Saturday, April 7, 2018



FORSAKEN HEART

THE FORSAKEN SERIES
BOOK I

Content Warning: graphic sex, some violence

About the Book

Punished for sins not her own, can a mortal claim her vampire mate?
The world of immortals must unite to save both themselves and the mortals they co-exist with from an ancient evil.
For Bede MacTaggert this means trusting in the warrior sent for her sister—a man of mystery, of power, and one who could easily sweep her into a world she's destined to be part of.
An imperial guard to the king of vampires, Gawain has always tuned out the needs of the flesh. Dedicating himself to the service of the royals, he's lived on the fringes of his people for centuries. Now he's forced from the shadows and into the arms of a woman who will awaken his heart and body to a passion unequaled

                      About the Author

Born in Northern British Columbia, Elise is a small-town girl. She writes in a variety of genres including paranormal, contemporary suspense, m/m in various lengths. Currently, she lives in British Columbia with her husband and son, one dog, one cat, and a gecko. Elise enjoys reading as much as she does writing, with some of her favorite books being read until they fall apart. 

She is currently working on the next book in the Forsaken Series, Burning Rain. As well she has a new contemporary she’s working on. For more information on Elise, or to check out her books you can find her on Facebook, twitter, and her website.

How do I develop my story ideas? 

Thank you for having me today. I’m excited to be here and look forward to hearing from your readers. I thought for today I could talk about my writing and how I develop my ideas. 

One question I get asked a lot is how I come up with the ideas for my books and I often have to chuckle at this question. There really is no one method. My ideas are often complex and evolve as I go. However, I can say for most of my books it usually starts with a word, an image, and expands from that point. 

Rarely am I given the entire idea, my muse – love her or him depending on the day – is stingy. I think if I got the whole idea it would make it much less exciting, and less painful at times. Often, I get inspired by something such as the image of a dress and from there it snowballs. Each idea brings with it a unique set of challenges which can be fun, can be frustrating, and at the same time can give me free reign to be as creative as I would love to be. 

Developing the idea takes longer than the initial inspiration. Having the starting point is great, but the pathways I can take to develop it are numerous and much like country backroad. Full of twists and turns, potholes, washouts, and character interference. This is what is so exciting about it. I can take the journey and build a world which gives me a window into the mindset of a character, a location, a time in history, or even the future. The journey itself is part of the developmental process. 

Plotting out a book is something I’ve tried numerous times to help me develop the story, and what I’ve found is it’s a great preface to the book but it doesn’t always work out. I’ve had outlines plotted that are ten, twenty, even forty pages long and started writing only to find by the third chapter the characters have taken over and I’m merely the tool they use to tell their story. Developing a story means allow the characters to tell me who they are, what they are about and what events in their lives have made them who they are at this point. Do I always hit it out of the ballpark on the first shot, no, but that’s another step in the development and creation of one of my books. 

When we started talking about the largest project I’ve ever undertaken, The Forsaken Series, it was challenging. Not only was I faced with an idea filled with multiple characters, multiple locations, and threads, but different voices. My co-author on the series, Ciara Lake, and I have spent hundreds of hours talking over the series, developing characters, rules, worlds, gods, laws, all in an effort to flesh out and bring to life a story of love and redemption, of forgiveness and justice. 

Can an idea go from inspiration to development onward quickly, yes, of course it can. Since I have a lot of different ideas on the go at one given time, it is unlikely I’ll be able to get something down too quickly. Like all aspects of writing, it is all about inspiration and allowing the story to tell itself. 

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