I absolutely adore writing. Which is way, of course, I am an author. Otherwise this would be an odd career path, but while I adore writing in general, I can’t deny that particular scenes are more fun to write, and I do have my favorites. Multiple of these favorites happen in book eight, The Stolen Truth. 

Warning: If you haven’t finished The Stolen Truth yet, this post contains major spoilers. 

Inspiration

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I originally thought up the idea for The Genie Whisperer nearly a decade ago. I worked on it a little bit back then, then decided I was too busy with college. I came back to it in 2021, but it remained in the back of my mind in the meantime, and I kept a Word document during that whole time to keep track of my thoughts and ideas for the story. 

One idea that was on that document from nearly the beginning was Ali and Tavor discovering the truth of genies’ history. I knew it was going to be in a desert with hidden records and I knew Tavor was going to be so livid at discovering the truth that he would hurt Ali without meaning to. Having that scene in my head for so long, it was such a treat to get to finally write it. I adore that scene – though admit I didn’t write it perfectly the first time. At first, I didn’t have any of the genies getting mad at Tavor over Ali getting hurt. A beta reader pointed out that didn’t make any sense, so I adjusted that. And set up Garan not being so pleased at Tavor not taking more care with Ali . . . 

And now I’ll move on to avoid spoilers for book nine 😉

Another scene from this book that was such a treat to write was the one that has one of my absolute favorite lines in all of the series. Which is Ali saying, “Shadow, I grant you free rein.” That in and of itself isn’t an impressive line. After all, Ali has said it five other times to most of her other genies. But as readers are well aware, saying this to Shadow is immensely different than saying it to the rest of them. And it was such a perfect moment with Ali and the other genies with her – except for Darios – trapped by wizards.

I definitely have a Darios bias, since I love a good enemies to lovers story and slow burn romance, and Darios firmly fits into both categories. I did originally hope that Ali and Darios would grow even closer in this book, but it didn’t end up working out. Mostly because Darios is too stubborn, but I still love how their relationship changes in book eight. 

The last of the scenes I really enjoyed writing in both The Lost Libraries and The Stolen Truth are Gary the transformation genie’s scenes. He’s a bit more comical than some of the other genies due to him looking at life with a lighter viewpoint. This made it quite fun to write from his perspective, especially with him being around for things like genies harming wizards and Ali’s relationship drama. 

I love how Gary reacts to all these things, though he finds Ali’s relationship stuff significantly less entertaining after he realizes she’s his granddaughter. After that, he’d rather the other genies not get so close to her, though there wasn’t really space to cover that aspect of things in book eight. But now that he’s sticking around, he’ll have plenty of time to stew over his granddaughter having not just one, but two genie boyfriends.