An All-Consuming Fascination: A Guest Post by Harper L. Woods
Harper L. Woods knew she wanted to write a vampire story for years, but she didn’t quite know how to make such a classic monster truly her own. In her exclusive essay below, Harper takes readers through the process of writing this addictive enemies-to-lovers tale and how her characters came to life on the page.
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The Cursed (Special Edition)
The Cursed (Special Edition)
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A marriage built on lies and a witch looking for a way out — even if it means denying their overwhelming chemistry…
A marriage built on lies and a witch looking for a way out — even if it means denying their overwhelming chemistry…
Like so many readers, the forbidden and dangerous allure of vampires has been an all-consuming fascination of mine for years. I always knew that I wanted to write my own version of a vampire, with all the gothic vibes that I’d come to love as a romance reader and lover of all things horror.
Nobody was more surprised than me when the story started to form in my head, and I came to more fully understand the premise of the Vessels. The vampire bodies created from a witch with the sole purpose of housing demon souls on Earth wasn’t what I’d anticipated for the story. For a brief time, I wondered if it was too out there. I wondered if I would defy the expectations of the genre just a little too much.
I knew from that moment that I accepted the Vessels—our heroine had to be a witch rather than the human I had originally envisioned for the story. My love for enemies to lovers couldn’t resist the push and pull of two supernatural species that had been tentative allies and enemies all in one breath. The lore of Crystal Hollow spread from there, entangling with my adoration for Salem, Massachusetts during spooky season. I wanted to create a place that captured that feeling and felt like a nod to my family as a descendant of one of the witches from the witch trials.
The moment I understood Willow’s family history, her mission of revenge, and her prophesied purpose beyond that, became clear. Her character was more vivid in my head from the moment of inception than I can ever remember a heroine being. Her story poured out of me and bled onto the pages faster than I could type, whether it was in The Coven or the sequel, The Cursed. Writing her words, hearing her voice, made me feel consumed, like it was a journey I needed just as much as she did.
She quickly became my favorite part of writing this series, though admittedly getting to experience Gray through her eyes was no hardship either. I didn’t understand why at first, as someone who typically thrives with my masculine characters, but over time I came to the realization that she was everything I wished I’d been when facing my own demons. She was confident and sure of her convictions. She knew who she was and was willing to go to the ends of the earth to set her boundaries and stick to them.
And that, I think, is a little piece of magic that I hope all of us are able to claim for ourselves.