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Chapter Seventeen

Although The Counterfeit is written in such a way that Wake Me When It’s Over is not required reading, this is one chapter where it would really enhance the reader’s experience. In Wake Me, Isabella is always presented as a very calm, confident character. We occasionally see her human side, but for the most part she wears an almost mechanical mask; always immaculately dressed, never nonplussed, ever in control. Her appearance in Chapter Seventeen is really the first time we get to meet her, and she’s completely out of the loop, and lacking any kind of control. It’s a very interesting change, if you’ve read the first book. If you haven’t then you just have to take Eric’s word for it.

The section about ugly neighborhoods near the Paris railway comes from personal experience, kind of. No, I’ve never been to Paris, but I travel fairly regularly for work—and since I work in the lumber industry, all of our facilities are attached to rail lines. Inevitably, they’re all in ugly, run-down, industrial parts of town, because who wants to live by the tracks?

Now that we’re getting into Paris, I ought to explain where all the Paris research comes from. I read about a thousand books on the subject (by “read” I mean “checked out from the library”). I also had the help of three French translators, who all had varying amounts of time living in France.

Micah Bruner did the primary translation. He served his LDS mission in the south of France (the Bordeaux mission), and while he didn’t have much direct Paris experience, he gave me a lot of advice about food and culture.

Scott Carlson helped with several phrases, having also served his mission in parts of France (the Belgium Brussels mission).

Katie Hansen did the final language proofread. Not only was she the actress who played Rebekah in the online marketing campaign, but she was also a French major at BYU (Rebekah had a French minor). Kinda neat how that worked out.

I understand that Covenant independently had someone else proof the French on their end, but I never learned that person’s name.

In the very first incarnation of Wake Me, the book took place almost entirely in Europe, and instead of being chased by car, they were chased on a train. I’m a huge fan of trains, and had researched everything from the look of individual stations to the exact schedules of each route. Since the setting eventually changed back to Utah, it was nice to finally include at least one European train ride.

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