Happy New Year from Joyce Lamb!

Hi! Happy new year! And thanks for having me here at Coffee Time Romance! I’m thrilled to be here the day after the second in my True trilogy, True Colors, came out. (True Vision was the first.)

I’m excited that readers are finally going to get to read True Colors. It was quite the challenge to write. When I pitched the story to my editor, I’d planned for the villain to be a guy pushed into a corner who came out swinging in a way that led to bad stuff for the hero and heroine. But when I started actually writing the story, my characters led me in a completely different direction. Suddenly, the villain was a serial killer with ties to the hero, John Logan. I’d never gotten into the head of a serial killer before and didn’t relish the idea at all. I fought it for a long time. I kept telling myself, “I don’t want to write a serial killer. Eww.” But Mr. Serial Killer Butch Magee, and my stubborn subconscious, insisted I tell his story. So I held my breath and went with it.

And, wow, did that make things rough for the heroine. See, Alex Trudeau has a wonky psychic ability. When she makes skin-on-skin contact with another person, she relives a traumatic experience that happened to that person — she experiences it as if it actually happened to her. That’s disturbing to begin with, but when she comes in contact with Butch Magee, her flashes into his past are beyond disturbing. After all, the most traumatic things that happened to him are key to turning him into a serial killer. So when Butch kidnaps Alex, she ends up spiraling through several of the distressing events of his past. There’s a little bit of a question of whether Alex experiencing those same events would change her in some way. But no spoilers allowed here! With this exception: The hunky and lovable, not to mention very hot when he’s naked, John Logan is right there to help Alex through it all.

Anyway, as the writer of the distressing events in Butch’s past … well, I ended up feeling pretty bad about all the stuff I put poor Alex through. And, yes, it is my fault that Butch became a serial killer, now that I think about it. But, hey, it wasn’t fun for me, either. Each of Alex’s flashes into Butch’s past are told in first person, which is a much more intimate point of view. I had to really get into this nutjob’s head. I didn’t want to. I mean, you know, he scares me. When I finally buckled down and did it, I went to some truly dark places. After a long day of writing, I had a hard time shaking free of the icky stuff. Looking back, I should have had an after-writing routine that would lighten me up. Something like watching that video on YouTube of Matt Harding doing his goofy little dance all over the world (if you haven’t seen it, you’ve got to check it out; just search for “Matt Harding” on YouTube). That makes me smile every time – and would have been the perfect way to get my brain back to its happy place.

In the meantime, I’m happy to report that Romantic Times called True Colors “dark and twisted.” I’m thinking that’s exactly what my subconscious was going for. 

Thanks for letting me yammer on! And please drop in and visit me any time at JoyceWrites.com.