Your Honour It Was an Irresistible Urge: A Guest Post by Brigitte Knightley
She’s a healer and he’s an assassin — what more can we say? This high fantasy world is full of spine-tingling tension and rapturous romance. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Brigitte Knightley on writing The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy.
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The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy: Book 1 of the Dearly Beloathed Duology
The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy: Book 1 of the Dearly Beloathed Duology
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Hardcover
$27.00
$30.00
Loyalties are tested in this slow burn, enemies-to-lovers romantasy following an assassin and a healer forced to work together to cure a fatal disease, all while resisting the urge to kill each other—or, worse, fall in love.
Loyalties are tested in this slow burn, enemies-to-lovers romantasy following an assassin and a healer forced to work together to cure a fatal disease, all while resisting the urge to kill each other—or, worse, fall in love.
When I started writing THE IRRESISTIBLE URGE TO FALL FOR YOUR ENEMY, I had a blank page and a question: “What happens if the irresistible force falls in love with the immovable object?”
I wanted to write an enemies-to-lovers story with two leads so diametrically opposed, so repellent to each other by nature, that even I, as the author, couldn’t be certain that they’d end up together. Osric, the irresistible force, came cheekily to life as an assassin of immense charm and little integrity. Aurienne, the immovable object, followed: a haughty, self-righteous healer so full of integrity she’s positively rigid with it.
IRRESISTIBLE URGE begins with a sick Osric breaking into Aurienne’s office and attempting kidnap (an auspicious start to a love story). What follows is a slow burn – my favourite form of torture – between the two of them, as they are forced into collaborating to cure his illness.
Building a fantasy world will leave you with both a god complex and new and exciting agonies. On one hand, you are the all-powerful creator; on the other, as you progress through the project, you suffer the consequences of your own stupid decisions. It’s wonderful. I highly recommend it.
I set IRRESISTIBLE URGE in an alternate world where there was no Norman Conquest and no unification of the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that existed in what we now call the UK. Instead, ten petty kingdoms (the Tīendoms) war for supremacy. This leads to all sorts of interesting consequences – for example, without the linguistic impact of the Norman Conquest, more Old English vocabulary persists in everyday speech.
The in-world equivalent of magic is called seith, an energy which is studied as a science. Because of seith, technological advancements in the Tīendoms are ahead of our world in some respects – Aurienne and her fellow scholar-healers cure things we consider incurable – and far behind in others. For example, because seith is used to travel, there was no development of the steam engine. Likewise, though IRRESISTIBLE URGE is set in an alternate late 19th century, telephones and telegrams don’t exist, because people use seith familiars to communicate.
All told, what awaits between the pages of IRRESISTIBLE URGE is a world that is strangely familiar, slightly chaotic, and, I hope, fun. I am so excited for readers to meet Osric and Aurienne, the assassin and the healer who will definitely not fall in love.