna’s romance: Just because you felt like a failure in the past, doesn’t mean you can’t get back up again and make something better of your future.

Deeper Than Midnight

BOOK 9

Romantic Leads

Hunter

Corinne Bishop

Plot Summary

After years of captivity and torture by malevolent vampire Dragos, beautiful Corinne Bishop finds safety and passion in the arms of Hunter, the most lethal of the Order’s warriors—a Gen One Breed born and raised to kill on Dragos’s command. Now Hunter’s loyalty to the Order will be tested when duty to his new allies forces him to risk breaking Corinne’s tender heart.

Primary Story Locations

Bishop family Darkhaven in Detroit, Michigan

Various places in and around New Orleans, Louisiana

Amelie Dupree's bayou home at Atchafalaya, Louisiana

Massachusetts senator Bobby Clarence’s North Shore residence

Order's compound headquarters in undisclosed location in Boston

Playlist

Through Hell
by We Are The Fallen

This Night
by Black Lab

Breathe Me
by Sia

Empty Bed Blues
by Bessie Smith

Story Background

I really felt the momentum of the overall series arc coming to a head as I wrote
Deeper Than Midnight
. On the external storyline side of things, events were in motion that would lead to the final, big showdown between the Order and Dragos.

Lucan and the warriors were soon to discover that the kidnap of Kellan Archer had been a calculated move by Dragos—a strike intended to prompt the Order to break one of their cardinal rules: admitting a civilian into the Boston compound. A secret, hidden location for more than a hundred years, the Order’s headquarters is suddenly compromised to their greatest enemy when Kellan spits up a tracking device placed inside him by his abductors.

Lucan has never been one to run from danger. Yet he knows that a swift relocation is the only responsible choice if he wants to keep the compound’s residents safe—his family, as he’s reluctantly come to think of them all over the course of the series. Kellan’s Gen One grandfather, Lazaro Archer, offers one of his properties in the Maine woods as a temporary base of operations, but just as the Order begins making plans to move to safer ground, Tess, who’s been pregnant since
Midnight Rising,
goes into labor.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Deeper Than Midnight
is Hunter and Corinne’s story. Hunter, the emotionless Gen One assassin born and raised to be a soldier in Dragos’s personal army, and Corinne Bishop, the Breedmate kidnapped from under Brock’s watch in Detroit decades ago and recently freed from imprisonment in Dragos’s breeding lab. Both victims of Dragos’s evil, Hunter and Corinne are thrust together in an unexpected alliance, when he’s tasked with escorting her home to her family, only to discover that Corinne had been secretly surrendered to Dragos all those years ago by her Darkhaven father.

And Corinne is keeping a secret of her own too. A thirteen-year-old secret, born to her in the breeding labs and snatched away from her when he was just minutes old to become the same kind of expert killing machine that Hunter is. As soon as she was released from captivity by the Order, Corinne’s driving purpose is to find her son and rescue him from Dragos’s control.

I thought it would be interesting to pair up Hunter (my first virgin hero!) with a woman who shared his background of abuse and manipulation by Dragos. Even more interesting, a woman whose personal quest will bring Hunter face-to-face with his own history—revelations that tear down the walls he’s had to build around his emotions in order to survive.

As a writer (and a woman) I’m fascinated by a stoic, strong, fearless man who comes from a background so destructive and poisonous that it would reduce most other men (rightly so) to quivering pools of weakness and self-pity. As the saying goes, the strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire. That certainly sums up Hunter, but it also sums up Corinne as well.

While Hunter and Corinne set out to uncover more of Dragos’s lieutenants and find her son, Nathan, back in Boston the Order has its hands full too. Aside from the sudden vulnerability of the compound to Dragos and the birth of Dante and Tess’s son, Xander Raphael, another of the Order’s inner circle is caught in a downward spiral that threatens to have catastrophic consequences.

Sterling Chase, once the uptight, by-the-book Enforcement Agent, has over time begun to slip perilously toward Bloodlust. But despite the grip of his consuming disease, he uncovers a stunning link to Dragos through an ambitious human senator who’s somehow allied with the Order’s chief adversary. And in Chase’s quest to learn more, he crosses paths with the senator’s assistant, Tavia Fairchild, a beautiful young woman whose very existence will change the course of the series and alter Chase’s own future with a single gunshot.

So, about that cliffhanger ending….

I’ve never written a cliffhanger before. While I don’t mind them as a reader, so long as the book doesn’t end mid-sentence or without wrapping up the main story I’ve been invested in for the past four hundred pages, when I chose to end
Deeper Than Midnight
with Chase’s voluntary surrender to human law enforcement in an effort to spare his friends at the compound, I did so with the intention that the next book,
Darker After Midnight
, would be coming out very soon afterward. As in a few months afterward.

But
Darker After Midnight
proved to be a bigger book than I anticipated. It took longer for me to get it just right. When I finally turned it in to my editor, she told me it was the best one in the series so far. It was a big book, she said, with a big book feel. And because of that, Random House was going to release it in hardcover. Which meant an even further delay in publication than if the book had come out as a mass market original.

Deeper Than Midnight
released at the end of June, 2011. It debuted on the
New York Times
at what remains my highest showing on that list, the #3 spot. Since my last release, the
Times
had recently begun tracking ebook sales in addition to print, and
Deeper Than Midnight
also placed high on the ebook/print combined, coming in at #5. It stayed for two weeks on the
New York Times, USA Today
(peaking at #12) and
Publishers Weekly
bestseller lists.

It was around this time that Random House also made an offer for my next two books. I had already decided I was having too much fun with the Midnight Breed world to let go now—and I also had this germ of an idea for a second story arc that could feature an all-new generation of Order warriors in a near-future setting.

As we went to work on a contract for what would become Books 11 and 12 of the series, I also pitched the idea of the series Companion you’re reading now. My editor liked the concept—and the plan to include Gideon and Savannah’s story as an original novella—but ultimately Random House and I could not agree on how to publish the book. They wanted to do it ebook only, with the potential of a limited-run hardcover release if, and only if, sales of the ebook were robust enough.

I was adamant that the Companion release in both print and ebook formats. And besides, with the industry changing so rapidly, giving authors more and more freedom to publish their work independently, I decided to decline their offer and table the Companion until I could do it on my own.

A Taste of Midnight

BOOK 9.5

(novella)

Romantic Leads

Danika MacConn

Malcolm MacBain, aka Brannoc

Plot Summary

A widowed Breedmate of the Order, raising her infant son alone after the death of her warrior mate in action, seeks the solace of a Christmas in Edinburgh, Scotland—her beloved’s homeland—never dreaming the holiday escape would bring her face-to-face with a deadly Breed crime boss and the dark, mysterious henchman who serves to protect him...someone she once knew—and could have loved—a long time ago.

Primary Story Locations

MacConn family Darkhaven estate outside Edinburgh, Scotland

Various places in and around Edinburgh, Scotland

Playlist

Who Wants to Live Forever
by Queen

Wherever You Will Go
by The Calling

I Will Stay
by We Are The Fallen

Story Background

This ebook original novella came about quickly and unexpectedly. I’d recently completed the manuscript for
Darker After Midnight
—which was to be my first hardcover release, in January 2012—and I’d just unsuccessfully pitched the concept of a Midnight Breed Series Companion featuring a novella for Gideon and Savannah.

As we were in the midst of contract negotiations for Books 11 and 12, my editor asked about the possibility of me writing an ebook original novella to be used to fill the time gap between
Deeper Than Midnight
and
Darker After Midnight
, the idea being the new novella would also help promote the upcoming hardcover. They wanted to include an excerpt from
Darker After Midnight
at the end of the novella, and later on, after the book was reissued in mass market paperback, the novella would then be included as bonus material in that release.