Goodreads asked M.G. Reyes:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

M.G. Reyes My most recent book 'SONATA' started out as a draft I wrote in 2011, my own take on the Beauty-and-the-Beast story, a kind of reaction to Twilight, which I admired but whose hero I thought might be even darker...

When I was a teenager I'd loved DAMIEN - the sequel to The Omen, a terrific horror movie. It was set in a military academy and looked at Damien - the 'devil incarnate' as a young teenager. So that's where I got the idea for a teenager who's part of some old, old devil-worshipping cult.

Not that I believe in literal devils or demons! But they're important metaphors for what we see as the true, dark heart of evil.

I'd also read, around 2009, The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley, which is an occult horror story, and had been made into a really enjoyable film.

If you take these things literally it might be that this kind of story might be too dark...and a friend of mine handed back an early draft of SONATA I'd given her to read. She said it'd given her nightmares! Even though I didn't think it was all that scary!

Spoilers below, maybe...

In the end, I was asking myself, what tempts a person to fall for someone they know might be dangerous? There HAS to be some appeal, something deeper than raw sexual attraction. And I thought - what if the attraction between the two teenagers at the centre of this novel is that together they can access some spiritual level of musicality, which eludes them alone.

That feeling becomes addictive. they crave it even more than they crave each other - at first. But as old family traditions start to bear down on them, they're forced to join up to battle dark forces. And it's in that togetherness that they begin to find love.

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