Lou Paduano | Urban Fantasy Novels | Sci-Fi Crime Series

The Gifts of Kali Author Commentary 1

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The author commentary for The Gifts of Kali begins! SPOILER WARNING is in effect. You have been warned!

Kali’s evolution

There was a steep learning curve in this book, and it was one of my own creation. I thought it would be fun to play with the fact that Kali has a secret identity of sorts. She lives in Portents, does whatever the hell she wants, under the guise of Callie.

It was a clever ploy to throw the reader off until the reveal in Chapter 8.

One problem: I didn’t think of it right away. In fact, I was well into the draft before I considered doing this. So, for the most part, throughout the original draft Kali was simply Kali and that was that.

(What an idiot…)

This is where writing a book from start to finish might have helped. But I didn’t. Nope. Not even close. So by the time I figured out this amazing plan to conceal Kali’s identity even from the reader, I had messed it up.

It took draft after draft to clean it up. When I sent it to my editor, the ever incredible Josiah Davis, I thought for sure I had it all worked out.

I was wrong. Kali was left in one spot instead of Callie. Four paragraphs before the reveal.

UGH.

Thankfully, that was the last one. I really wanted it to be this eye-opener for the reader that they had been following Kali since Chapter 2. I honestly don’t know if it strengthened the book or merely gave me a migraine. These are the little things that keep a guy like me up at night.

The idea behind Kali

Fate was key to the book. The idea of predestination, that we have no true control over our lives. It definitely seems timely as I type this. How Kali/Callie acts at the beginning of the book, the presence she carries throughout the narrative, stems from her fighting this outcome with every fiber of her being.

She knows the end of the story and will do everything she can to avoid it. That is her main drive and why she rubs Soriya the wrong way more and more with each encounter.

I wanted to create someone that Soriya would look up to in Beth for Hammer and Anvil. It was more on the mental side, the lore of the city. Kali brought the physical side to the forefront, so Soriya was hoping to connect with Kali much like she did with Beth. As the story goes along, though, she knows this is a false front. That Kali’s fear is her driving force, not her strength.

Using the flipside of the coin for this book, allowed Soriya to see things from a different perspective. These are her training years, so having these issues come up were important for her own personal growth.

Soriya believes fate to be a beautiful thing, a motivator. Kali believes the opposite, that it is a chain around her pulling her kicking and screaming.

I hope you enjoyed that philosophical argument in the book. It was fun to write.

A look at Mentor next time. Thanks for reading.

The Gifts of Kali Author Commentary Intro

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This is my favorite part of the blog. I love being able to share the story behind the story. This time around, I’m talking about The Gifts of Kali. Gifts will always hold a special place in my heart. It is the first book I wrote as a “full-time” author. Every book that preceded it was written during nap times, in the dead of night, or during holidays when my wife took over the kid duties.

Gifts was the first time I felt like I knew what the hell I was doing. I went from a very clear outline to a draft in 16 days. It was crazy, energetic, and incredibly freeing to be able to get everything down on paper.

So where did the story come from?

I’ve spoken about this before. There were certain points I wanted to hit with the prequel trilogy. One of them was the ribbon Soriya wears along her wrist. For as much as it is used I thought it was important to explore where it came from and what the circumstances were behind Kali gifting Soriya with this incredible tool.

That was the main thrust for writing this book. Everything that built from there came organically, and I’ll be delving into the lore in a later author commentary.

For this introduction to the book, I wanted to talk about one specific moment that started the ball rolling for me.

I wanted a car chase.

Is that weird? I certainly thought so at the time. I was driving my kids to school one morning and Counting Stars came on the radio. As we were traveling over a bridge I suddenly saw Soriya in this epic battle on the roof of a car. She was leaping along traffic, taking out villains left and right, all with her patented smirk.

I think I listened to that song 500 times while putting the book together. Every time, it seemed to amp up the action pieces.

The car chase ended up going in a different direction at the climax of the novel. I love the way it evolved over the course of the draft. When I close my eyes I can still see it from Ruiz’s perspective at the hospital, looking out toward the RDJ and seeing a lone truck barreling along the road to outrun the shadows chasing it down.

The RDJ

Speaking of this little tidbit… no one has said a thing to me about the name of the expressway. I thought I would get so many comments about the name, which is of course a nod to Robert Downey Jr. It was one of those cute little jokes I was able to squeeze into the background. I always hope readers pick up on these, or at least wonder if it means what they think it does, while they’re reading.

More to come next time. Thanks for reading.

Hammer and Anvil Author Commentary – Creating a Series Thread

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Welcome to the end of the Hammer and Anvil author commentary. We made it! I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into the work. If there are things you wanted to know that weren’t covered, please don’t hesitate to write at lou@loupaduano.com. Here it is, your final SPOILER WARNING!

Creating a Series Thread

Going into the prequels I knew there had to be some commonality between them. There had to be a thread, or else it would not be a proper trilogy. At the start of things, however, I had no clue what I was looking to do or where I was headed with subsequent books (for the most part – I did know Kali was going to be in Book 2, which I will be talking about in November and December).

I needed a sense of direction. More than that, I needed the character or incident that tied each book together in some fashion.

Enter: The Door

How did the Minotaur enter Portents? It was a question that plagued me for much of the writing. Mentor’s diversion to the home of the labyrinth wasn’t even a proper chapter in the book until the revision stage. Even then, it was more a red herring to make you think Karen Winters, the Luminary, was the menace behind the Minotaur’s presence in the city.

It was a fun gimmick to try, but all it did was make me realize that someone else must have brought him out. Someone else must have had the ability to open a door into the labyrinth and release this menace.

That was where the series thread was born. That was the moment it came to light just what this series might be about at its heart. (In terms of the plot, anyway… This was always meant to be Soriya’s journey to become the Greystone and take the mantle from Mentor.)

With the realization that someone had to be behind the door for the Minotaur, I had my starting point. Mentor’s chapter where he discovers the door suddenly took on a whole new meaning. I rewrote it several times, trying not to be too obvious with the hints laid out for the reader…

Okay, did you read it again? Good.

The Wiccan Shop

Did you catch the mention of that innocuous shop across the street? I put it there for a reason. There is always a reason when I add a specific detail to a scene, I promise you. Yes, the red herring was there to turn longtime readers toward the Luminary, but the Wiccan shop was listed to foreshadow what is coming next for the series:

The Final Gauntlet

Yes. This is it. The end of the trilogy and the book that owes everything to Hammer and Anvil for creating the series thread. Without the mention of the Wiccan shop, without the question being asked about how the Minotaur made his way to Portents, there would be no Book Three.

Everything was born in this moment and the culmination is coming your way October 13th.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the commentary.

Hammer and Anvil Author Commentary – My Wife Saved the Day

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Welcome back to the author commentary for Hammer and Anvil. SPOILER WARNING is in effect!

My Wife Saved the Day

Credit where credit is due. My lovely wife, who saves my butt day in and day out when it comes to putting these stories together, really stepped it up for Hammer and Anvil.

Most of the time there are little things she finds when reading through my drafts. There will be the usual hodgepodge of grammar and punctuation issues. Sometimes there are a couple out of place elements or questions that come up, but nothing major.

Then Hammer and Anvil hit.

Mentor’s injury

It’s no secret, Mentor has a problem with his right knee. It locks up on him. It slows him down. Eventually, it leads to his death at the hands of Nathaniel Evans.

I never explained where the injury came from. I never felt the need to dive into it. In my mind it was a process of age from a long life of getting the crap kicked out of him by random monsters.

So when Mentor confronts the Minotaur in Hammer and Anvil, Mentor is taken out pretty definitively. The Minotaur wipes the bloody floor with him.

At one point, the beast takes Mentor out at the knee. It wasn’t specified in the first drafts which one. It was merely a progression of the fight and never went further.

Until the wife reads it.

All of a sudden she shouts out, “So this is how Mentor injured his right knee!”

She was very excited.

And I looked at her without a single clue what she was talking about.

She had to explain the scene to me, to spell out the impact of this blow. This is the moment Mentor’s life changed, that his death was all but inevitable because of the Minotaur.

It never even occurred to me. (Idiot!)

I tried to play it off that of course I meant it that way. That OF COURSE I, being the genius author I am, had that moment planned from the very start.

I didn’t. Not at all.

My wife saved the day. She deserves all the credit for making the connection.

The lesson here?

Always let other people read your work? I guess. More likely, the takeaway here is that my wife is always right and will always be right for all time.

I’m okay with that.

The impact of that moment

Everything changed with that revelation. Every instance in the book, and the two that have followed, was given a new layer of context thanks to my lovely wife’s discovery.

Mentor’s whole life was shot in a new trajectory. If not for this injury, he could have continued being the Greystone indefinitely. By adding this as the turning point for him, there was a ticking clock on his tenure.

It was the perfect way to add a layer of tension to his arc going forward, especially in The Gifts of Kali which I will be talking more about in a couple months.

Hammer and Anvil Author Commentary – A Circle of Shadows

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The Hammer and Anvil author commentary continues. SPOILER WARNING is in full effect! Today I’m talking about that dastardly group, A Circle of Shadows, and my reluctance to keep them in the book.

A Circle of Shadows

When I sat down to outline Hammer and Anvil, I knew I wanted some touchstones to the main series. The top two, of course, were the Minotaur and Soriya’s first meeting with Beth. Those were established facts from the series and should be dealt with in the book.

Beth brought with her some challenges though. Her association with the Circle being one of them.

It needed to be addressed. Clearly, Beth was a member of the group. She was tied to their endeavors in the background prior to Signs and leading up to her death. So I knew I couldn’t avoid the subject. It wouldn’t have made sense.

Still, I fought with myself over having Julian and Pratchett in the book. I mean, FOUGHT.

The argument AGAINST them

Spoilers. That was what it boiled down to for me. If someone decided to check out Hammer and Anvil before reading the main Greystone series, I didn’t want them spoiled about who was in the Circle of Shadows and how important they are.

I created the prequel trilogy as a gateway for new readers, but the more I wrote and delved into the series, I realized it was more a continuation of Greystone than anything else. In truth, Signs should still be first in the reading order. Always.

Hammer and Anvil, while a streamlined version of the main series, was still part of the larger picture. And though I hoped to give people this entry-level adventure, it really is Greystone Book Six in a lot of ways. That wasn’t what I was looking to do, it wasn’t the goal of the project, but looking back I can’t help but feel that the inclusion of A Circle of Shadows in this story made it that way.

So why the hell did I keep Julian and Pratchett in the damn book?

The argument FOR them

Insight into Beth. That simple. Character, for me, is the most important aspect of a story. Any story.

Beth was a member and it should be seen, it should be understood why by the reader. I felt it was too crucial to who she was as a person, and the doubts she was starting to have in that role with the Circle, to ignore.

The great bits included in their scenes:

I can’t help this. I loved the scenes with Beth and Julian. The back and forth between them, the way Julian kept trying to manipulate the situation for his own ends and Beth was so well aware of it, really brought out a nice tension. It also served to plant the seed of doubt for Beth.

This was the moment she realized maybe the Circle wasn’t the right path to follow.

The Circle’s role in Beth’s story ended up being more important to me than the threat of spoilers for new readers. That was how I justified their involvement here and why I did everything I could to make those scenes from Beth’s POV as well as focus in on who Beth was as a person because of her association with this secret organization.

Did it work for you? Were you questioning their presence in the novel or did it fit with the narrative being told? If Hammer and Anvil was your first foray into Greystone, I’d be especially curious about your thoughts.

Hammer and Anvil Author Commentary – The Minotaur’s Evolution

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Welcome back to the Hammer and Anvil author commentary. Be warned there will be SPOILERS ahead for the book!

Today I’m talking about the big bad of the novel: The Minotaur!

Bringing the Minotaur into the story

The Minotaur was one of the few pieces that had to be in the book right from the start. Signs of Portents made it pretty clear that this menace was one of the first handled by Soriya during her training years. I thought it was a significant touchstone to tie in the new prequel trilogy with the main series.

There is a flashback of Mentor watching Soriya battle this creature. It is all of five paragraphs in the book, but it stuck with me throughout the series to the point where I want to expand that moment.

I wanted it to resonate with the readers as much as it did with me.

What drew me to the Minotaur

There was a level of expectation with the character. After writing about men like Henry Erikson and Julian Harvey, it was refreshing to have this powerhouse of a threat against Soriya.

Having the Minotaur also focused in on something I thought was important for this trilogy. There is no Loren here. This is Soriya’s story. So rather than have it bogged down on the investigation angle of the series, this was a chance to amp up the action.

Greystone-in-Training became a fast-paced adventure series instead of the crime thriller that Signs was. And that was the direction the series was going anyway. You could see it with The Medusa Coin and A Circle of Shadows. The action bits were bigger and more prominent, than the seedy underbelly of the mystery.

That was Soriya’s influence on the narrative. And since this was her story to tell, it made sense to take it to the next level with a bad guy like the Minotaur.

The Evolution of the Minotaur

Readers of these commentaries know where I stand when it comes to writing the villain. Writing Nathaniel Evans in Signs of Portents was an eye-opening experience for me. Where I saw all this nuance and motivation in him, most others felt he was one-dimensional. Not that he was a terrible villain, but that there was no meat to him.

I took those comments to heart and redoubled my efforts in fleshing out the threats in each of the subsequent novels.

The Minotaur was no exception.

I dug deep into the lore. I read about his subjugation at the hands of King Minos (though he didn’t see it that way at the time). He was abused consistently, and still felt love for his king.

Adding that backstory was just the first step for me.

The moment I knew I had something with the Minotaur in this book was the scene with Mentor, where the Minotaur holds out the phone and speaks for the first time.

It was in the original script. It was in the outline. But I didn’t realize the significance of why that mattered until later drafts. He was evolving. He was becoming something more than the monster in the labyrinth.

I loved that turn. Because it meant he could be viewed as a creature anymore. He was a living, breathing entity with unknown potential now.

He took things too far, of course. I mean, who wouldn’t? Here he sees his freedom, this new world, and he seeks to claim it as his own. He tries to test himself, to prove himself, and it leads to his own downfall.

We can all identify with the villain.

Not the mania or the immorality of them, but their ambitions – their dreams? Sure, why not?

Once I tapped into that evolution vibe with the Minotaur, I went back and filled in the blanks. I layered it into every scene. You can see it starting with the scene where the two cops arrive. He figures out that’s what they are by “reading” the word from the cruiser.

He “reads” the relationship between Mentor and Soriya during their fight in the old city. The Minotaur even lays a trap for Mentor.

All this things point to the Minotaur’s ability to grow, to evolve, and it made him a truly terrifying menace (IMO).

I hope you enjoyed his tale as much as I had writing it.

Will he ever escape the labyrinth again to threaten Soriya and Portents? There is an answer to that question. But should I tell it to you?

No, I better wait. Just a little bit longer.

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