Wisdom’s Allegiance - About the Story
Originally posted at Love Bytes during Wisdom’s Allegiance book tour.
Wisdom’s Allegiance can be read as a single title, so if you’re intrigued and don’t want to start at the beginning, just check this one out.
I wanted to be a little different with this one. I’ve tried to be diverse in my shifter series by having not only different shifting animals but also including various nationalities and ethnicities. This time around I wanted “unconventional beauty.” This is also my first time writing a threesome. My editors were great in helping me handle Dexter’s character with care and respect. Dexter is a big man with low self-esteem and fragile confidence. He is the sweetest and most loyal guy but is painfully shy around strangers, especially attractive men. Due to his personality, I had to make sure his potential mates were outgoing and had a “take-charge” attitude. Enter Talon and Orion. I really love these guys. They are complete opposites in personality, and because of that they know they need a third person in the relationship to balance it out. Talon is reserved and seems stuck-up while Orion is bubbly, bouncy, and painfully cute. They are also both owl shifters – a great horned owl and an elf owl respectively.
Have you ever seen an elf owl? They are the cutest little poof-balls ever! I modeled Talon and Orion’s personality on their owl types, and I’m satisfied with the end result. So of course I had to make Dexter a bird-lover with owls being a special favorite of his.
Their courtship is rather short so I wanted it to be obvious from the start how right they were for each other. I also wanted to help the reader suspend disbelief a bit. My guys fit together like puzzle pieces and it was greatly satisfying to get them through their low points so they can have their happily ever after.
But of course it wouldn’t be shifter book if I didn’t have enemies involved in trying to keep our heroes apart. However, the Knights (my big bads) don’t play a huge role in this one. The danger comes from within the shifter community and hits rather close to home for all three men. I won’t say anymore! Don’t want to spoil anything.
I set the story at UC Boulder, Colorado, and while I’ve never been to the campus personally, I scoured their website trying to find all the needed details. However, I am only human, and those who’ve actually been to UC Boulder will probably be able to pick out flaws. Sorry, I did my best! I do work at a university myself, but on the west coast of the USA, so there were some norms across university culture I know intimately. Of course now I want to visit UC Boulder after all the research I did! And go hike in the Rocky Mountains....
This story went through several incarnations, as most of mine do, and the original title, “Sanguine Truth” didn’t fit anymore. After brainstorming for some time, I decided to play off the stereotype of owls being wise and used “Wisdom.” Then I realized “Allegiance” was going to be a big theme in the story so I just slapped those two together and there you go! Sometimes titles are just there without me thinking about them and sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to come up with the right one.
Thanks for joining me and may dragons guard your dreams,
M.D. Grimm
