On to the last of the genies for how their original story went! Going in order, we have finally reached Darios, the dark shadow genie. 

Black Opal

Darios’s original story is the most similar to what I ended up publishing. He was always with Ethan McMichael, and he was always going to torture Ali to try to make her do what Ethan wanted. I knew this before I ever wrote the story, and even had a prologue in the original version of Ali about to be tortured before the story goes to her at the park where she meets Tavor. 

Though, technically, I didn’t actually get to the point of writing Ali meeting Shadow in that first version. I got right to the point before that would happen . . . and then got distracted with college and decided I would hold off on writing until I graduated. And then wrote a bunch of other stories before coming back to The Genie Whisperer. (Thank goodness, because my writing improved immensely with all those practice novels.)  

The biggest difference between the story I had planned back in college and what I published is how Ethan got ahold of Ali. In the original, he basically snatches her off the street. Since genie wizards didn’t exist in this version, Tavor wasn’t protective of Ali, and didn’t insist she carry genies around, so she went to school without them. In the published version, Ethan would have no way of knowing whether Ali had her genies on her or not, so could never simply confront her, leading to the plot line of him kidnapping her parents to blackmail her into coming. Which, honestly was a convenient way to also handle her parents, because they were definitely a problem. 

Other changes in the published version are that Shadow gets introduced much earlier. His frightening magic is shown off in the Museum of Horton when Ali meets Rajan, and he himself appears after Illan is stolen, when he’s sent to investigate what happened. I had a lot of fun teasing his appearance prior to Ali actually getting to meet him.