Janea Robinson asked Helena Newbury:

Where did you get the inspiration for The Double? OMG!

Helena Newbury Well, Konstantin had been introduced way back in Kissing My Killer but I didn't want to give him his own book until I had a heroine who would be a match for him. Then I started thinking about how every head in the room turned when Konstantin walked past, and how the perfect foil for him might be this woman who thought of herself as invisible, who had spent her whole life avoiding attention.

What if she went through this transformation to become someone else, someone who was glamorous and sexy and used to constant attention, but inside she was still this shy little thing. And what if Konstantin, who'd deliberately chosen his girlfriend to be someone he'd only ever have a very shallow, sexual relationship with, started to see this other person hiding inside? I thought that would be really interesting to explore and combined with the tension of the heroine being undercover and risking being discovered at any moment, and this deep, unstoppable pull she feels towards Konstantin, despite his outward evil (because I think that's another part of it, that he's deep down a good person, wearing this mask of evil because that's who he believes he has to be)...then that would be really fun to write.

So the short version is, I came up with Konstantin's perfect foil, and went from there :)

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