If you read the latest Stormy chapter "Quileute Song," a lot happened. Lindsey's death was actually harder to write than I thought it would be considering I've been planning on killing her since I wrote Early Imprint. But there's a back story as to why I did it.
Believe it or not, the idea started off as a joke. Lindsey, Amber, and Ashley are named after real people I’d gotten to know through a particular fandom site. Now Lindz was pretty popular on this site, and at the time everyone was writing her into their stories. When I realized she was getting hooked up with all these hot characters, I jokingly told her, "That's it, I'm throwing 'Lindsey' off a cliff in La Push. You don't need any more hot guys."
I wasn't serious at first. But then I thought about it some more. At the time I had never read a story where an imprint gets killed (we're talking two years ago). I wondered how it would impact the pack, and as it's not a subject I'd ever tried to write before, I decided to go through with it. Originally, Amber wasn’t even a factor. I decided that Lindsey was going to have a baby and die in childbirth. Collin would then have to remain strong for the baby’s sake.
However, I realized pretty early on that even the baby wouldn’t be enough motivation to keep Collin going. As it says in the Eclipse chapter “Legends,” Taha Aki imprinted on his third wife and they had children together. After she killed herself, he laid down by her body in wolf form, growled at anyone who came near her for an entire day, and then disappeared in the forest to live out the rest of his life as a wolf. He was never heard from again. It didn’t matter that he had small children. He couldn’t live without his imprint.
I knew Collin wouldn’t be able to survive if Lindsey died. It didn’t matter if he had a baby who needed him or not. The only thing that could have saved Collin was if he found a second love that was just as strong as the first. I figured if Collin imprinted again, it might be enough to keep him sane and alive…even if he resented it.
Originally, Ashley was going to be imprinted on. If you go back and read chapter 28 of Early Imprint, Amber and Ashley visit Claire while she’s in the hospital. Collin and Lindsey walk in, and Ashley ignores Collin and leaves the room. I had planned on her acting that way because it hurt too much for her to be around him. But then I lost touch with the real Ashley and decided to make Collin imprint on Amber instead. LOL, I’m happy with that decision too. Amber’s a lot softer of a character than Ashley.
So that’s the story why Lindsey was killed off. You don't know how badly I started to dread writing her death. After awhile, I didn't want to kill her off, but once the storyline was put into motion, I couldn’t take it back since Collin's connection to Amber was mentioned in all my stories since Early. Ah well, it let me try to something new.
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