Backstory:
Mallory and Dev from

As Bad As Can Be
and
Slippery When Wet
books #2 and #3 of the
Under the Covers trilogy

When I start working on a new book, part of the challenge is knowing the back story. Not just knowing who the hero and heroine are, but how they got that way. For instance, Mallory, the heroine of As Bad As Can Be, is guarded as anything. The only person she really trusts is her brother, Dev. For her, love always comes at a price. In a relationship, the person who loves the most loses control. Mallory will never lose control, she vows. She knows too much the cost.

And how do I know this? By developing the back story -- imagining important people in her life who may not even appear in the book, and how those people affected her life. For example, here's a bit of how I imagine Mallory's mother, Dorie, to be:

Dorie grew up in a small town in western Montana. At 14, she watched the Beatles at Shea Stadium and dreamed of a life beyond the backwater that she had to call home. At 16, she was listening to the local college station in Missoula, Montana, just a 20 minute ride down the highway. She started calling into the station and talking with the night deejay, a college junior named Bruce who introduced her to the world of political protests, the antiwar movement, long hair, and rebellion. One spring night, she hitchhiked to Missoula and showed up at the station. When his shift was over, they went to an all night party. It was the first time she took drugs. It was the first time she ever made love. Her life was never the same.

Every week, she started going up to Missoula, first ignoring the protests of her parents, then sneaking out. Bruce started talking about the scene in San Francisco, saying he'd head that way as soon as classes let out. He asked her to come with him. She was 17 and it was the Summer of Love.

San Francisco was a haze of music and parties and drugs for Dorie. When word came down about a far out concert called Woodstock, she jumped in a van with a couple of other guys and started across country, determined to make it to the concert of the century. When the van engine burned out, they began to hitchhike; when they had a hard time getting rides, she began to offer to sleep with the truckdrivers. After all, it was the 60s, and sex was no big deal.

Somehow, things began to change, though. When they reached Detroit, they crashed with friends of friends, and she shot heroin for the first time. After that, their trip across country became a dream. At Woodstock, she got handed off to a different group, a harder group, and they headed south. Things began to fade, then, held together only by the fixes and the whisper of the needle. Outside of New York, she stumbled off to hitch a ride with a group of bikers. Near the dockyards in Philadelphia, they began to exact their fare

Dale Carson was on his way home from his night shift at the docks when he saw something at the side of the road. Motorcycles roared away, sparks shooting out of their tail pipes. He almost didn't see the small bundle they left behind.

And then it moved, and he realized that it was a child. No, a girl, he saw as he got closer. Emaciated, with a wild tangle of hair and a trickle of blood coming from her mouth, where they'd hit her. That wasn't all they'd done, he realized grimly, and picked her up to put her in his van. As he was putting her into his van, she opened her eyes and looked at him, and his heart was lost, simply as that.

The drive to the emergency room was short. When he realized she had no insurance or even I.D., he put down money for her. Malnutrition, the doctors said. Pneumonia. V.D. And, very possibly, drug addiction.

Dale didn't care. He visited her every day, sitting patiently by her bed though she was unconscious or raving. He spoke to her in a soft voice, stroked the hair out of her eyes. The day she awoke, he was there, with a shy smile and some flowers, and he welcomed her back into the world.

Eventually, she recovered enough that the doctors said she'd have to go. Dorie panicked, not wanting to call her parents, not knowing where else to go. Simple, Dale said. She could come with him. She could live at his house. They could marry.

And grateful to this gentle man who'd helped her to escape, feeling barely able to cope with the world she now knew, Dorie accepted.

In the beginning, their marriage was a safe haven and Dorie felt grateful and safe within the shelter of Dale's love. Bruised and battered by the world, she was happy to hide out from it and let him care for her. Life was a series of calm, quiet days broken up by nights during which she'd bask in the glow of adoration and care. Day by day, week by week, Dorie grew stronger. Within their little circle of two, all was comforting, soothing, quiet and easy. She told herself what she felt for him was love, and perhaps it was. And though the depression she'd lived with all her life threatened to overcome her, she battled it back grimly and gave Dale no hint of what demons she fought.

When Dale hinted that he'd like to start a family, she banished the initial uneasiness and asked herself 'why not?'. Motherhood wasn't quite what she expected, though. The pregnancy was difficult, the birth more so. Exhausted by 26 hours of labor and sleepless nights before and after, she soon found herself at her wit's end. When Dale came home one night to find her in hysterical tears with two-week-old old Dev, he suggested that his sister Rue come stay with them to help out. Dorie agreed without thinking.

And so things went from bad to worse. Bad enough that Dorie had to deal with bouts of depression. Now she had to deal with big sister Rue. For Rue, who had practically raised Dale, no woman would have been good enough. But Dorie was quite literally street trash, a no good who had tricked Dale into marrying her, as Rue saw it. She was civil in front of Dale, but when he wasn't around, she was contemptuous and spiteful, doing her best to drive Dorie away.

Dorie slid deeper into depression and finally begged Dale to send Rue home. Dorie was ready to get out from under the black cloud that was Rue and just focus on being a mother. Somehow, though, life didn't go back to the warmth and comfort that had gone before. It was no longer just Dale and her, there was a child, Dev. No longer was she the one being cosseted; now Dale lavished his care on the Dev, or so it seemed.

When she felt the first stirrings of discontent, she pushed them down. It was just the frustrations of a new baby, she told herself. A year went by, then two, and she found herself more and more restless. Finally, when Dev turned three and a half, she began to work part time.

Over Dale's objections, she began working in a bar a few nights a week. They couldn't afford day care, she reasoned, and she could make more in tips than she could working at the local drug store. In truth, she began working at the bar because she wanted to, because it brought a welcome breath of excitement to her life. She remembered again what it was like to be out at night, to party and laugh it up.

Barely six months passed before the bad news?she was pregnant again. Dale insisted that she stop working to get out of the smoky environment that was bad for the baby, he said. Dorie reluctantly agreed. The pregnancy was difficult, the birth more so. And the time afterward became nightmarish. Whatever joys of motherhood she felt were swallowed up in sleep deprivation and depressionTrying to keep up with an infant and a toddler was nearly impossible. Life stretched out into weeks and months of drudgery. She waited for the joys of motherhood to come, but she merely felt tired and increasingly trapped. The pretty, sexy woman she'd once been had been subsumed by a sexless mothering creature who had no identity of her own.

Had she ever felt love for Dale, Dorie wondered, or had it just been gratitude? And why couldn't she muster more than halfhearted affection for her children? Why was it that all she saw when she looked at them was outstretched hands and demands?

When her daughter Mallory turned three, Dorie went back to work, back to the bar, the lights, the music. The men. With a tray in her hand and a short skirt, she felt attractive again.

Things were about to change...

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