The Immorality of Immortality: Playing with Reality

So last week I introduced you to my appalling website for the Immorality of Immortality trilogy. If you want to read last week's post click here. I promised I would share with you the only thing I would miss if the website disappeared off the face of the planet: my descriptions of what it was like to write the trilogy. So I thought I'd start of with book one, Playing with Reality which you can now get for your kindle for 77p! Yay! 

If you want a taster, the first three chapters are on Movellas.

Before we go into it be prepared, I wrote the A Lot of Background section when I was sixteen and when I read it over I was shocked to find how juvenile it sounded. I hope you enjoy my enthusiasm and peppiness. 

“Life’s Just a Horror Story”

“A week ago I’d been an average girl.

I hadn’t realised that life could change so quickly, without warning.

And now what?

What do I do next?

My life was turning upside down around me and I couldn’t even explain why.  I was lost in my own body, my own mind.  What was I supposed to do?

And with the thirst growing stronger and more irresistible by the day, life – or should I say ‘death’ – was becoming a nightmare.”

Through Felix’s eyes, Playing with Reality opens your own to discover how wonderful and frightening life can be.

A Lot of Background

'Playing with Reality' was an exploration into what vampires should really be like.  I, personally, though I loved Stephenie Meyer’s ‘Twilight’*, didn’t think her vampire anatomy made sense.  I mean, glittering?  Why?  So I sat myself down and really thought about it.  I created my favourite spider diagram which still to this day has everything that makes my vampires what they are, including hearts beating, sunlight, blood, strength, immortality – all of that and more.

*I was young. Sorry for the Twilight love, don't be distracted. I mean, it doesn't matter what made me write, right? The point is it did make me write. Please read on :) 

So then all I needed was a start, that’s where Felix comes in.  You hear authors say this all the time, but she really did just walk right on into my head, just like that.  She was shortly followed by her sister April and an unnamed vampire who attacks her – who became Elektra.

With all of them safely walking around in my head – yes that’s what it’s like – I began to write and the story came out as though I wasn’t the author, but just the writer.  It was Felix’s story and it was as though she was telling me what happened and I just wrote it down.

I should mention at this point that various characters in PWR are named after my cousins:

Jake – Jacob James Taylor (April’s boyfriend) is named after both my cousin Jacob and my brother James.

Lottie – Charlotte Emmy Ford (A Senate Follower) is named after my twin cousins Charlotte and Emmy.

Emmie – (Evie’s youngest sister) is named after the same Emmy as above to make up for the fact that she was only a middle name.

Now here’s the weird part.  My Auntie had a baby girl and named her Evie, having no idea I’d used that name as one of Felix’s best friends.  So now I had only one cousin I’d missed out, poor Libby.

So then waltzed into my head was the amazing Libby and the plot (still in Sanfolk at this point) really jumped forward and then the Senate came to me.

Shortly after this, Damien and Lucas – always a pair – came knocking on the door to my head and I fell immediately in love with Damien as I hear so do women who read PWR, but not so much men.

That’s how it all happened.  As you can tell, PWR is a character driven novel, not a plot one.  The characters come into my head holding part of the plot in their hands like a gift.  It’s magical, I can assure you of that.

At the very end of December 2011, I published PWR with AuthorHouse and let Felix loose on the world!



So there you have it. That's what it was like to write such an ambitious novel with so little writing experience. If I, like my vampires, only had to sleep for three hours a day, I would definitely go back and re-write PWR. It's a story I love and hold so close to my heart I just want to make it perfect. I was such a new writer when I wrote it that it actually astounds me. I had no idea while I was writing this that it was going to steal every corner of my heart.

Tune in next week for book two, Gambling a Fairytale.

Molly Looby
Author of the Immorality of Immortality trilogy