Beasties

Working on BLOOD SON today, and my hero is majorly conflicted. He's a dhampir (half-human, half-vampire), and he REALLY hates his Daddy. In fact, he hates him so much that he loathes half of himself, the dark half, anything he sees in himself that isn't right and good and moral and decent.

But you don't have to be a beastie or a vampire or a thing-that-goes-bump-in-the-night to have this conflict. I have known plenty of men and women who have wrestled with their darker halves. I have had dear friends diagnosed as bipolar, and I have had friends struggle with mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, and abusive relationships. I have had friends who stayed ten years too long in relationships they should have left pretty much after the word, "hello," and I have known people who so hate their own pasts they have run from them their whole lives.

And therein is the secret, I think, to writing about beasties, vampires, and even anti-heroes and murderers. I think the father in THE ROOFER is damn sympathetic even if he tosses his enemies from the rooftop without a thought, and even if he breaks his own son's nose. It's all in the complexity of the dark side, the backstory of why and how someone came to be the beast they are. And I think to write a successful paranormal or fantasy book--or mob book or crime story--you have to be able to go to that dark place and make it understandable even for people who walk mostly in the light.

You have to shine your flashlight under the rock and expose the creepy-crawlies in all our souls. And in the souls of beasties, too.

Sometimes, while you're at it, you can even make a villain a hero. Or at least sympathetic. And you can make a half-monster seem like someone you'd take into your bed. Which reminds me. Off to write a sex scene with said dhampir. And I think it will be hot.