Toni V Sweeney sends her hero for some serious therapy!

A Devil of a Sequel

Back in the Dark Ages when I was still writing novels for my own benefit because I couldn’t afford to buy them, I wrote a little ditty called Bargain with Lucifer. Starting out small and getting more outrageous as it went along, it concerned a young Creole named Lucifer Deveraux who makes a marriage of convenience to gain a fortune, falls in love with his wife, and ends up accidentally killing an ex-girlfriend to save that marriage. Throughout the story, try as I might, Luc was definitely not a nice person. Though handsome and sexy, he was, by turns, cruel, arrogant, and violent. As critic Margaret Marr points out, “There’s no way that I’d let a man treat me the way he treats Julie; he’d be out on his butt with a broken nose in no time flat!”(http://www.nightsandweekends.com/articles/10/NW1000098.php) In fact, in some places, he almost seemed to have two personalities, and eventually actually questions his own sanity. In the end, he decides he’s just so undisciplined and accustomed to having his way that he’s not crazy, but spoiled. Nevertheless, a good session with a psychologist is definitely in order. The story ends with Luc heading back to Dallas where everything started, to begin psychotherapy, leaving his wife to wait for his return as the husband and father she’d want in her life.

I was now burdened with some left-over plot lines and some unanswered questions: what about Michel, the younger brother, whose wife Luc accidentally killed; what about the child she had before she died, which may or may not be Luc’s; what’s Julie going to do all this time her husband’s away playing with Dr. Freud?

The answers to those questions came in Brother Devil, Michel’s story. Like its older brother, it started out small and then ran wild. Michel begins as a repressed widower, starved for affection by the treacherous wife who actually loved his brother. Discovering himself suddenly free of the chains binding himself to his cruel, unfaithful spouse, he responds like the frustrated, sexually-deprived male that he is…he runs amok. One woman after another falls to Michel’s suddenly awakened male charms and while his sister-in-law worries about him and his brother offers advice via Skype from Dallas, Michel the Angel finds himself fluttering in a downward spiral of sex and violence…and the sad part of the whole thing? Michel never wanted any of that…all he wants is someone who’ll love him for himself alone, a fact that is pointed out in an even more shocking climax when he meets Laurel Duncan, his wife’s cousin and look-alike…

Wonder what Margaret Marr will think of that? I can’t wait to find out!

Bargain with Lucifer and Brother Devil are available as e-books and print from Class Act Books, www.classactbooks.com. They are published under my pseudonym Icy Snow Blackstone. Trailers can be seen at www.youtube.com/icsnow14

Love how you've explained your internal concern with a main character, Toni! Many people think writers must love or at least feel confident with every character we create but very often that isn't the case at all. I love that you knew deep-down things were quite right and worked out a sequel was in order to set the equilibrium. Sounds fabulous, bring on the comments!