Today I thought I’d dive into the romance sub-plot in the Distant Horizon series. Now… before we go any further…

If you like to read books with no idea of which characters show any interest in each other, then go read Distant Horizon, Fractured Skies, and Starless Night first! There will be spoilers ahead. I’ll try not to go into anything too major, but it’s kind of hard to avoid in this particular overview.

Have you read them? (Or don’t mind spoilers?)

All right. We shall now proceed. 🙂

Anyway, in Distant Horizon there wasn’t much of a romance sub-plot. I tend to prefer slow-burn stories, if there’s romance at all, and for the most part, Jenna’s mind really wasn’t on finding a partner. She’s a too busy fighting terrifying subhuman beasts and trying not to get killed.

Once we get to Fractured Skies, however, that starts to change. While Jenna is still dead-set on stopping beast transformation, certain other team members *Cough*Lance*Cough* are starting to settle into their new roles and are interested in pursuing a relationship.

Which… ah… if you remember the first book, Jenna and Lance butted heads. A lot.

They’re best friends, but they don’t always see eye-to-eye.

But there’s that expectation of childhood friends sometimes going on to become efficient partners in the Community, so Jenna (somewhat begrudgingly) decides to give dating a try between researching how to stop beast transformation and how to get rid of the memory seeds.

Let’s just say there are complications… especially when she starts to realize that she and Lily… a mercenary who seems to understand where she’s coming from surprisingly well… get along better.

(I apparently rather enjoy the enemies to allies/enemies to lovers trope).

Now, when Isaac and I first ran the campaign that Distant Horizon spawned from, the original pairing was Jenna and Lance… with all the complications that came with them clashing. What I hadn’t anticipated was that, when writing the story, Jenna and Lily would end up with far more chemistry. (The sort of warm, fluttery feeling of “will they get together?” despite not planning on writing it that way. Which seems to keep happening to me. Characters completely surprise me by being tender to each other or pebbling each other with cute gifts and the next thing I know I’m shipping them together… and then I realize I’m the author so… does that still count as shipping?).

After having Isaac read the draft and having him be completely in favor of giving them a chance…

(By completely in favor I mean he kept nudging me with more ideas of cute scenes.)

I rewrote those scenes with the idea of building the romantic tension between Jenna and Lily, which added to Jenna’s debate of whether to go the more expected route of the efficiency of a Community partner, which she and Lance don’t seem to have… or her gut feeling that she and Lily share something special and work together better, despite their different backgrounds.

Isaac and I further explored the different relationships in Starless Night.

And let’s just say the bond between Lily and Jenna becomes extremely important. (Especially as a certain brain seed she’s fighting is determined to cut away any romantic bonds in its fight to stay relevant). Starless Night is not a romance book by any stretch of the imagination, but their relationship becomes crucial to the book’s resolution and Jenna’s fight with the brain seed.

Though Jenna and Lily haven’t yet had a happily-ever-after (HEA) or even a happy-for-now (HFN), I have my suspicions about how I want their relationship to go by the time I get to the end of the series (whether that’s one or two more books… not sure yet).

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Read a very slow-burn romance seeded under a lot of world-building and adventure…

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Happy reading and writing! 📖