I’m celebrating the release of the second book in my A’yen’s Legacy science fiction romance series, The King’s Mistress. It opens one month after the close of My Name Is A’yen, and continues the story of the Lokmane fight for freedom.
I write romance for the hero lover. The hero is always the star of my novels. It’s his story I’m telling. He always comes to me first, and he arrives about 75% fleshed out.
Part of how I take him into the realm of a fully realized character is identifying his love language. I learned about love languages in Gary Smalley’s book, “The Five Love Languages.” It’s an awesome thing to know, both as a person and as a romance writer.
The love languages are: words of affirmation, acts of service, receiving gifts, quality time, and physical touch.
Once I get my hero on the page and I start to get a sense of who he is, I step back and take a look at how he’s interacting with those he cares about. Identifying A’yen’s love language was easy. It’s physical touch. He receives and communicates love by touching the people he cares about.
A lot of people assume most men default to a love language of touch because so many are focused on sex and sex is all about touching. However, it’s not actually true according to Smalley’s research. A’yen loves sex and being intimate with the one he loves, but he also loves holding hands, sitting close, hugging, sharing the same seat, sneaking up behind Fae and kissing her. A touch of Fae’s hand to his arm as they walk past each other is enough to assure him he’s loved.
The secondary hero of The King’s Mistress is a man named Ro. He’s A’yen’s bodyguard. His love language is quality time. Quality time is the one thing he never gets with his siblings, the only two people alive who love him. I don’t want to spoil too much about his story arc, but I will say he has a tragic past and lot to recover from.
He also hates being touched. Instant conflict between him and A’yen! Since Ro is A’yen’s bodyguard, they’re together pretty much all the time. A’yen comes very quickly to care about Ro and wants to show him he’s loved. Figuring out how to do that is a challenge for A’yen.
As the series progresses in being written, I’m exploring other love languages and how they can both further the conflict between the hero and heroine and build intimacy between them.
In future novels, I have a hero whose love language is words of affirmation. For these people, words are a double-edged sword. They can build up and cut down faster than anything else. Someone with words of affirmation as a love language can be irreparably harmed by careless words spoken in the heat of anger. So of course his heroine has a moment where she loses all control of what’s coming out of her mouth and she wounds him deeply.
Another hero speaks the language of receiving gifts. I’m still playing with this one and figuring out what all I can do with it to amp up the conflict. I paired him with a heroine who speaks the language of quality time. Quality time isn’t something he can freely give her.
I have yet to build a hero with acts of service as his language, but I’m far from out of ideas for A’yen’s Legacy. I suspect my acts of service hero will show up here pretty soon.
The King’s Mistress (A’yen’s Legacy, Book Two)
Freedom has a cost. Can A’yen pay it without losing his soul?
Liberation of the enslaved Lokmane begins with the king. A’yen and Fae agree to visit the Hidden, a group of escaped Lokmane, to protect his identity while the Shadows make their move with emancipation acts. But he’s not prepared for the prejudice rampant in the Hidden, or their lack of patience for him. And his new linked bodyguard is unstable to the point A’yen fears for the young man’s sanity.
Upon returning to Titan, A’yen is kidnapped and taken to the largest breeding farm in the galaxy. This time he’ll be himself even if it kills him. His resolve to unite his people grows as he wonders if he’ll live long enough to do it.
With A’yen kidnapped, Fae returns to the Lokmane homeworld seeking the final pieces of what happened two thousand years ago when they were conquered and enslaved. Getting as far away from her father as possible is the only way to keep her from disappearing too.
Separated by light years, A’yen and Fae have to stand alone and fight for their right to live in freedom. No matter the cost.
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