A woman makes a deal with a sexy demonto win back her ex-girlfriend in the Lambda Award winner’s The Devil She Knows.
This is your first foray into paranormal romance. How did you find switching subgenres?
The idea first came to me during the pandemic, when I was really looking for an escape into a completely new world and feeling kind of tapped out in the contemporary space. It was so easy to brainstorm and easy to draft; it felt like a breath of fresh air.
What inspired the plot?
Oh, God, the 2000 masterpiece Bedazzled starring Brandon Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley, of course. That movie is so campy—and I mean that as a compliment, completely. Putting my own spin on it, I really wanted to lean in on the romance. And I absolutely had to make it sapphic!
The demon, Daphne, grants heroine Sam six wishes. How did you approach this magic system?
I did a lot of worldbuilding and a lot of research. I drew inspiration from Dante’s Inferno to craft the world of hell, albeit with a more comedic spin on it. When it came to the wishes themselves, I also wanted to model the stages of grief that Sam is going through in her breakup with Hannah. So I tried to draw a lot of parallels there.
Daphne’s probably not what most people picture when they think of a demon.
Gosh, she’s chaos incarnate. On the surface, she’s irreverent and sarcastic and stirring the pot. But that’s a cover for a very tragic background. She’s a character who feels very deeply and ends up seeing a lot of herself in Sam’s desperation to be loved. I wanted to chip away at her layers as the wishes went on.
Was it a struggle to balance the two love interests?
It was a challenge, I won’t lie. I needed to make it clear that Sam was so in love with Hannah that she would gamble her soul, but I didn’t want that to undermine the relationship that’s blossoming with Daphne. I wanted readers to understand why the relationship with Hannah was wrong before Sam herself can see it. Even when cracks are forming, she ignores them, because Hannah is her first love. So readers are rooting for Daphne and Sam well before Sam is ready to let go of Hannah.
How did you approach the sex scenes?
It comes down to characterization and really just not thinking as myself. I try to get as close to the characters as possible so that I’m not, you know, blushing at what I’m writing. I’m in their heads in that moment, using the type of language that they would use in those scenes. It’s really just a continuation of their relationship dynamic, but in an action sequence.
