The Dark One Trilogy is a series of novels told from the perspective of Clarabelle Weaver after she’s kidnapped from her village to become the Great Lord’s mistress.
How it all came about:
Well now. The inspiration for this story was a very strange one indeed. It all started with me playing a game on the trusty PS3 called Overlord2. My mind wanders a lot while I play these sorts of “hack ‘n’ slash” games, it’s not as if they require much thinking beyond the ‘press this button now’ mentality.
Anyhow, for those not in the know, you play the bad guy who goes around either killing or enslaving people. So during one such time as I was enslaving silly pixel people who don’t even have the brains to flee very far, one thought pops up: What if the bad guy doesn’t believe he’s morally a bad guy but is perceived as a bad guy by some while technically doing bad guy things? Not a concise thought, I’ll give you that, but there you go.
Now I struggled to accept this idea. Shelved it under the ol’ mental WTF file and moved on. Even so, the idea persisted, plaguing me with the notion until I gave in and started thinking on it. Number one thing I needed was a reason for this not-bad bad guy to be not-so-bad. It didn’t take long for me to realise the Main Character would not be the bad guy himself, but another who would see him as bad and, through her (yes, her) eyes, learn there are worse people.
Does it sound like I just described a vague plot of Beauty and the Beast to you? Because that also managed to factor itself into the story, albeit subconsciously. I grew suspicious of the notion halfway through writing the first draft. By the time I was three-quarters done, I knew bits of that old tale had rooted itself into the storyline. Except this isn’t about outward appearances at all because he’s still a hunk. Besides, I’m pretty sure the Beast couldn’t steal your soul. Not in the versions I’ve read, anyway. ^_^
But, of course, if my bad guy isn’t bad, then who is? Why that would be Lenora of the Raven Household at Ne’ermore with her pet barbarian: the one-man siege machine. You can thank all the stories with the cliché, muscle-bound heroes for his inspiration.
And after Dark One’s Mistress was done, my muse kicked into overdrive to figure out if a sequel was possible. I really hoped it could be left as is, but the tempting idea that has morphed itself into a sequel, which has grown to a size that requires being two stories now. So … this standalone-turned-duology went and turned itself into a trilogy without my permission. Thank you, muse. Now stop it.
Aldrea Alien 