The Midnight Bride

Book Info
Due Date: Summer or Fall, 2010
Possible Blurb:

By the will and magnanimous glory of nos ancêtres,

may your enemies forever know your name…

Second-born daughter Melisende Ludivine d’Auvigne has been subjected to almost ritualistic mistreatment all her life, as is customary in her family. But unlike other second-borns in her family, Melisende is oddly silent in her suffering, meekly refusing to rebel or retaliate in any way. Or at least...that’s how it seems.

For it shall keep you from wear and wizening

Keiji Hirayama, the illegitimate younger son of a notorious hotel mogul, has always known his father’s obsession with business expansion would bring about disaster. He lost his brother when their father tried to do business with the dreaded Hirosawa family. Now, despite adamant objection, his father seeks to align with the infamous d’Auvignes.

As it has been penned in the Book of Two Kings…

When the two very different families are joined beneath one roof, world-weary fathers Akihiro Hirayama and Ludovic d’Auvigne find themselves revisiting decisions past and present. For in a house where the relics and voices of those long gone are devoutly revered, both men realize no sin can stay buried forever, for the dead and wronged always have the last word.

May you persist for centuries, as nos ancêtres persisted.

The Why, How, and What For

In the The Midnight Bride, I introduce the d'Auvigne family (in modern-day USA).  I also bring back the Hirosawa family mentioned in Folklore, and Other Stories, but I mostly present them in conversation.  We'll see more of them in Velvet Hall.  The d'Auvigne family was established in Europe some time during the 16th Century, when a Mandara princess was kidnapped and sold as a mistress to a French nobleman.  Since the 1500s, the d'Auvignes have done what they euphemistically refer to as "persisting", resulting in the extensive amassing of money influence across the globe...all the while remaining shadowed.

The main d'Auvigne in The Midnight Bride is Melisende, a thirtysomething-year-old unwanted second daughter who's being married off in what her family calls an "acquisition."  In exchange for getting married and having kids, she gets a hefty monthly stipend and the assurance her children will be declared legal heirs to her father-in-law's sizeable empire.  The marriage is projected to drastically alter the fate of her family for generations to come.

Problem is, Melisende already has a plan for herself (and her family), and marriage isn't in it.  It is, after all, the 21st Century, and not the centuries of old.

Her husband-to-be, Keiji Hirayama, could also say the same.  The only reason Keiji works and travels with his difficult, ever-grouchy father is that everyone else the old man loved--his wife, his first son--are dead and gone.  Bound to a woman he neither knows nor wants and pressured to have kids he never planned for, Keiji tries to drown himself in work to forget his problems.

There are, of course, a host of other characters at play here, each with their own agenda (Melisende's dying father, her flakey aunt, her bitchy older sister, her loyal best friend, Keiji's sultry lesbian cousin, his quirky British BFF, and the tortured judge who feels owned by the d'Auvignes).  Set in a fictional region I plan to use repeatedly in the future, I've given myself free reign so I can go as far outside the box as possible...and still make some sense.  Naturally, there's going to be a slight body count as well, considering the main family in question, along with some romance, some sex, and some dark intrigue, all wrapped up in a Gothic-flavored package--a very "Moi" book, if you will.  But what's going to stick out to some readers, if you haven't already noticed, is the whole "interracial" aspect.

So here's what I need to make clear.  I like to write about people of color in roles and stories we don't expect to see them in out here the Wild, Wild West.  I'm a woman of color, so naturally my main characters will be of color--no shocker there.  I also believe various groups of color need to learn to get along with one another, of course.  However, with Midnight Bride I'm afraid people will read too much into the racial aspect of the characterizations, and thereby miss the story altogether.

The characters each represent ideas, varying mentalities and/or agendas.  They were inspired by archetypes found in plays, psychological concepts, proverbs of questionable origin, and even tarot cards.  Therefore, giving them different ages, genders, and races--in essence, "color-coding" or "numbering" or "alphabetizing" them--helps the reader to better organize and keep track of the various personalities.  Such characterization also make a story easier to translate to film.  With that being said, the d'Auvigne family could've just as easily been made into an Asian family, and the Hirayamas and Hirosawas into African families--in short, their family traits are not inherent to their races...just so you know.

Interested readers can enjoy rough draft excerpts on The Writer’s Café.