I turn the water to red-hot and step under the spray. I quash the guilt about throwing my fanciest clothes around like I was a teenager in a snit, but I’ll take care of them in a moment.

The peacock-y tailcoat suffers the same fate, and as I march through the apartment to my bedroom, I remove the cufflinks and the studs from my suffocating shirt, flip open the button on my pants, toss them on the bed after shimmying out of them, and by the time I reach the shower, I’m naked.

I tear off my white bowtie as soon as the door closes behind me and toss it on the entryway table. Then he meets Mikko, a regular middle-class, yoga-loving guy, and his life changes completely…Įxcerpt It’s late when I finally get home. They’re always in the public eye, something Henrik doesn’t like, something that has kept him from trying to find a significant other because he doesn’t want to subject someone to a life of public scrutiny. His family still garners lots of attention from the press, and they’re very rich, not just from inherited money, but also from hard work. They still enjoy some informal social privileges, and in 2022 there are still 657 noble families in Sweden.Īnd Henrik is one of them.

Sweden is a kingdom and has had noble, titled families for hundreds and hundreds of years, but in 1902 the last person became ennobled, and the nobility lost their official privileges, such as tax exemptions on July 1 st, 2003. He started as a regular gazillionaire (hah!) with a private plane at his disposal, but in the final edit, after I got my manuscript back from betas, he morphed into something more. I’m aware that class differences are a real thing-both IRL and in books-but the poor MC meets billionaire MC isn’t something I read a lot, which means I don’t write it either.īut Henrik, the narrator in It Rained All Night, told me he was filthy rich, and I had to listen to his voice. It Rained All Night is a contemporary story, and it doesn’t come naturally to me in this context. I’ve written about it exactly once before, but that was in one of my rare fantasy stories, and it felt more natural in that situation. This story features a trope I usually don’t write: class differences. Thank you so much, dear Ally, for allowing me back into your space to talk about my newest release It Rained All Night.

All I See by Nell Iris