Pure Rapture (Book 5) – inspiration

Hi everyone! It’s been a LONG time since I’ve blogged! Life has been a roller coaster over the past few months, but it’s all good 🙂 I wanted to stop by and wax poetic a bit about perhaps my favorite book of the Pure/ Dark Ones series thus far. I know, I know, I said Book 3 was my favorite too, but that was before I wrote Book 5. 😛 My favorite changes with with my mood…

Why do I love Book 5, Pure Rapture so much? And by the way, if you haven’t gotten it, GET IT TODAY!! Can’t believe it releases in just 3 days!!

Let me count the ways:

1. The Hero, Tal-Telal, is to die for. He is a hero to end all heroes, as far as I’ve written them at least. He’s brave, strong, fiercely protective, beautiful inside and out (and later, perhaps more from the inside), unswervingly loyal, and when he loves, it is for ALL TIME. In other words, he is purely fictional and the stuff that dreams and fantasies are made of 😛 Now, I read all of my readers’ reviews and comments – I absolutely love reading them, even the critical ones. They inspire me to keep writing in so many ways. Some have said that the series is not for them because some of the heroes are not “alpha males.” I would argue that depends on how you define “alpha.” If alpha means aggressive, dominant and “experienced,” then nope, most of my heroes aren’t that sort of alpha. If alpha, however, means strong, protective, controlled and true, then that is exactly the sort of heroes I like to write about, both Dark and Pure. And they are the perfect counterparts to very strong heroines. If Tal has a fault, it is that perhaps he is too protective, too self-sacrificing. I’ve had one reader say that he made her so upset when he kept everything inside and refused to share his burden and ask for help. Yep, he frustrated me as I was writing that too! 🙂 But that’s the kind of male he is, and it’s so integral to who he is that I wouldn’t change any part of him for the world.
2. The Heroine, Ishtar Anshar. It was very hard for me to come up with a heroine who could ever deserve a Hero like Tal. I think Ishtar does. She’s in so many ways the opposite of Tal – uninhibited, passionate, also extremely loyal and sure about what she wants. And make no mistake: from the first time she sees him, she wants Tal. Where he’s restrained, she’s exuberant and demonstrative. Where he’s deeply private, she loves to demonstrate her affection openly and often. But one thing they share is their devotion to each other, no matter the obstacles, across time and space. This is a love story thousands of years in the making, a star-crossed love story no less. Somehow I had to come up with two characters that could make it real and believable. I think I have. I’ll be interested in what you think too.
3. The world-building cresendos. I’ve spent the previous 4 books building the world of the Pure/ Dark Ones piece by piece, working on different parts of the tapestry in different books, that only the most involved readers would have the stamina to follow and piece together. I hope it was worth the wait! This isn’t to say that the world-building is complete by Book 5, but you get enough of the context now to understand that the scope of this series spans thousands of years, across many different cultures and mythologies. But as broad as it is, it also narrows down to a few key players in the ancient Akkadian empire. For those readers who have followed all the crumbs I’ve left along the way throughout each book in the series, you will be rewarded with the discoveries in this book (as well as some revelations from Book 4 and onward). But new mysteries come to light as well.

I hope you continue this journey with me to solve these mysteries and watch True Love win the day in all its gorgeous forms.

XOXO

Aja