Welcome to Behind the Scenes
This page is for readers who love peeking into the process — early drafts, cut scenes, and little moments that didn’t make it into the books. These glimpses are not available anywhere else.
Your secret window into the story and a small reward for your curiosity...
A cut scene from The Stormbound Cipher: Prequel to The Counterfeit Conspiracy.
Behind the Scenes Context
In the original prequel, Lord Tristan’s contact in France was a woman — Sabine Moreau, a fellow spy. I eventually changed this character to a male contact, because Lord Tristan’s true love is introduced in The Counterfeit Conspiracy, the next book. While Sabine could have added some romantic tension, I realized it would have distracted from the depth of Lord Tristan’s relationship in Book 2 and risked confusing readers about who his heart truly belongs to.
This scene takes place just after Lord Tristan has escaped the French and is aboard the cutter on his way back to England — a quiet moment of reflection before the next adventure unfolds.
He closed his eyes briefly. Rain pelted his skin. And in the dark, he saw Sabine. She had looked tired. Not the kind of tired one cured with sleep. The kind that came from running too long, trusting too few, and knowing too much. She was a valuable asset and a friend, but in this game of spies, she was not one he could fully trust.
He remembered her hands—steady, precise, stained with ink and gunpowder. She had once dismantled a musket blindfolded to prove a point. He had never asked what the point was. He suspected it had something to do with survival. Survival in their game was never guaranteed.
The Sea Drake surged forward. The sails whipped with a furious rhythm, the deck creaking and groaning under the storm’s wrath. Lord Tristan felt his heart pace in tandem with the ship, each wave a drumbeat in a symphony of tension.
