Simple Complications

Simple Complications is a young-adult Paranormal Romance by author L.R. Celeste. It is the first novel in the series, and will be followed by the currently unpublished Forgotten Memories. In the first novel in the series Sarah Lewis finds herself falling for the gorgeous new boy at school, Stephan Aberton, and has to deal with the complications that can arise with dating someone inhuman, which include his inhuman family, a murderer and trying to get through the school day in one piece.
Synopsis
Plot Summary
Being low in the social order, on the large side and extremely ginger, boys don't look twice. Sarah Lewis knows this well, it's always been a problem. That's until new boy Stephan Aberton arrived. He's tall, pale and completely gorgeous, and seems to like her.
After Sarah’s attacked, and rescued by Stephan, girls Sarah knows start dropping like flies, but under strange circumstances, and she has to discover who the killer is before she joins the bottom of a long list of dead girls. But in doing so she discovers Stephan’s keeping a lot of deadly secrets, ones he’s not ready to give away.
Sarah tries desperately to uncover his secrets and in doing so discovers that he’s part-vampire part-shapeshifter, and the only person like this. After Stephan’s spilled most of his secrets to her she falls in love with him and his tortured past. But their relationship is tested when Sarah triggers Stephan’s curse, one put on him by one of his former flame to stop anyone loving him, and she has to decide whether she can trust Stephan before more girls die.
When Sarah finally decrypts all of the strange deaths, her encounters and the possible motives, she discovers who the killer is, and decides her only option is to become the last person on the list of mysterious unexplained deaths. That is until Stephan risks his own to life, fighting off the vampire who has killed all of the girls and now intends to kill Sarah, in a bid to save her life, confessing, when her heart stops from her multiple injuries and lack of blood, that he has feelings for her.
With the murderer dead, and Sarah still alive, Sarah and Stephan are able to focus on their relationship. Stephan tries to tell Sarah that he loves her, but is cut short. Sarah vows that one day she’ll make Stephan confess his true feelings for her, and that she would live forever if it meant he would say it.
Development
Inspired by the outburst of vampire-romance novels at the time, Celeste began to write vampire novels when she was 13, but she tossed aside her initial stories. She began writing Simple Complications when she was 15, using some of the ideas from her original stories, but adapting them. Her original transcript was titled Dark Romance and Stephan was called Stephen, until she discovered she had been mispronouncing the name, and he was going to be a vampire, without his shapeshifter counterpart. Charlotte was originally going to be Claire, and Sarah had a younger brother.
Celeste began at the beginning of the novel, but after writing only three chapters she wrote the second to last chapter of the book, and what is the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth chapters. The book was not written chronologically, instead it was written as several ideas and pieced together like a jigsaw. In the first year of writing Celeste had only managed to put together the first eight chapters. But, after her best friend demanded he wanted to read her book she found the motivation to complete the book and wrote the final sixteen chapters and epilogue in under a year.
After a large amount of help and encouragement from her best friend, Celeste decided to publish her novel. Being young when she was trying she was rejected many times, but after hearing about many success stories she decided to self-publish.
 
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