END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit - or as we call it around here, the EOBS. I write these at the end of every book to kind of give readers a little insight to the story they just read. They aren’t edited, so don’t mind my typos.
Some of them are epic. I think the last one for Mr. Romantic was pretty good. Some of them, especially the early ones, are just meh. It really depends on the story and how it affected me as I wrote it. Some are hard to write, some are very easy. Some are controversial, some not so much. And sometimes I just want to talk.
Mr. Corporate is funny because I started this series with Mr. Perfect being so damn perfect and then jumped right into the controversial subject of rape fantasy with Mr. Romantic. I am not afraid to write about anything. I mean, if that’s how the story says it’s going, I’m like – OK. Let’s do this shit. And even though I knew the overall series arc for the Misters, I don’t plot the books out separately too far in advance. I pretty much plot the next book during the time I’m writing the last 25% of the current book.
So I was plotting Mr. Corporate while all that rape fantasy stuff was going down in Mr. Romantic. I knew that the book was going to push some buttons. I didn’t care, mind you. But I knew. And I knew Romantic was over the top, and Perfect was so damn perfect. So I wanted West and Tori to be more “normal” but is a completely different way.
I wanted West to very traditional. He wants very traditional things. A wife to stay home with the kids, the house, the corporate job, and dinner on the table when he gets home.
I think this is kind of a big trigger, not just in romance books, but in society in general. Men aren’t allowed to want these things today. They are sexist if they want their wives to be… well, wives. I’m talking as a career choice. I think “wife” can be a career choice. It doesn’t have to be, but it can, just like “mother” can be a career choice.
No, you don’t get paid, per se. But you enjoy the rewards of the partnership by working together.
And even though West had a mother and father while he was young, and after he was adopted, he never had anything close to traditional. I didn’t explore West’s feelings about his new family (I will, later), so you don’t get much from him about that. But I did know that he missed out on something he felt other kids got. A “normal” loving family life. So this was his motivation in his romance with Tori. He loves her. She’s wild and crazy and hot-tempered. And he can’t get enough.
But he needs to tame her ass down if he’s ever going to fulfill his desire for a “normal” family.
And Tori had her background to run away from. She was forced into things as a young girl/woman and so all she can do is resist this trap West is setting. He stifles her with his expectations.
She and he are not on the same page.
So what does it take to change someone’s world-view?
That’s a hard thing to do, right? Especially as you get older.
How does one make a wild woman like Tori understand that giving in to a traditional role in a relationship is not giving up her identity as independent?
In the “romance world” there are so many ways to write a relationship. But mostly the women are supposed to be strong, but nice. And the men are supposed to be alpha, but not demeaning.
Well, in Julie’s world, that’s not really the case. In fact, I think every expectation except for the two golden rules of no cheating and the mandatory happily ever after, should be thrown out whenever possible.
I kind of like traditional. And I especially like writing about women who choose to be mothers instead of career women. I don’t know why, really. I was a single mom for half my kid’s childhood. And I have always worked. Not always out of the house though. I found ways to work from home. But I never wanted to change my choice, so writing women who choose a traditional role isn’t based off some regret I have. I just think it’s a great job and so many women see it as a trap.
So I loved writing Victoria coming to terms with Weston’s “demands” that she be his “wife”. And I loved her reasons why she was refusing. I liked that she made him work hard to understand her point of view. She kept him at arm’s length until he understood her issues with it. And I think they probably have a good, healthy attitude about who wears the pants in the family now that they’re at the end of their story.
Oh, hold up. We didn’t have a wedding, did we? In fact, we’re missing quite a few weddings in this series. Hmmm… what might that mean? ;)
I also loved that Victoria always knew West was innocent. It was such a breath of fresh air after Nolan’s complete weirdo fucking meltdown of a life over that whole rape thing, you know? He took it to one extreme and Corporate took it to the other.
Everyone thought Nolan was guilty. Hell, even Nolan thought he was guilty. Maybe people thought Corporate was guilty too, but who cares? He had a witness. His life after those rape charges was almost no different than before. He had his girlfriend, who also knew he was one hundred percent innocent. So what if he didn’t finish college? I don’t think it mattered to him the way it did Nolan. Nolan came from a family filled with great expectations. Weston had zero expectations to live up to. I think he was probably more surprised things were working out so well, more than anything. So when he was asked to leave school because of the controversy, he just took it all in stride and moved on. He’s definitely a roll-with-the-punches kind of guy.
I also love Corporate’s backstory. That was another surprise. I knew going in I needed to make him fit into the over-all series story. And I was hesitant to keep adding in more and more people to the mix because I have to tie it all together in the last book, right? No pressure there.
So I was aiming for super simple. I was aiming at Claudette, if I’m honest. I was going to put her in this story somehow. But you know, I really hated her. I didn’t feel like giving her so much power or page time. And I liked the thought of West being from Nantucket. I had done all that research for Ivy and Nolan in New England and I really wanted Corporate to be from “that kind” of family.
Old money.
But with a twist. Because old money can be boring too, you know. Besides, Romantic was from super-old money. And I didn’t really get into Perfect’s money genealogy, but it was several generations. Mysterious is half old money, half new. And Match is Spencer Shrike money. ;)
So Corporate was my only real chance to come up with some cool new-money story. I don’t remember why I was watching the Goonies recently but I was. God, the Goonies, right? That is so my generation. It was a great new-money story and every kid I knew wanted to be part of that team.
Which leads me to another thing I like to do in my books. Contradictions.
I love contradictions. Sexy fucking Ford Aston and his sexy fucking brain. Jesus Christ. He is the perfect contradiction. Spencer Shrike and his fun, easy-going attitude combined with his obsession with guns. Ron the Bombshell Vaughn with her giant tits, blonde hair, and job as a tattoo artist who ends up having six kids. Rook and her wide doe-eyes isn’t exactly innocent by the time you get to Panic. And Mateo and his star tattoos and astronomy job. This is the stuff of great characters.
My aim in Corporate’s story was to present this ridiculous contradiction between a boat-rat kid who finds a treasure and the super-successful self-made man. The more ridiculous the better I like it. It’s a challenge and I’m a hell of a character developer. So I’m OK with just about any scenario.
The contradiction with Tori was her desire to save kids, yet refusing to have any of her own or be part of the expected “nuclear family” because it feels like a trap.
It’s irony, right?
I first got the idea that Corporate was some kind of con-artist when I saw a movie recently called This Boy’s Life. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a kid back in the Fifties who is trying to get as far away from his small-town life and abusive father as he can by applying to elite private boarding schools. So he gets his nerdy friend to fake some transcripts for him and works hard to pass the entrance exams, even gets himself a scholarship.
I thought to myself, yeah. This is Mr. Corporate’s background right here. But I needed more, and I knew I wanted him to be from Nantucket (contradictions, right? He lives in a shack on land worth millions of dollars). So I put him on that lobster boat and started asking myself what could possibly happen next.
I am constantly being asked by other authors how I flesh out my characters. Do I map it out? Do I have a time line? Do I keep one of those story bibles with every little detail outlined?
I don’t do any of that. I just come up with a childhood and shape my character from that. You know, just like Mother Nature does it in real life. You are this blank canvas when you’re born. And pretty soon you’re back packing the Appalachian Trail as a four-year-old with your dad. Or visiting the physics lab with you mother at six. Or learning how to ski, or golf, or surf because your parents are ski, golf, surf bums.
It shapes you, ya know?
But the really fun part about shaping characters is the contradiction. If I’m going to write a stripper he’s not going to be just any stripper. If I’m going to write a rock star he’s not going to be just any rock star.
And if I’m going to write a five-book series based on the “office romance” trope, well, don’t expect the sex to happen on a desk in every single book. I just don’t roll that way. But if you look closely, every one of these books are absolutely an office romance. That was the very first unifying premise of the whole series. Even before I had the whole rape accusation I had the “office romance”.
So I hope you’re enjoying my take on that trope. Personally, I find office romances among some of the most boring stories ever told. (I’m just being honest here) But Perfect was perfect for the trope and the longer I thought about each Mister in this context, the more I liked the idea.
Mac and Ellie are boss and subordinate, pretty clear cut with very few contradictions. Super seductive, Nolan, is interviewing little inexperienced, naïve, Ivy. West and Victoria are competitors after the same contract, dragging a whole lot of baggage behind them.
Which brings us to Mr. Mysterious. Jesus Christ, I’m not gonna spell it out for you, but I hope you got that little hint at the end of West’s last chapter. I’m so fucking excited about this next book. And then Match and Five and holy fuck, I cannot wait.
Anyway, I hope the Misters were fun reads so far. That’s what I’m aiming for. I have a lot of dark erotica coming up starting in January, but I like to do fun stories for summer. And maybe Romantic wasn’t as fun as Perfect, but I promise to make it up to you with Mysterious. He should be dark, right? Right? Let me just say – expect the unexpected. It’s what I do best.
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Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and I’ll see you in the next book.
Julie
JA Huss