Foreward
(NOTE: Inkitt removed all the images related to chapters. For the image version read on Amazon Kindle.)
Dear most-treasured readers,
I want to start by saying, that you have all been so wonderful!
Following Belle & Eli’s tragically broken love story as it’s repeatedly evolved and blossomed over the course of these past eight years.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a decade since I first penned the original novel, which was actually without a title for those first two years before I’d first published it.
‘Untitled Incest Novel,’ is how I’d originally referred to their forbidden romance tale.
All the chapters compiled in a folder under that unassuming title, and I’d constantly add to it. Writing little tidbits and chapters here and there, gradually, until eventually it was fully completed.
Once done to my satisfaction in 2014, I uploaded it to a little place called, Wattpad, where the majority of you first came across it, way back when.
I was vastly overwhelmed and astounded by the amount of love and acceptance my darkly twisted novel, then received.
In fact, I was even more overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enjoyment people seemed to be finding with my simplistic and virtually unedited novel.
I was deeply humbled by, and so very thankful for all of it—for all of you.
But, over the years, as my writing abilities better developed and confidence grew along with it, it really ate away at me that I’d withheld so much of the initial story I’d intended to divulge about Belle and Eli.
Things were glossed over, plotlines held-back for fear of disappointment from readers or self-consciousness on my own part. (Things other authors warn you should never do.)
And it has relentlessly nagged and bothered me for quite some time, now.
Worse still, it’d nagged, how wildly different my first novel was from the fourth one I was nine chapters in on writing when I decided it essential to restart work on this one prior to completing that one.
So great are the differences, that some people can’t even read beyond the first and second books to make it to the slightly-better written third and soon-to-be fourth ones.
More of my more recent readers have voiced their frustrations about the lack of depth and various other shortcomings attributed to the original two novels, especially. All of which, were entirely spurned from my lack of knowledge and generally little novel-writing experience when I first sat down and penned this tale at seventeen.
Originally, back in 2012, while getting into my early development of what would become Belle & Eli’s momentous saga, I’d made the decision to create a high school love story between a brother and sister, with the sole purpose being that neither of them were going to off themselves by (or, in) the end purely for shock value.
Every sibling/close relation incest novel, always seems to play out into this tragically hopeless ending, which can’t either be undone or mended in any conceivable way, even if the author were to write a sequel. And leaves you feeling cheated and wanting to rip your hair out.
(At least it does me, anyway! Perhaps that is just me!)
That was purely something I sought to rectify, for lovers of dark taboo fiction, such as myself, (and my best friend of the past decade)—and that was all there was to it.
No grand scheme.
No resolved gameplan.
Just don’t allow any tragedies they go through to be fatal.
Have them both live through it, whatever, ‘it,’ happens to be.
(And for those whom have read my original novels, you are well aware Belle & Eli go through quite a lot!)
This time around, however, I wanted to tell their story in a starkly-reimagined and much darker-veiled platform, right from the get-go.
Giving Belle the quirky-wit and steadfast voice she was always intended to have, (but that I wasn’t brave enough to give her until later installments) rather than the bland indecisiveness and clingy whininess she was marked as having the first time around.
Eli is moodier and darker than you’ll recall, but still has the same tender underbelly he’s always had, when it comes to his little sister, Belle, at the beginning of their story.
He is also written the way I originally envisioned him, but also feared might not go-over well if I put him to paper. However, I now believe I was very wrong not to do so. Not to trust Eli’s voice to carry through and touch my readership, the way he’s always seemed to in the past.
The first time around, my characters felt inauthentic and slighted, because I, as the author, reconsidered their every conceivable thought and action and therefore stunted their individual voices.
Afraid to let them be who they were, unapologetically, for fear of backlash, or not doing so well.
But not this time.
This time, I’ve set them all free.
Editing their core thoughts and feelings very little in revision, unlike what I did the first time around.
The general story still breathes the same life, as before, but (as you’ll soon see) carries far more depth and energy than its predecessor ever did. Both remembered and broad seasoned storylines come together to craft something both the same and enormously different at its core.
If you thought the original tale was a wild thrill-ride, I know you’ll enjoy my rewritten debut novel: Amidst Honeysuckle, Promises, and Forbidden Things: Belle & Eli Reimagined.
One year ago, I made all of my readers and reviewers on Goodreads a solemn promise: To revisit my former novels of Belle & Eli and rewrite them a tale worth reading and remembering. No matter how long it may take.
This is me, fulfilling, that promise.
Please, give this renewed take a chance, and thank you all, kindly, for both your constructive criticism and honest opinions which have greatly helped in fortifying me into a much better writer!
Love truly & yours forever,
Breannalyn Pearce
