Behind the Book is a series in which I give you a behind the scenes look at one of the latest installments of The Diamond Collection. For this round, I will be focusing on Diamonds N’ Roses: Part Five of The Diamond Collection.

Diamonds N’ Roses was released on December 25, 2016 and is available at the following online retailers: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books-A-Million.

CHAPTER TWO: ALL THINGS GO

In this chapter, readers learn that Chapter One was a nightmare. Well, parts of it was. Some of it did actually happen.

In Chapter Two, readers are introduced to the two main plot points of the book. The first is Story A, which is the planning of Carmen and Jay’s wedding. The second is Story B, which is Jay being introduced to the issue of conflict diamonds (or blood diamonds).

Story B conflicts with Story A because it distracts Jay from the main task at hand – the planning of his wedding. This chapter shows the start of the breakdown in some of Jay’s relationships. First, with his fiancée, Carmen, as he misses their first planning session. Then, with his business partner in Africa and his best friend/ right-hand, Malik Washington.

Of course, it wouldn’t be The Diamond Collection if there wasn’t a sea of other conflicts occurring at the same time (i.e. Coco’s pregnancy, Kristian’s disappearance). I planted this stuff on purpose as I wanted readers to question if the wedding between Carmen and Jay was even going to happen with all the drama surrounding them. Hence why the chapter is named, “All Things Go.” The title of the chapter as well as many more in the book come from the tracklisting of Nicki Minaj’s The Pinkprint album. This album stayed on repeat while I was writing the book, which is why I named the chapters after most of the songs.