Story Behind The Case of the Reincarnated Lover

There's a story behind the writing of The Case of the Reincarnated Lover. Many years ago, I wrote a Forever Knight fanfiction called White Rose. It was well received by the community, even though it had an original character in it. You must remember that in those days, original characters were rarely well received and were generally considered Mary Sues. The fact that I wrote an original character people liked and wanted to see in a sequel was one of those moments when I decided maybe I could make money as a writer.

I'd always wanted to take the basic plot line of White Rose and turn it into a commercial story, but it took over a decade to find the right vehicle for it. When I created Paul and Dafydd, I knew they were it.

Just to be clear, this isn't a 50 Shades of Grey situation. I didn't take the original fanfiction and change the character names. The original is just over 11K words, and Reincarnated Lover is over 90K. They both share two common plot points, but that's it.

I would have loved to have used White Rose plotline as the jumping off point for the series, but I also knew that readers had to care about Paul before the story could work. It was always intended to be the tale where we learned his back story, and it wouldn't have worked as the first story in the series. Alert readers, however, will note that I laid plenty of foundation for this story in The Case of the Haunted Vampire, and even left a bit of foreshadowing in The Case of the Werewolf Puppy. I had thought I would write this story a bit later, as the fourth or fifth in the series, but I couldn't wait that long.

Feel free to read the original story. I'd be curious to hear from readers who have read both. Which one did you like better, and why?