Is that less punchy and dramatic than killing them or saving the reveal that they are alive until the end? Absolutely. The direction I ended up going was revealing to the reader very early on that Lara had only faked her sisters' death. Having her never even THINK about them only emphasized the problem of her coming off as a cold-hearted b*tch. As Lara is the narrator, I had to have her never think about her sisters, because obviously she is aware they are alive. Readers were still going to go through most of the novel believing Lara a cold-hearted b*tch for murdering her sisters, and that risked a lot of people DNFing before I was able to redeem her. It was this version that went to my editor and to my agent, but from my agent’s feedback in particular, I determined that this still wasn’t going to work for two reasons. So I decided to rewrite the beginning with a few clues that Lara had only faked her sisters’ death, with the reveal that they were still alive happening when Marylyn showed up at the end. Even if I could, readers would spend the bulk of the novel hating her, which really wasn’t ideal. I did start writing the novel that way, but very quickly I realized that I couldn’t create a redemption arc that would allow readers to forgive Lara for the selfish/unprovoked murder of eleven of her sisters. Concept Lara was a level up on the ruthlessness scale from Published Lara. I had this chapter sitting in my head for YEARS before I sat down to write this novel and the version you’ve all read is identical to that vision with one rather large exception: in my vision, Lara actually killed her sisters. Not only is it exciting and shocking, it clearly establishes the conflict and the stakes, as well as gives readers a great taste of Lara’s character. The Bridge Kingdom has my favorite first chapter of all my novels.

The Broken Ones (The Malediction Trilogy: Prequel).

Warrior Witch (The Malediction Trilogy, #3).Hidden Huntress (The Malediction Trilogy, #2).Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1).

The Endless War (The Bridge Kingdom, #4).

The Calm Before the Storm (The Bridge Kingdom, #3.5).

The Inadequate Heir (The Bridge Kingdom, #3).

The Traitor Queen (The Bridge Kingdom, #2).

The Bridge Kingdom (The Bridge Kingdom, #1).

The bridge kingdom book