Can a childhood pact affect the lives of three adults?

Love and betrayal surrounds the lives of lifelong friends Lanie Rhodes, Grant Bennett, and Dane Voight. Years ago, they made a pact to remain together as friends forever. The boys also made another secret pact that same day—to never vie for Lanie’s love.

Grant and Lanie have secretly been pining for one another since they were children.

Now grown up, they finally admit their feelings for each other and what ensues is a twisted tale of deception as Dane does everything he can to stop them.

The story weaves around this uneven love triangle. What will happen to the pact? Will friendships be destroyed? Will lovers emerge?

Creating tension between characters.

As an author, I know that I need to make the interaction between my characters engaging to the reader, which mean that the connection needs to feel real to them. One of the best types of connection is tension.

Now in The Cliff, you can definitely see a few different types of tension. There’s angry tension as well as some downright awesome sexual tension. Which do I prefer to write? Well, both, but for very different reasons.

Lets start with angry tension, shall we? I love to pit two characters against each other and build the animosity they have to the highest degree before reaching its climax and exploding into a … Yes I am still writing about angry tension LOL ... fist/cat fight, screaming match or plain of seething, silent hatred. I want my readers to feel it, choose sides, hate someone or want to face punch one of my characters. No I don’t mind if you punch my characters, sometimes I totally want to you hate the hell out of them! But how do I accomplish that? Well, I personally think about something in my life that’s pissing me off and use that to form the basis of what my character might be feeling. This way what you’re reading is real and raw, just probably not about the same why. See real life experiences allow me to utilize my own emotions and transfer them to you. So you feel my anger. See, I’m trying to rile you up. You need to feel the tension or I am an epic fail at creating that tension.

Sorry, I don’t mean to raise your blood pressure. Or do I? Yes I do. And well that’s where we get into the other type of tension I like to write about. Sexual tension. Oh I know that got your attention. So how do you build on something that is the type of emotion that needs to exist all on its own? We all know you can’t force sexual tension; it’s either there or it’s not. I read somewhere once that one of the first things you notice about a person is whether or not you’re attracted to and/or would have sex with them, and this all happens within the first three minutes that you’ve met them. But I digress.

So, how do I find the inspiration to get my characters all heated up and in turn get you all excited? Well I pull on those heart and pants strings by reaching back into my past to remember the first few weeks of falling for someone or that first kiss or not being able to keep my hands off someone. TMI? Well of course it is but that’s what pulls you in too. Lets take that first kiss. You all know what I’m talking about. The butterflies in your stomach, staring at the person’s lips, the heart pounding in your chest, chewing an entire pack of gum in hopes that first kiss is on its way.

Oh that first kiss … the total sexual tension you feel with that other person. Like magnets drawn together. You can’t help from moving your body closer, and yet closer still. Dying to see what it would be like to press your lips against theirs. The heat is undeniable. When you can feel that draw to someone from across the room, or over the phone for that matter. Hell, in this day and age you can feel sexual tension thru email or texts. And there you have it. And this is exactly how I create that sexual tension between two characters; and in turn, makes you feel the same thing in your head and maybe even your pants. Clears my throat.

OK then, so creating tension between characters in a book is one of the most essential parts of being a good writer. Pulling from my own experiences allows me to help you feel what I’m feeling through my characters. And it’s a lot easier to do when you’ve actually lived through those feelings. 

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