Real (Real, #1) by Katy Evans
To my readers …
You are the checkered in my flag and complete my alphabet, A to Z.
You’ve given me the rain to dance in and the voice to quack with.
Your endless support, continued enthusiasm, and unwavering faith in my abilities overwhelm me on a daily basis.
This is the book I never intended to write, but you guys can be quite convincing … so this one is for you.
I race you. I book you. I chocolate you. I thank you.
Kristy
When I started this journey, I had no intention of writing any part of these books in Colton’s point of view. Rylee was my girl. I knew how she thought, plotted out her motivation from one scene to the next, and understood her resistance yet draw to the egotistical mess of a man that is Colton Donavan.
Not once did I contemplate what Colton was thinking other than why he would push her away.
All of the books I’d been reading were from the first person female point of view. I connected with the heroine this way, related to her actions, and that’s what I set out to do for the readers when I wrote DRIVEN.
When DRIVEN was released, a blog commented in their review that they’d love to see some of the scenes through Colton’s eyes because he was so complex. I struggled with the criticism, not because it was invalid but rather quite the opposite. The reviewer was spot on in saying this, but hell, I’d never written from a guy’s perspective before. The thought scared the crap out of me.
I decided to challenge myself. I reached out to the blog and asked if they wanted a Colton point of view as an extra for their site. They accepted. And then I realized how lost I was because yes, I knew the dialogue that would take place, but not once did I ever question Colton’s thoughts.
So writing the scene was rough going at first. I had to find his internal voice, his personality. And after days of type, delete, type, delete, repeat, I was finally finished.
And it was in that moment I realized I loved Colton even more than I thought I did. I loved his tell-it-like-it-is nature, his sarcasm, and better understood the demons that haunted him. There was something so liberating writing the scene through his eyes. I loved the challenge, enjoyed figuring out how his mind worked, and loved stepping outside of the story and looking at it with fresh eyes and in a totally different perspective.
Feedback was positive on the scene when the blog posted it. I looked at FUELED, which was about eighty percent complete and all in Rylee’s point of view, and decided I needed to write some chapters from Colton’s perspective. After the ending of DRIVEN, I figured the only way to get him back in the good graces of readers was to tell that last chapter through his eyes. I wanted readers to understand him so they could forgive him a little more.
I sat down and wrote the prologue of FUELED in one sitting. That had never happened to me before. But when I was done, I knew I was going to be ripping apart eighty percent of the book I had completed so I could add in more of Colton’s voice.
In both FUELED and CRASHED, I was selective in the scenes I told from his perspective. I never wanted to give away too much or too little and always wanted his scenes to pack a punch, serve a purpose, but it never seemed like there were enough in the readers’ eyes. I was (and still am) messaged constantly, and asked what he was thinking in this or that scene. I debated the idea of rewriting the series through his eyes but thought maybe his humor, his draw, would lose its luster to readers. That they’d become bored with a story they knew all the ins-and-outs of already.
But I did think certain events would still hold merit if retold, so I asked you guys, my readers, which scenes those were. Not surprisingly, many of them were the same as the ones I wanted to write.
So here they are, the Colton Points of View. A few are revamped versions of ones you may have read previously on a blog, some are new chapters retold, and some are scenes you’ve never read before because we saw what Rylee was doing but never knew what Colton was doing.
I hope you enjoy them, I know I did writing them. It was fun getting back into his complex and humorous mind, experiencing him conquer his demons, and watching him learn how to race blindly off the track.
Many readers were curious what Colton thought during his first meeting with Rylee when she fell out of the storage closet. I was curious too; the problem was I had no idea. I didn’t even know why he was wandering backstage in the first place.
This scene was my first attempt at writing Colton’s point of view.
I started it at least seven times, trying to figure his motivation for heading farther away from the gala rather than being in the middle of it. The scene took me a long time to write but I’ll forever look at it as the one that changed FUELED’s direction … for the better.
What. The. Fuck?
My body jolts with the impact as she slams into me. Fingernails dig into my biceps. A pile of wild, brown curls is all I see when I look down at the top of her head. Her shoulders shudder with each hyperventilated breath—a sound that goes hand in hand with the earsplitting scream that will inevitably happen next.
Thank you social media! You can take your goddamn tweets and stalker.com posts and shove them up your asses. Thanks for helping another faceless, frantic, fangirl find me.
What the f*ck is it with women attacking me in this place? First the auburn piranha in the alcove and now this.
Seriously? The damsel in distress route? Like I haven’t seen that one before. You’re one of millions, sweetheart. You want me to notice you, baby, you’ve got to have less clothes on. Well, unless you count thigh highs and heels. And nothing else. That’d sure as hell catch my attention.