The Creation of Arresting Jeremiah by Amber Daulton

The Arresting Onyx series came together through a stroke of luck. The premise for Arresting Mason, book one, was a dream in which I was the leading lady with an ex-con boyfriend and an overprotective brother, who just happened to be said ex-con’s parole officer. While I was writing this story, I soon realized the end wasn’t really the end. How could it be? The angry, tight-laced PO brother—Jeremiah, better known as Jim—needed a woman in his life to loosen him up.

Bring in Calista—the sexy waitress Jim couldn’t stop flirting with in the first book.

Jim and Calista’s story flowed right out of me, at least at first, but all good things come to an end. Writer’s block and plot holes are the bane of my existence. Seriously. Thank goodness my hubby, Greg, helped me work through some of the issues. The biggest plot decision I made was switching the loyalties of one of my criminals. Now, I won’t say whom—I don’t want to spoil it for the readers—but just know not everyone is who he or she appears to be in the book.

Arresting Jeremiah clocked in at only 67k words when completed, which is fairly short for a novel. I wasn’t happy with the length, nor was I okay with Arresting Mason reaching the grand old word count of 40k. Oh yeah. These books were totally epic. NOT! Needless to say, I got back to work and added more characters, subplots, and depth. Some of the things I added are now so cemented in my brain that it’s hard for me to remember I didn’t have the idea right off the bat. With book three on my mind, I had a blast rewriting the first two and creating a lead-in for the third installment.

Once I published Arresting Mason with The Wild Rose Press back in 2018, I edited Arresting Jeremiah again—at this point, I had to have been on my sixth or so revision—and I sent it to my editor. Following more rewrites over the next two years, the published copy is almost unrecognizable from the original draft, which I still have saved on my computer.

From 2013 to 2020, that’s how long it took for me to write, rewrite, tear apart, and write this story again. I’ve fallen in love with it, and I’ve cursed it to the lowest depths of Hell. Eh, don’t all authors do that with their book babies? But at the end of the day, Arresting Jeremiah is one of the books I’m most proud of. I hope you enjoy Jim, Calista, and their wild, sexy adventure as much as I do.