Upside Down by Amie Stuart

Or taking the ordinary and giving it a good hard twist!  One of the BEST parts about being a writer is, well, that little god-factor. As in, I am. God. I am the god of every universe I create. I get to make people do things, give them a history and sometimes… sometimes my muse even lets me get away with whatever crazy scheme I cook up.  And in my capacity as god of Amieville, (that’s Amie-ville not Amityville, okay?), I’ve had occasion to say in the middle of plotting a book, “Wow, that’d be a hoot! Let’s do it!”  

That’s usually the point where my muse should tell me no, but doesn’t because she’s out drinking or cavorting with unused heroes or something equally insane. In HANDS ON it was blue-collar chicks, a little BDSM and girls kissing each other, in Kink (in the BUILT anthology) it was 1st person from a dude’s point of view and MAKE U SWEAT (September 08) is about female movers! I even created a hero who was a survivor of spousal abuse.  

Then….there was NAILED my June Aphrodisia release. I played with about five or six different scenarios surrounding my hero being a gun-for-hire, and my heroine being a woman in hiding (with a blue collar job), and one of my critique partners said, “He can’t kill someone on the page. The readers won’t like that.” Keeping in mind she’s often the voice of reason*, this particular time I listened.   And I said in reply, “Hey wouldn’t it be cool/funny/crazy/a complete gas if he was the black sheep because he WOULDN’T kill people?” And Raine said, “Yeah! Do it, DO IT!”   And we laughed…a LOT! Because we thought we were terribly clever and funny.  

So I did it. I made my hero the bane of his father’s existence because he won’t kill; I made my heroine a peeping tom. The one person who is initially a thorn in my heroine’s side later becomes a great good friend (and helps save her skin) and then I jambed my hero’s brother up by making him unable to lie. It’s all in a day’s work, but sometimes being god of the universe can make you reckless…Such as with a hero who can’t lie. WHAT was I thinking? Because, you see, some rather wise writerly person once said, “If you introduce a gun in the first act, you have to use it by the end of the book.” Well I definitely introduced a gun in NAILED, and I had to “use it” in SCREWED …or rather, give the reader a good reason for my hero’s inability to lie. Don’t worry, I found one, but to see how THAT turns out, you’ll have to wait until next March. 😉 

I hope you enjoy Wynn, Bonnie,Clyde and the rest of the crazy-fun cast that makes up NAILED as much as I did!  

———–

*Raine is often the voice of reason but in SCREWED (which is actually two novellas Screwed and Hooked) I did indeed pull the trigger–twice. 

Amie 

—————————

HANDS ON ~ Now Available from Aphrodisia ROPER’S RULE ~ Cobblestone Press May 08

NAILED ~ Aphrodisia June 08

MAKE U SWEAT ~ Aphrodisia September 08

SCREWED ~ Aphrodisia March 09