It’s been a busy week of writing, editing, networking and… I have gotten a few more reviews of Unbind! I’m quite proud that most readers seem to be coming back with the same thoughts – the sex is well-written but isn’t tantamount, yet adds a certain extra flavour! Even one lady told me her husband says, “Thank you.”
I am reluctant to talk about Unbind until enough people have read it (finding time for the old plugging is proving a nightmare right now with one issue or another!). Anyway, there is one dynamic of this book I’d like to talk about and it’s the day that changed the life of our hero in this novel, Cai Matthews. I drew from Ian McEwan with this one… the scene where Cecelia and Robbie “do it” and her little sister gets totally the wrong impression… you know the one, in Atonement. By the way, I love Ian McEwan but someone once told my love scenes were a bit more, well, you know…
In my bid to be contrary and write something I hoped would be totally original, I wrote the same pivotal scene in Unbind from three different POVs. The day Cai’s life changed forever can not only be viewed from his perspective, but also his mother’s, and the spying housekeeper’s. Each POV (deviating from the main narrative which is Chloe 1st person, past tense) is from the third person in past tense. I just wanted to twist words a little bit because you have to question what’s true sometimes. We’re so often given a headline or a news bulletin, you know, and we take it as truth. I had to stand from above this scene and look down on it from a bird’s-eye view, then tell you what people are seeing or more to the point, not seeing. Sometimes, there’s just that little piece of missing info that sheds a ton of light on the scenario. I think we read third person like we read first person, the only difference is in third person we have less of the emotion and we’re not driven by the protagonist as much, more by the narrator delivering that passage or chapter(s) as the action happens. You’ll have to read it to decide for yourselves… but I doubt you’ll think this is the cleverest trick I rolled out in this book!
Anyway, the title Unbind very much refers to the nature of the Catch-22 Cai finds himself in, and this is what he has to find his way out of, but you might not expect the way in which he does escape…! The whole Unbind-ing of his predicament isn’t simple, and so, moving into the planning of the next novel… we shall have a much more emotive delivery of Cai and how his world works. We will dive right into the mind of an artist… and one thing I am desperate not to do… is rely on soap-opera to move my writing along. Nope. I won’t include a car crash or anything like cheating or whatever… this is purely a character assassination (with sex) that will hopefully test me and my writing yet again, hopefully thrilling you in return! Ideas are already brimming my mind!
Check out Unbind if you’re looking for steamy romance with just that extra bit of intrigue and some characters that feel real to me, so I hope they do to you too! One elderly chap said, “This would sell without the erotic elements.” I think my week is complete. 🙂
Sarah Michelle Lynch 