Eye of the Beholder - Evolution of Story
Originally published by Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words during the Eye of the Beholder book tour
To celebrate Eye of the Beholder, I wanted to talk a little about the evolution of the story. I enjoy vampires at times but I’m not obsessed with them like some people are. However, this story has been on the backburner for years and after four or five complete rewrites I decided I wanted to fix it up and finally release it.
It is a story near and dear to my heart. It’s been with me for a very long time, and I have a special affection for Vulcan, the main character. He is a wonderful bundle of contradictions—between being bold and shy, and wanting to connect with others but terrified of loss. His character has certainly seen the most evolution from the first draft to the last and I couldn’t be prouder. He is an amazingly self-assured young man but also painfully insecure when it comes to intimacy. It was imperative that he not be classically/stereotypically handsome. In my opinion, he’s adorable, but he doesn’t see himself that way. What I find most attractive about him is his intelligence and creative flare. He’d be a fun guy to get a beer and hang out with.
As a counterpoint to Vulcan, there is the Roman vampire Cassius and he was a hoot to write. This was certainly one of those times where the story might never have been published if I kept digging into Ancient Rome and putting in details about his previous lives. It was fascinating to think of a man who grew up during the time of the emperors in Rome and then continued to live through a significant amount of human history. What would he have seen? Who would he have met? Vulcan’s fascination with Cassius was partly my own. His questions were those I’d want to ask such a man myself.
Cassius as a character didn’t evolve much. I pretty much knew him and how he would react to Vulcan and the world around him. He is certainly someone who can roll with the punches and isn’t really fazed by most things. Then Vulcan pops into his life and shakes things up. He brings a little sun into Cassius’s perpetual darkness, so of course the old vampire would take an interest.
Of course there are slayers involved because where you have vampires, you have those who want to kill them. However, I also added another little crisis to my world—an insidious threat that proves there is a price for nigh immortality. It was a concept that grew with time and only fully formed during the last big rewrite.
I enjoyed fleshing out the world of the vampires and occasional werewolf in Los Angeles, California. They pass as eccentric humans and what better place for such strangeness to exist? It was imperative that I keep the essentials of vampire lore but, of course, add a new twist or two of my own. I didn’t want it to be the same ol’ same ol’ that inhabit the majority of vampire stories. Whether I succeeded or not will be up to you. I’m not one who easily does single titles so this was good muscle flex in writing a fully realized story in a single book.
That’s it for me. Enjoy the rest of your day!
May dragons guard your dreams,
M.D. Grimm
