Now that TRAVELER is out and hopefully being read at a steady rate, I thought it might be fun to share some behind-the-scenes trivia. Some of this stuff will be familiar if you were among the early beta readers at SwoonReads.com, but at least one of these tidbits will surprise you:

1. In the original draft of the story, Ben was revealed at the end of book one to be a Time Traveler. In the climactic scene at the end, instead of reaching for a rock, Jessa was directed to a chisel hidden in the rock wall – placed there by Ben who had just shifted back through time.
2. Another change from the original draft: originally when Jessa traveled to the Steampunk reality and met pirate Finn, she discovered to her surprise that she was soon to be a teen mother. That’s right – steampunk Jessa was pregnant. Which makes for a much more poignant and hard-hitting scene later in the book.
3. In one discarded reality, Jessa had a younger half-sister named Julia.
4. In another reality, Finn and Jessa were canoeing down the Amazon.

And now for the final tidbit, one that even the early readers couldn’t know.

5. In my original plan for the full story arc, Dreamers weren’t confined only to the dreamscape. They were more like Travelers who’d gotten a promotion and could access both reality and dreams. In the original plan for the final installment of the series, Mario was going to give Jessa his Dreamer powers so that she could do something very important. It was going to be equally important that she give the powers back to him at the end – but in order to do so, she’d have to find him in the real world.

“How do we know who he is in real life?” she was going to fret to Finn and Ben. “He’s got to be an Einstein or a Stephen Hawking! He’s got to have a mind that doesn’t work like everyone else’s!” And that would be when she realizes the truth: Mario is really her brother, Danny.

Of course, this ending won’t work now so it’s been discarded, and Danny is Danny and Mario is Mario and never the twain shall meet.

Oh, wait. That’s not entirely true. But you’ll have to wait for DREAMER to get the scoop on that scene.

Stay tuned . . .