I’d known from the jump that I liked her, and after we got through shooting the first season, I knew I had a true partner. She is as all-in with the books as I am, and she’s also a great friend and a lot of fun. Everyone at Passionflix is the same.
Post-production was about three months, and then I got to see the rough cuts of the six episodes. My bffle and I watched them one by one…and omg. In spite of the fact that I wroteDarkLover, and got it through publishing production, and have been talking about it for twenty years, and even though I approved the scripts, and saw snapshots and dailies from set, I was absolutely riveted. All wait, what happens next?!? I hope they get together in the end!!!
I figured that was a good sign. But I had no idea what it was going to be like to see the finals of everything.
Flash forward to the premier. It was so great to have everyone together, and the audience cheered and clapped at all the right places. We were totally buzzing, and excited for the show to get seen.
We were also shitting ourselves.
A week or so later the first episode came out. We figured it would get some traction, and were hoping that with a little momentum, we could find an audience and claw our way to a second season.
What happened…was every bit as magical as when the books first came out.
The BDB community crashed Passionflix on episode two. And three. And four…and five.
It was insane. Incredible. Unbelievable. Surpassing even the most optimistic, crazy, never-going-to-happen estimates.
In solidarity with the community and the Passionistas, I watched the finals every Thursday. I was always asleep when they came out at 12:01 a.m., so had to catch them first thing in the morning, and I loved all the posts online about what people thought. One of my favorite parts? The way the BDB fans got excited every time they broke the app. Never in all my life have I seen people be happy when they couldn’t access a service. It was like a badge of pride each week that it happened.
And everyone was so happy.
Still are. At the moment, we’re in the planning stages of the second season which is based onLover Eternal. I can’t wait to doit all over again. As Tosca says, it’s a labor of love, and I feel like everybody involved feels the same way. Without the support of viewers, we wouldn’t be able to move on to Rhage.
Thank you so much, to everyone who’s watching.
Now on to thisInsider’s Guide.
I know there are a ton of people in the BDB world outside of the original five Brothers and Butch. There are their mates, and their young, and the males and females who fight alongside them, and all their allies, and of course thedoggen—Fritz! You’ll see a lot of them inHappy Anniversary, the story at the end of this book. But as always, I had to make decisions about where to focus and that’s why for the Interview(ish) section, I stuck close to home, so to speak. I really wanted to circle back to where this all started.
Those original Brothers and Butch.
I just can’t fit it all in.
#thatswhatshesaid
Fair warning, the interview section gets a little meta, and not in a Facebook kind of way. I wrote it as it came, and please excuse me if it’s fucking weird in places. My mind’s a squirrelly mess, what can I say. But we’ve also got some fun stuff from theCaldwell Courier Journalemails I used to do, and some writer’s advice from the Friday is for Writers posts I used to do on Facebook. As well, I thought it would be good to do a sample menu and then some jokey questions about the Brothers.
Who knows, maybe we’ll do a third guide that really locks in on the next generation?
As for this introductory part of things, I want to end on something that happened in April this year.
Jen Armentrout and I go back for quite a while. The joke has always been that I just really like her. She’s inspiring, a helluva writer, and she’s smart as hell. She’s also one of the big three for the entire romantasy genre, something that couldn’t happen to abetter person. (And can I just mention as an aside how much I love Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros? Both of them have been hugely kind to me, and I want all of the success in the world to keep swamping all three of these ladies.)
So Jen runs one of the biggest and most important conventions for the romance genre—hell, for writing in general. ApollyCon is the place to be, and back in 2020, I’d been scheduled to attend. I don’t do much outside of my own events, but like I’m not going to hang out with Jen if I get the chance?
Except the world shut down back then and the event was canceled.
Flash forward to last year. I’m still not sure why it came to me, but I hit up Jen and was like, hey, maybe I should come? And because she’s fucking awesome, she hell-yeah’d the idea. As the date for the con got closer and closer, I started to get really anxious. I’m a creature of habit so busting me out of my schedule is a thing, and I don’t travel well. I’d also heard that it was really a romantasy event that skewed to a younger audience so I was kind of like, jeez, I wonder if anybody will be interested in getting any books signed by me?
I ended up going with a pit in my stomach.
As I was checking in at the hotel’s front desk, I was absolutely thrilled that two readers recognized me and were super nice. But again, I was giving myself what I call “the dinosaur pep talk.” After the BDB turned my writing career around, I set out a goal that I wanted to retire from the business as a dinosaur, as someone who had been around the block a gazillion times and was choosing to step off the ladder because they decided they’d typed all the things and now were going to coast into the sunset, at peace with where they were at and what they’d done.
After all, I firmly believe we have to get out of the way for the next generation at some point. I had my incredible ascension. I lived that gift, even if I was always so stressed I never enjoyedit. I hit those benchmarks and then some. With Jen, Sarah and Rebecca, the torch has been well and truly passed, and it’s not just about the three of them. There’s a whole bunch of super talented young authors breaking out right now, publishing books that blow my fucking mind.
#milkcarton
IYKYK.
