The Servants Of Need was conceived in a dream in a house in which I was staying in the winter of '87, when I was 13. I recall that Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven On Earth" was in the charts. At the time, there was a lot of publicity about AIDS, which I'm sure accounted for the dream that I had in which my mother and I were quarantined in a concentration camp for people with AIDS. Except I knew that my mother and I were uninfected.
Whilst at the camp, I encountered a young woman of 19 who was thin, with sharp features and light brown hair and eyes. She had AIDS and was furious that it would take her life. That was Sarah, the main character of my novel. I admired her fieriness and her refusal to accept her predicament with grace.
Initially, she was not the main character. Stee (who is now her mother's hot young boyfriend) was originally the main character. He was a weretiger, Sarah was a werewolf and Nic (who is now the love interest) was a werelion, as was the young woman who had now become his ex. She was not the ex then. She was current.
Nic was much thinner in the original story. He was also fairer-skinned, blonder-haired and had green eyes. He wasn't a very nice person. He was careless with people and property. However, he had strong and genuine feelings for Sarah, who was oblivious to them because she was painfully in love with Stee, who didn't care for her at all.
Later, I removed Stee from the story, made Sarah the main character and Nic the love interest. In that version, he was a werewolf and her dilemma was whether to remain close to someone so dangerous.
Now, they are all physically human. Stee is back in the story as an object of lust who is oblivious to the feelings that he arouses in Sarah. Nic is the love interest, whose feelings and intentions for Sarah are somewhat murky. And the ex is someone who never makes a bodily appearance, but is spoken of.