My novel is the second volume of a trilogy so I need to get back to the very first image I had about the first one.

I saw a young girl, she couldn’t be more than 15 or 16 years old, long brown hair and a long white dress running away from a church at night. “Who is she?” I thought. “What is she running away from? Why was she even in the church?? I immediately thought this could be the spark for a horror story, my favourite genre. I just needed to find out the thing or the person she was running away from.

Now, you must have noticed from my name on the app that I’m a huge wolf lover. Surprisingly or not, the werewolf is my favourite fantastic creature. Et voilá! I know what the girl is running away from: a werewolf. Now I just need to put my thinking hat on and flesh out the story.

I wanted to stay away from typical werewolf stereotypes: bloodthirsty creatures that go on killing sprees every full moon. No, my werewolves will reason. They will talk too. They will have their loves and hates and pains and dilemmas. They won’t go back to their human shape either. Once a werewolf, always a werewolf. I also don’t want them to be horny beasts, excuse the term. I’m tired of too much sex in werewolf stories, even if their lust is uncontrollable during the full moon. I really want to create characters that people resonate with. Let’s face it. Vampires have Dracula and Lestat. Monsters have Frankenstein. But when you think of werewolves, what name pops into your mind? Maybe I’m too ambitious, but for me now werewolf means my main character, Luvinus.

Back to this prompt: my first volume has been published, now I have to continue the second. I see it a bit like this: the first volume is the introduction, the second is where all the action happens and the third (not a word written yet) is the conclusion.

On the second volume, Luvinus goes on a quest to find more about himself and his kind. His deceased alpha didn’t tell him much so after the first volume he has to go find why he is a human within a giant wolf body. I mixed a lot of real life events – France is super rich in werewolf folklore; ever heard of the Beast of Gévaudan? – with my own imagination and Norse myths. The best about this is that my imagination can go wild. Luvinus will find allies and enemies. Enemies that he thought were friends. Friends that he thought were enemies. He will be put to the test. Knowledge doesn’t come without a price. But ultimately he will know that he has a role to play in bringing peace between humans and werewolves. And while doing so will he let humanity prevail or is he doomed to give in to the beast dwelling within?

Don’t think that this has been a smooth process. I go from a super excited writing spree to months of no writing at all because suddenly I think the story is crap and won’t go anywhere. Or I am just so stuck I can’t tie any knots between the different events in the story. Sometimes I wish I could somehow get out of my own body and read my own story as if I was someone else. It’s difficult to spot loopholes when the story is in your mind.

But do you know what’s the best of this? I feel that my characters are my children and somehow I have to keep writing to give them a voice and tell their story. They deserve it.

Will you like it? Maybe. Maybe not. If there is something I’ve learned in life is that we cannot please everybody. But I also know that when one does something from the heart, it’s impossible to go wrong. And this trilogy, my friends, comes from my heart.