Dante Eternal's Virtual Bookshelf: Forbidden Rain by: L. L. Crane w/ Guest Post

Title: Forbidden Rain

Author: L.L. Crane

Series: Blue Spectrum Chronicles (Book 1)

Genre: Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

Publisher: Self Published

Release Date: July 16 2015

Edition/Formats Available In: eBook & Print

Blurb/Synopsis:

Rain is forbidden. As a matter of fact, any teen romance is quickly snuffed out by the Administration due to the high S.L.A.G. (symptomatic latent autistic gene) rate. But that isn’t going to slow Orion down. He wants Rain, and one way or another, he’s going to get her. The problem? She isn’t interested in the hunky new boy who struts into her Geography class right after an earthquake strikes Province A. New students are rare in the Provinces, and much to Rain’s dismay she must show him around for three long days.

But there’s much more to Orion than what meets the eye. The cocky boy has secrets, not only about his family but about Rain’s as well. When a romance finally develops, Rain and Orion must find a covert hiding place so the Administration’s prying eyes won’t find them. But will it work? The hedge gap seems the perfect place, until Orion mysteriously disappears, leaving only one cryptic clue. The letter K. Heartbroken, Rain feels the loss of Orion viscerally and is determined to find him. Eventually, after giving up on Orion, Rain settles into a normal routine with her new family, trying to forget about him.

But Rain soon discovers that she has the biggest secret of all, and if the Administration finds out, there is more at stake than just a teen romance. Left on her own, Rain must face the biggest decision of her life. There are only two paths to follow. Which one will she take?

Book 1 in the Blue Spectrum Chronicles will keep you tethered to your seat, waiting to turn each page to see what happens when a young couple bravely dares to fall in love at a time when it is strictly forbidden.

Smudge turned me around somehow, still holding me tightly in his arms. I didn’t know how he did it with me kicking at him so furiously, but he twisted me around until our faces were just inches apart, his eyes hot blue smoke that seeped through every part of me.

I stopped kicking.

The lights from the teen center cast a shiver of orange light on his face, and I couldn’t help but stare at the pure perfection of it.

Smudge cocked his head to the side, and still holding me, his lips lightly brushed against mine. I struggled to breathe, then, as his lips hungrily pressed harder, moving slowly and deliberately with such emotion and intention I couldn’t help matching his movements with my own, the blue mist of his eyes circling us together and swirling us around in a cloud that seemed about to burst.

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Character Development: How do you make your characters believable?

I usually think of real life characters that I have known in my life, which are many! I have always been attracted to “quirky”, interesting people, so I have an entire life file of people to choose from...many in my family alone. I often use their idiosyncrasies to make the characters more interesting. Since I have so far only written Young Adult Fiction, I have to be careful that these characters remain interesting for young readers, and this helps.

From there, I add characteristics that would fit into the story line of the book. For instance, in the Mark of Power Series, I wanted to keep the book “clean” for middle school aged students, so I invented swear words that they might have in the futuristic setting. My nineteen year old daughter told me she usually quit reading books without swear words in them because she doesn’t know of any teens anymore who don’t swear and the books seemed artificial and unbelievable. My older daughter nagged at me to keep the book series pure. But I wanted teens to read and enjoy it, so I had one of the main characters, Echo, who was raised with five older brothers, have an entire vocabulary of “made-up futuristic” swear words. She let them fly right and left! I also had to add depth to her character with vulnerability (she didn’t know how to read), bravery (went to battle against Siv Gareth), and finally a love interest (she and Gunter fell in love, even after she gave Teak a hard time about how disgusting she and Koree were).

I think it is of utmost important to add depth to the characters, and maybe that is something that you get just from living. Life isn’t always pretty and easy, so when I read a book where everything seems perfect, I get bored. I want characters who are troubled or have important choices to make. In Forbidden Rain, the protagonist, Rain, has to choose between letting the Administration abort her unborn baby or try to save it by running away. Orion, the father of the baby, is an interesting character in his own right, but he has just disappeared from her life, so she has to go it alone. The worst part? She has always yearned for a family and has just found one where she is loved and accepted. She now must give up her family in order to keep her baby. Tough choices make for interesting characters and how they respond to those choices. Rain has been “perfect” all her life, an excellent student slated to go to University to find a cure for autism, until she falls in love with Orion. Suddenly she is sneaking around and doing things she never would have thought of before. (Including getting pregnant!) This series is for older readers and has real swear words in it. In Vanishing Rain, Rain meets Troll, who has a very foul mouth but a kind heart. Boy, does that guy let swear words fly!

The most difficult part for me is to make sure that the characters’ voices stay consistent and that all of the characters in the book don’t “speak” the same way. It was really difficult to keep Teak, the protagonist in the Mark of Power Series using proper language throughout the series, especially once she made it to Harcourt where people didn’t talk that way. It is too easy to write like you as the author speak, so attention needs to be paid to how a male would talk compared to a female, a teen compared to an adult, and so on.

Usually I start writing a book with the basic characters in mind and how I am going to plug them into the story. Then it just develops from there. It is the editing stage where I really have to look at the characters and how they have evolved, making sure their dialogue is consistent unless there is a reason for the change.

For Forbidden Rain, I originally conceived Orion as some popular, beefy guy who dumps Rain once she finds out she is pregnant. But he became such a complicated character, and I just finished the third book of the series, Rain Born, where he is a completely different person! I like him a lot better in the third book than the first.

I think that developing characters is the most fun part of writing fiction! I get to invent people and make them do whatever I want them to. I have found that I have a hard time finishing a series, because I have become so attached to these characters that it seems like they are real to me. I don’t want to tell them good-bye!

But there are always new characters waiting to be born!

L.L. Crane lives in a remote area of Northern California with her two horses, six goats, three dogs and two cats. When she was a child, L.L. Crane dreamed of being a writer. She used the name, “Katie Bush” as a pen name for the famous writer she hoped to become, cranking out book after book on her mom’s old blue typewriter.

As life often has twists and turns, L.L. Crane found herself becoming anything but a writer. She graduated with a B.A. in Education, even though she was honored to begin her college career with the aid of writing scholarships.

After becoming a teacher, raising three children primarily on her own, as well as owning and operating a business, L.L. Crane finally pursued her dreams and began writing novels. She brings her own experiences from teaching and her love of animals to her stories.

L.L. Crane is an avid reader and writer and loves children, animals, reading, riding horses, and gnomes.