Guest Blogger, LaTorre Mays!

I have a new guest blogger today. His name is LaTorre Mays, and he is the author of Darkened Soul. I asked him to write about any subject he chose, and here is his post!

Man on a Ledge

            It was a tale as old as time.

            Or as old as 1998.

            I used to frequent (and at one point worked as a Host at) Perkins Family Restaurant. At the time, Jonesboro, Arkansas was a small college town. Perkins was twenty four hours, great for college students to study. It also had the most lively smoking section I have ever encounter before I went to college and since. There used to be a wait to sit in smoking, like waiting to get entry to a popular nightclub. As a writer, I found it fascinating and ripe for story ideas. While I did not smoke, I still sat in that section, observed, and wrote.

            And that night I was working on a novel.

            It was a novel about four seniors in high school and their misadventures. There was Robin the girl who did not know what she wanted to do with her life, but loved to write. There was Doug, her best friend with a secret. There was Eugene who was a playboy, learning to love for the first time. Finally, there was Nick who would do anything to be popular, even hurt his friends.

            There had been a house party. Robin had run into her crush, football player Matt. Eugene's playboy ways had caught up with him almost. Nick had found out Doug's secret in a shocking way.

            I was figuring out what my next move from there was when an image popped into my mind's eye. It was man on a ledge, looking down at the world below. I shook it out of my head and kept writing.

            But it kept coming back. This man was on a ledge. All he wanted was to end his life. But...why?

            Finally...I put my teen novel aside. My curiosity over what this man would be doing on a ledge had grown to the point it was all I could think about. It also became easier to focus on it due to a case of writer's block on my teen novel.

            I found out that his name was Daniel. The year was 3055. Oh, and while it was not spelled out to me, Daniel was a vampire.

            Whoa.

            He waited. He waited for the sun to come out of the clouds so he could kill himelf. The only thing standing in his way was another of his kind...Jared. Judging from the tense conversation they were having, something had occurred in California which was a futuristic city-state a la Blade Runner. What was it? What had happened that Daniel wanted to kill himself?

            And that was the first five pages.

            Thus, Darkened Soul was born. My novel of Nosferatus (my name for vampires), a world that was a mixture of futuristic structures with a dystopia tip, and prophecies full of danger was interesting to write. It was fantasy, horror, and sci-fi mixed into one. And there was action and romance in the form of a triangle of sorts on top of that.

            There was also time jumping. 1997. California circa 3053. London. Paris in 2048. I would think of the time jumping in Kill Bill, but without getting tooo lost.

            There were themes. There was love in all of its forms. Pure first love. Obsessive love. Passionate love. Dark love. Identity came into play due to what role the prophecy played upon Daniel and Jared's life. The meaning of what it was like to be isolated, whether it was literal or just the sense of feeling alone in a crowded room. Then...there was the essence of dark and how it played out throughout the novel, leading to the unexpected ending that so far readers had mentioned to me they did not see coming.

            And that was only the beginning.

            I put the pencil down. I had finished writing Darkened Soul. I had been spent. I had traveled through Smalltown USA in 1997, danced at a Goth club in 3053 London, gasped at the blood and mayhem in 2048 Paris, and finally came back to how it had all began. Daniel on a ledge, sun about to appear.

            I never thought I would return to the Darkenverse again.

            Two more book ideas, a novella in progress, and short stories (that can be found at www.facebook.com/darkenverse) later, I should have known better. The need to want to play and explore this fully realized dystopia proved to be too much to resist. Whether it was Daniel dealing with his new responsibilities, the witch Angela Hillworth wanting the best for her children, or the deliciously wickedness of my villain Ursula, I hoped there was plenty for readers to like and enjoy. And all of it began with a man on a ledge many years ago.

            Won't you come and explore?