Some very successful books have been inspired by dreams. For example, Stephenie Meyer’s international sensation Twilight came upon her as a dream of Edward and Bella talking in a field. She knew they loved each other, and knew that he was a vampire drawn to her blood specifically. She wrote the dream down and kept writing. Once she had finished, she wrote backwards to figure out what happened before that scene in the field, and realized there was a lot of book to come before her dream had even started.
And thus, Twilight was born.
Forbidden Mind had a similar inception. Years ago I had a vivid dream about a girl named Sam (everyone always assumes this is short for Samantha, but according to her, it’s just Sam) who could read minds. She narrated the story to me, telling me about the group called Rent-A-Kid that rented her and other paranormals out as spies to the rich and powerful. She told me that her life had been pretty safe, until something horrifying happened that woke her up to her reality and changed the course of her life.
I jolted awake, transcribed her message to me and fell back asleep. That message got lost in other projects, other work, other books—until Fall 2011.
While trying to finish two other books for publication, I wanted to put out a short story that would attract readers to my paranormal writing. At that point, I had only one book out called Bits of You & Pieces of Me, a collection of short stories, poetry and essays about life, and one that really didn’t reflect the writing style I’ve since branded myself with (a process that is sometimes as painful as it sounds… but most of the time is fun).
Knowing that I needed this new brand, I set aside my other books for a few days to pen this short story called Rent-A-Kid. Ha! Yeah, right. You know what they say about how life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans? It’s true.
It wasn’t a short story. It was a novel… which turned into a trilogy… which has sense turned into a saga… and has completely taken over my life.
Forbidden Mind was published by Evolved Publishing in its original form on September 6, 2011. After Forbidden Fire, the sequel, launched in 2012, I went back and rewrote it, essentially doubling its length. (It was a VERY short novel in the first publication.) That too was published with Evolved, until now.
The rights to our series have reverted back to us, and we couldn’t be more excited to publish our first fiction series under the Daring Books imprint!
Some fun facts about Forbidden Mind!
- It’s been published in two version (the original short version and the now longer version)
- It’s had two covers
- And it’s now had two publishers
- It won the Forward National Literature Award its first month out.
- Early in its publication it rose to the top of many Amazon bestseller lists
- It ultimately inspired the New Adult series, Seduced.
- We have been approached by producers about a possible film version of it, and we have been working on the screenplay for it, though nothing official has happened on this end yet.
