The din tore down the beach like a great beast in heat. – from The Grey House, Book One
Doesn’t seem like the word genie is there, does it? It is.
When I write, the words usually flow out. I hardly ever craft a sentence to make sure the right feelings are conveyed. The sentence above started out as either “the noise tore down” or “the cry tore down”. It wasn’t, to me, enough.
This sentence represents Natalia’s turning point; This is the moment she decides to follow her desires and be with a vampire, even though she is hunting another vampire. It had to have impact, even if only to me.
I used the thesaurus to find other words that meant ‘cry’ and ‘noise’ and found the word ‘din’. I have heard the word before, probably used it too, but it’s not common. When I read it, I remembered, or thought I remembered that there was a word that meant ‘genie’ that was vaguely like the word ‘din’. Due to the rest of the sentence, “great beast in heat”, I knew I had to find out if the word existed.
The word is djinn.
To me, the noise that Natalia makes when she yells her frustrations are akin to a genie being released from a bottle after millennia. It’s one of my favorite sentences in the entire trilogy.
