🖤 SOMETHING I NEVER WOULD HAVE WRITTEN AS LINDSEY POGUE...

Let’s talk about Sylas and Evangeline.

Their relationship was one of the creative decisions I struggled with most when I started writing the Darkborn series.

I knew their arcs. I knew the history they needed to share for their story to have the weight I wanted it to have. And I also knew there was something inherently a little taboo-ish about it.

If you’ve read Bloodborn, you know I went out of my way to remove the things that would have pushed it into “nope, too icky for me” territory. But the history is still there. Sylas's draw to Evangeline when she is young was one of those areas of the original draft I was EXTRA curious about what my beta readers would say.

Testing the waters with their age difference is not a choice I would have made in a Lindsey Pogue romance, and I wrestled with that.

But somewhere along the way, I realized that was the point of writing as Harley Blackwell.

I created this pen name because I wanted room to follow my imagination into darker places. To write complicated characters, questionable choices, brutal worlds, dangerous relationships, and stories that might occasionally make me cringe, apparently. It's like writing fated mates. I NEVER would have done that...until this series and it just felt right.

This is dark fantasy romance, after all.

If I kept dragging every idea back inside the boundaries of what I was comfortable writing before, what would be the point?

So I decided to trust the characters, trust the story I wanted to tell, and own it. And when I take a step back and really think about it, that decision has shaped far more of the Darkborn series than just Sylas and Evangeline.

For those of you who've read Bloodborn: I'm curious. Did their story give you pause at first? Regardless, let's see how much they change in Soulbound. :) Cause...damn.

No spoilers for Soulbound, please. Some things are about to get... complicated. 👀