Outside of the four friends who make up our Unbreakable Bonds main characters, Hollis Banner is so damned fun to write, I’m nuts about him. Jocelynn and I are still working out our “writing together” routine and during the creation of SHIVER, she was in charge of the first round-or the main bulk–of Lucas and Andrei’s story. (Her love for Lucas is FIERCE, you guys!) She would chuck chapters at me to keep me up to date. I did the first round of revisions, rounding out certain characters and I also added quite a few scenes. Then it went back to Jocelynn and so forth. (Is it any wonder we ended up with a book over 100k? It could have been longer. Trust me. 😉 )
So, I got to write Lucas and Andrei as well. But we quickly realized we wanted to divvy up the characters. So, when a scene would come up with the other’s character, we’d switch who did the first draft, etc. Rowe is Jocelynn’s. Now, that doesn’t mean only she writes his scenes or only I write Snow’s. We do mix things up–which I love! My characters are mainly Snow and his upcoming love interest (I’m working on the main bulk of their story now!) and I got Ian because that young man crawled into my heart quickly. I also ended up with a completely new character we hadn’t planned!
So, one of my assigned scenes was set in a hospital with Lucas–if you’ve read the book you know what I’m talking about–and in strolls Detective Hollis Banner. He jumped out as this whole, mouthy and completely intriguing character. (Kind of like Jocelynn did with Melissa. Man I love her!) I was grinning and barely able to keep my fingers typing as fast as he just coalesced into life. I couldn’t wait to get that scene to Jocelynn and she responded as I expected. We must keep him! (There are a LOT of reasons why Jocelynn and I work so well together. We have similar tastes in books and characters. We also bring different and sometimes opposite strengths to a book–but that’s a post for another time…)
So, yeah, we decided to keep Hollis Banner. Add in a certain response he had to someone and readers will understand why we really had no choice. We have such lovely, lovely plans for him. Stick around, you’ll see. 😉
SHIVER is out now! You can purchase copies at:
Also, we released a LONG sneak peek of book, two. Click here to read the opening to SHATTER!